Most of the pieces published in this series so far introduce writers who may not be widely known, who have been discovered or at least brought to prominence by the editor who’s writing. My situation is a little different—Jim Harrison was already a beloved, best-selling author long before I came along, so my story is more about our relationship and how I got to be lucky enough to work with him.

I was working as the assistant to the publisher of Grove Press one August over ten years ago when a fax arrived, written in longhand, from an author whose name I had heard but whom I’d never met—Jim Harrison. My boss was on vacation, and the fax rather intimidatingly demanded we dispatch to him a notebook of the finest rag paper, without which he could not finish his latest masterpiece. At the time, of course, I had never encountered Jim’s sense of humor so, better safe than sorry, I bought a hardbound journal and sent it off with a note that I hoped would strike the right balance between amusing, ingratiating, and tweaking him slightly for his demands.

When the book came in, it was The Road Home, and, incidentally, worth any gross of rag-paper notebooks bound in gold, and far more.

I’m not sure exactly when or how I became Jim’s editor, but I have to credit the rapport that developed then, and grew through numerous gravelly-voiced calls from him as we were preparing to publish The Road Home, that convinced him he could work with me. We’re an odd couple in some ways—he is an avowed hunter and I’m a pescatarian—but since one of our first projects together was his decidedly carnivorous collection of food criticism The Raw and the Cooked we crossed that bridge fairly early on.

Jim’s latest book, just out in January, is a trio of novellas, a form he has been championing for most of his career. And though I’ve now read enough to believe he can incarnate any voice, this one is a good reminder that a good book or author is something that never stops surprising you. Of course, prior history might tip you off that Jim is a good candidate to write the memoir of a retired werewolf (as he does in “Games of Night,” with both ludic and profound results), and that the latest appearance of his recurring character Brown Dog will be a delight (and it is).  And, given that no less a writer than Louise Erdrich once called him “one of the few truly high-test males to have gone through the eye of the needle” in writing about women, and that he’s given us characters like the eponymous heroines of Dalva and The Woman Lit by Fireflies who have stuck in readers’ heads for years, it should not be a surprise that the girl who is the subject of The Farmer’s Daughter is so vivid and real and warm-blooded. He captures the aching loneliness and tense possibility of coming of age as a smart and odd girl. Sarah Anitra Holcomb stopped me in my tracks.

Talking the other day with Jim Harrison about this, it’s not the first time he’s heard it. We were all female once, he says, referring to the early development of embryos. Be that as it may, there aren’t a lot of men who could create a character like Sarah. Maybe it goes back to Off to the Side, Jim’s beautiful memoir, a book which I have given or recommended to many of the smart, odd girls and women and men in my life. “Off to the side,” he writes “is a designated and comfortable position for a writer. . . . How can you observe the vagaries of human behavior when you’re the target” of attention? While perhaps too humble an explanation of his ability to capture character, it’s probably as close to an explanation as there is.

Amy Hundley is an editor and director of rights at Grove/Atlantic.  A native of Chicago and alumna of Kenwood Academy, she’s spent many hours at 57th Street Books.