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Growing up, Ann Patchett dreamed of becoming one thing, and one thing only, a writer.   \\u201cI wrote and read and read and wrote, \\u201d she observes in the current edition of The New Yorker.  She didn\\u2019t like sports. She didn\\u2019t like clubs. She didn\\u2019t like socializing. She liked books, reading them and learning how to write them.   She fulfilled her dream.  Her  many books, like Bel Canto and The Dutch House, have become both critical and commercial successes.

Yet for all her acclaim as a writer, her father Frank never believed in her as a writer, and told her so, explicitly, painfully, and repeatedly.