Author, journalist and lecturer Gail Sheehy is coming to O’side

Herald: Throughout your book you talk about the need you had to write, to be a journalist, to be “where the action was.” To what do you attribute that drive?

Gail Sheehy: I guess I was just born with an extra dollop of curiosity in my genes. I grew up across from Mamaroneck Harbor and at 10 years old, my friend and I convinced the boatyard manager to lend us rowboats. We would row to abandoned houseboats and climb in. There we found old newspapers and Crisco cans, things that showed how people lived in the ‘20s. We also climbed through the window of a famous dead recluse, and danced in the ballroom as if we were princesses.