For Rebecca Strand, the 28 year-old main character of my new novel The Secret of Joy, published this past November in trade paperback by Simon & Schuster, the secret begins with her father’s deathbed confession of a long-ago love affair, a baby that he turned his back on, and a stash of unsent letters he’s written every year on the child’s birthday. Shocked to discover she has a half-sister she never knew existed, Rebecca is now the keeper of the secret. What will she do with it? Her overbearing lawyer boyfriend thinks she should excise the secret-a sister!-from her mind, as her father did. “Just forget the women exists-lest she try to get her possibly trashy hands on your father’s fortune,” is his lawyerly advice. But this secret stirs something in Rebecca. Her mother is gone. Her father is now gone. Her boyfriend, is, well, trying to run her life. And her job as a paralegal at a divorce mediation firm, where said boyfriend is a partner, is all about endings. Rebecca needs a beginning. And that beginning is dependent on setting things right, on finding 26 year old Joy Jayhawk in a small coastal town in Maine. In delivering…