Putting Your Best Foot Forward

    "Best foot forward," Mrs. Gladstone said to me. "What does that mean to you?"
    I smiled. "My grandma used to say that to me every year on the first day of school. She'd tell me to put my best foot forward and try to do my best."
    "I would have liked your grandmother."
    "You would have, Mrs. Gladstone. She was a pistol." I grinned. "Like you."

    Now that I've written Best Foot Forward, I get lots of questions about, well...feet:
        Mrs. Bauer, which is your best foot?
        Do you have a thing about feet?
        Do you like your feet?
        When you walk into a shoe store do people get nervous?
    I hope not!
    But when I was a girl, shoe stores made me very nervous because my feet pointed inward and I needed to wear special shoes to realign them. I hated those shoes. They were big, clunky and nothing like the cool, sleek shoes my classmates wore. I would tie up those monstrous things and feel different and ugly right down to my toes. I couldn't grasp the concept that inside those special shoes were braces that were realigning my feet by turning them ever so slightly and gently outward. I'm not sure how many years I had to wear corrective shoes, but I remember when I didn't have to anymore. I was in seventh grade, I slipped into a pair of black flats, and felt released.
    And I took that memory of release and let it run through Best Foot Forward. Have you ever tried to walk in too-tight shoes? That's a bit of what Jenna Boller, the sixteen-year-old narrator of this novel (and Rules of the Road) is experiencing when the story opens -- life is squeezing her every which way. She's trying to deal with the emotional pain left by her absent alcoholic dad, her part-time job at Gladstone Shoes has become mind-numbingly complicated, her little sister is being a consummate brat, and then this guy, Tanner Cobb, shows up. Jenna doesn't trust him, no one does, with the possible exception of her boss, Mrs. Gladstone.
    Best Foot Forward is a story about connections and disconnects, about huge lies and overcoming truth, about the sheer power of forgiveness, the grace of a second chance, the goodness of a well-made pair of shoes, and the simple joy of a serious doughnut.
    Well, you've got to read the book to see the connections, just like you've got to try on the shoes and walk around in them for a while to see if they fit.
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