I Have a New Job

Two years ago, I was grieving my mother.

I had no plan to become a novelist.

And now I get to say something that still feels a little strange:

Koehler Books will publish my debut novel, The Penny, on May 11, 2027.

I’m enormously grateful to Joe Coccaro, who convinced me to take the leap and sign with Koehler, and to Jon Koehler for seeing something in this story, the generations of women, the mothers and daughters, the nurses and midwives, and everything underneath what happens on the page.

There is something remarkable about having someone else see the book you were trying to write.

Especially when, not very long ago, you weren’t entirely sure you were a writer at all.

But there is something strange about typing the word Author under your own name for the first time.

Especially at 60.

Maybe because I never planned for it.

Maybe because by 60, I thought I had a pretty good idea who I was.

And then I wrote a novel.

Everything I’ve done professionally started in the same place: nursing.

It began when I walked into Rhode Island Hospital as a candy striper in 1983 and knew almost immediately that healthcare was where I belonged.

There is something unusual about nurses.

We walk into rooms other people would rather run from.

We walk in when someone is bleeding or terrified or in terrible pain. We walk in when a family has just heard the worst news of their lives. We are expected to bring some combination of knowledge, confidence and calm, even when there isn’t an easy solution.

And you learn very quickly that what is happening in the chart is not always what is happening in the room.

The chart can tell you the diagnosis, the medications, the lab results and the procedure.

It cannot capture the fear on someone’s face.

The daughter who hasn’t slept in two days.

The husband who keeps asking the same question because he cannot quite absorb the answer.

Or the patient who waits until everyone else leaves before telling the nurse what she is actually afraid of.

That is the part nurses see.

I think that is where I learned to pay attention to what isn’t being said.

And although I didn’t know it then, I think it was teaching me something about writing.

After my mother died, I began writing about generations of women, midwives and nurses, mothers and daughters, Italy and America, secrets and grief, love and the things families don’t always say aloud.

At first, I didn’t know where it was going. Somehow my mom and my grandmother were beside me. I know that sounds strange.

One woman appeared.

Then another.

Then another.

Eventually, I realized I was writing a family.

That story became The Penny.

For decades I’ve been comfortable with the letters after my name.

RN. MS. CIC.

Saying, “I’m an author,” is newer and, if I’m being truthful, still feels a little audacious.

But I don’t think this is a second act that replaces the first one.

I like the first one.

I love my work. I love solving problems. And I loved being a bedside nurse.

Nursing is part of the fabric of who I am, and it became part of the fabric of The Penny too.

The more I think about it, the less this feels like becoming someone entirely new.

Maybe I’m just adding another line.

Daughter. Friend. Nurse. Wife. Mother. Leader. Author.

All of those things can belong to the same life.

So yes.

I have a new job.

The first one isn’t going anywhere.

And I’m very curious to see where this one takes me.

— Donna Nucci, RN, MS, CIC