Her new novel owes its existence to a chance decision — which is also a major theme of the book.
Some years ago, Dani Shapiro's husband and son were driving home from a townball game when teenagers threw a bottle of salad dressing from the top of an embankment. It shattered in the street, missing their car by a fraction of an inch.
"When my husband got home he told me if it had been a second earlier, that salad dressing would have hit the windshield and they would have had a terrible accident," Shapiro said in an interview from her home in Connecticut. "And I thought, salad dressing! I never considered a bottle of salad dressing becoming a means of devastation."
