JUNE 25: Huntington Woods Public Library & Fox Run Senior Living Community, Greater Detroit, Michigan

We invited Kristen Bell to this Detroit Double Whammy. Alas, she could not make it.

It was a packed and wonderful first day in Michigan. I arrived in Detroit just short of midnight the night before with a new entourage as my husband, Jim, joined me from London, while Lily and Deirdre stayed back in southern California.

Jim and I hit the ground running, with two events on the first day. Unfortunately, I failed to brief Jim on his duty, taking over from Lily, as tour photographer. So our first outing, at the Fox Run Senior Living Community in Novi, MI went undocumented. It was my largest audience thus far, with a crowd of sixty to seventy, filling the Fox Run Performing Arts Center. It was also my first encounter with some of the deep red folks who make Michigan a battleground state — but that’s exactly why I was there, for what’s the point of speaking only to allies and folks already on side?

I didn’t write Crossing the Line to make money (I mean, that would be nice but debut books rarely do). I wrote the book to touch hearts, change minds, and make change before the 2024 election. Michigan was the perfect place for me to be the week Biden was scheduled to meet “the former guy” on the debate stage. And after seven blue-state West Coast events, I was ready.

Following our mid-day presentation, we made our way to nearby Huntington Woods and its fabled public library for our evening engagement. We managed to get a message to Kristin Bell’s publicist, inviting her to the event as Huntington Woods is her hometown. But she couldn’t make it. That said, one of her teachers from her elementary school days was in the audience.

We had an enthusiastic turnout in the library’s Woods Gallery and the local bookstore, Book Beat (serving metro Detroit since 1982), graciously handled the commerce.

Thanks to Deb Hemmye of the Huntington Woods Public Library, Karen Linnell of Fox Run, and Audrey Pleasant of the Congregation for Humanistic Judaism for providing us a place to hang our weary heads. Thanks, too, to Marjorie Zeifert and Chuck Keiffer, fellow border witnesses and the champions of our Michigan welcome wagon, whose personal chariot, a Subaru Outback, became our wheels as we traveled from Detroit to Novi to Huntington Woods then on to Ann Arbor for the next line-up of events…