Moms de Plume

It messed her up.

There were some letters, delivered through a third party, and, finally, a phone call, initiated by Homes. The voice on the line frightened her. It was "low, nasal, gravelly, vaguely animal."

"Tell me about you -- who are you?" the voice asked.

Homes said only that she was a writer, lived in New York, had a dog. "I am not who I thought I was," she found herself thinking, "and I have no idea who I am."

More stressful conversations followed. One day, the voice showed up on her answering machine.

"Your cover is blown," it informed her. "I know who you are and I know where you live. I'm reading your books."

Two Shadows

Homes strides into the West Village restaurant a couple of minutes late -- a bit rumpled, looking warmer and more natural than she does in her carefully posed book jacket photo -- and extends a hand:

"Are you you?"

It's her standard way of greeting an interviewer she's never met. But one can't help thinking it's also a version of the question Homes has spent a lifetime asking herself.

Are you you? And just who would that "you" be, anyway?

Growing up, Amy Homes was the kind of girl who loved the slides and swings at Candy Cane City, the Rock Creek Park playground near her house, and shot hoops in neighbors' driveways, pretending to be a Harlem Globetrotter. She also haunted the Chevy Chase library. She favored biographies and latched onto two famous figures in particular: Eleanor Roosevelt and Babe Ruth. Later she realized that both had been separated from their parents at an early age.

Two shadows darkened her childhood, she says.