Rachel Simon in Toronto

Rachel Simon, author of bestselling memoir Riding the Bus with My Sister was on a pre-sale tour in Toronto this week to promote her new novel, The Story of Beautiful Girl (Grand Central/Hachette, ISBN 9780446574464, release date May 4, 2011), a love story tracing the divergent paths of a young developmentally disabled woman and a deaf African American man. I was able to sit down with Rachel for what turned out to be a very pleasant and engaging chat, mainly due to the fact that she absolutely radiates with kindness and empathy – but also because we have something in common which you can discover from a blog post about her Canadian visit. And no, it's not that we both like to chat endlessly (though that is also true – we ended up with over half an hour of footage!). We will be posting video of this interview in a couple of weeks.