Windsor Square Author Adele Griffin Launches Her Latest Book

Windsor Square resident Adele Griffin, a two-time National Book Award Finalist, is launching her latest book, “The Favor,” with a special event this evening from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at her 100 year-old home in Windsor Square.  Guest are invited to wear something vintage and share a a story, or not, it’s entirely optional, Griffin told the Buzz. Chevalier’s Books will be there, of course, selling books! Neighbors interested in attending are welcome and can email Griffin for details.

Griffin is an acclaimed author of more than thirty young adult books. She is making her adult fiction debut with “The Favor,” a radiant novel of friendship and the call to parenthood, featuring two women of vastly different financial means who form a too-fast friendship which turns into a hasty surrogacy agreement.

Griffin told the Buzz she worked from her own experience with infertility to write the novel, which proudly shows there is no one “right” way to create a family, but true as ever, the same requirements of unconditional love, trust, and courage universally apply.  “The Favor” brims with heart and delightful pop culture cues while celebrating a non-traditional, but very common, path to parenthood in an ode to the modern family.

Nora is in debt and exhausted from her many failed rounds of IVF when heiress Evelyn Elliot swans into the vintage clothing store where she works. The Manhattanite to Nora’s Brooklynite, they are instantly charmed by each other. Evelyn is refreshed by Nora’s practical resourcefulness and Nora is enchanted by Evelyn’s luxury lifestyle. They soon become each other’s best new friend but that friendship becomes entrenched when, over wine one night, Evelyn generously offers to be Nora’s surrogate, an agreement which isn’t as seamless as they expected.

Their friendship of opposites begins to erode as their financial differences start to come between them. Meanwhile, both women have quickly realized that pregnancy is a huge obstacle to Evelyn’s extravagant lifestyle. Nora’s anxieties about money and the well-being of her future child flare up as Evelyn becomes increasingly more distant. As the pregnancy progresses, both women start to reevaluate the relationship they’ve built as they both work to uphold their promises to each other and the baby.

Griffin’s other books include the National Book Award Finalists “Sons of Liberty” and “Where I Want to Be.” Her novel “The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone” was named a YALSA Best Book, an Amazon Best Book of the Year, a Booklist Top Ten Arts Books for Youth, a JLG selection, a Romantic Times Finalist for Book of the Year, and a School Library Journal Top Fiction pick.