Excerpt and Giveaway Change of Heart by Shari Maurer

Published: December 2013

Description:

When you're 16 years old, it never occurs to you that you might die. Emmi Miller's got a fabulous life. She has tons of friends, does great in school and is an all-star soccer player who played in Europe last summer. It even looks like Sam Hunter, a totally cute baseball player, might be interested in her. And then she gets a virus. No biggy, right? Until the virus goes to her heart and weakens it so much that, without a transplant, Emmi will die. Will Emmi get a heart in time? Is Sam too good to be true? What about her new friend Abe, who has also had a transplant and guides her through these scary times - is he just being supportive or is there more going on between them? And will Emmi realize it before it's too late?

EXCERPT:

If I had known “normal” could disappear so quickly, would I have appreciated it more? Would I have been less afraid to raise my hand in class? Would I have let my mother’s complaints roll off my back?

Looking back to how it was before everything changed, I think I’d have done things differently. I’d have stopped to enjoy the smell of the cut grass on the soccer field—and been nicer to my brothers. I’d have eaten that hot fudge sundae, even when I felt kind of fat.

But it’s easy to analyze this stuff when you have the perspective I do now.

I think when you’re sixteen, you believe you’re invincible. Or immortal. Maybe it’s both?

When the most stressful thing in your life is winning a soccer game or what to wear to school, you take some really basic things for granted. 

Like the love of your parents. 

Or hanging with your friends. 

Or the beating of your heart . . .

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About the author:

Shari Maurer did her undergraduate work at Duke University, studying English and Film and Video. In graduate school at NYU, she realizedunnamed that while her Dramatic Writing classmates were all writing serious plays, movies or sitcoms, she kept drifting toward “After School Specials” and she decided to do her internship at the Children’s Television Workshop. She wound up staying there for six years, working on Sesame Street productions around the world.

After her daughter was born with a heart defect, Shari got together with a friend to write The Parents’ Guide to Children’s Congenital Heart Defects which was published by Random House’s Three River Press and named one of Booklist’s “Top Health Books of 2001.”

Shari segued into teen fiction with her novel, Change of Heart, about a 16 year old soccer player who needs a heart transplant. Both of these books were made easier to write because Shari’s husband, Mat, who she met in summer camp when they were 17, is a cardiologist.

In addition to writing young adult novels, Shari spent two years as the “Moms Talk” columnist at the New City Patch, an on-line local newspaper. She got her inspiration for the column, as well as for her books, from her three teenagers, Lissie, Josh and Eric and started the newest chapter in her life when she became the mom of a college student.

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