I always assumed I would have the whole pie. I worked as a journalist, played in the wilds of New Mexico’s rivers and mountains where I kayaked, skied, biked, climbed and ran, and I traveled the world. But I longed for the missing piece: a mate and child. The yearning felt like a chasm at the center of my being.

As I neared age forty, the desire intensified to a point where I felt I had to take action.

This experience is the seed for The Baby Pact. Though the book may appeal most to women who long to have a family, it is really for anyone who has suffered from unfulfilled desire.

During this time my best friend had twins, so I was thrown into the world of motherhood. I listened to her complaints about sleepless nights and the pain of breast-feeding. I went to her home and held her babies. I smelled their milky scent and helped change their diapers.

There were moments of beauty so rich I cried—the warmth of a baby against my chest, her pointy shoulder blades on my palm. And there were moments when I saw the immense challenge of parenthood. Most memorable was when the twins pooped their way through three diaper changes in a matter of minutes, while their screams pierced my eardrums.

The time I spent with my friend and her babies expanded my understanding. I vicariously tasted the duality of parenthood—its poignant beauty and its immense sacrifice. I realized that a child would not fill the void within me.

One day, the desire was gone.

Rather than a living child, I gave birth to this novel. More than a decade of nurturing went into it.

What drives good fiction is when a character has an unyielding desire for something. So my main character, Jamie O’Leary, heads into the procreative world with blind intensity.

Such intense desire usually has roots in a past creation. Jamie’s quest takes her back to a lost love. It is a story that is familiar to all of us—the painful path along which our passions lead us.

We seek, we find. We become disappointed, lost and bereft. From this, clarity is born. It happens again and again, until one day we arrive at our true self—that part that is pure love.

We stop searching.

We are found.

This is Jamie’s story in The Baby Pact. It is also my own as I come to know the true child I desire: soul.

With crackerjack writing experience ranging from scientific journals to national magazines to travel guides, Lesley S. King has produced in her saucy first novel an MRI of human relationships. It’s a walking tour of the human heart. It’s a five-star read. It’s delicious.”

—Robert Mayer, author of The Dreams of Ada and Danse Macabre

If you would like to adventure with Jamie, I invite you to click below to purchase a copy.

Blessings to you as you birth your true inner self.

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