Dear Jesuit High School students, faculty, alumni, family and friends,               I am greatly honored that you’ve chosen my novel Boy’s Life as your Big J Read  project. I have fond memories of coming to the school and speaking about the book back in 1994, and I particularly recall how attentive the students were to my address, and how perceptive were theirquestions and comments. I left that day feeling I had not only met many friendly people, but in fact I wound up being intrigued by the eagerness of the students to hear my thoughts on the book and also to venture their own.               Boy’s Life almost did not come to be. I had to fight for the book to be published in its present form, as after reading the manuscript the publisher at that time wanted it to be primarily a "murder mystery" and for me to remove most of the other elements because the readers might become confused over what is real and what is imagined. Robert McCammon               I told them to hold onto that thought, because I was flying up to New York the next day to talk about it. The result of that rather one-sided and certainly passionate conversation was Boy’s Life as it stands today.               So I am pleased to say that my original vision of Boy’s Life survived, and the book has readers around the world, and in every age group. I have spoken to teenagers who enjoy it, as well as to senior citizens who tell me they read it every year. Some people tell me they take the book with them on trips, like a valued companion. One gentleman in particular took it on his own personal journey, for his daughter informed me it was buried with him at the end of his life.               What can I say? I wrote it, but in a way it remains a mystery to me. I put down the words, I arranged the sentences, I guided the plot along until I reached The End and there were no more words to be written.  Yet...Boy’s Life continues to amaze me, because it seems to be more than words and sentences and line of plot. For some readers, it has no End, for they read it over and over again. They draw comfort from it, and they see it as a window into the world of wonder. Sometimes I think that even though I wrote Boy’s Life, I was just along for the ride, for I had no idea how the book would touch so many people in so many countries, and across so many generations.               One of the most wonderful—and, to me, totally unexpected—things about the book is that it has given readers a common experience that they seem to value and appreciate, no matter if they live in the United States, Russia, South America, Africa, or...really, wherever the book can be found. I know this from the letters I've gotten. I hear the voices of youth in their excitement, in their renewal of something they had forgotten they possessed, something tucked away in a box like a prized keepsake, or up high on a closet shelf like a broken kite its owner vowed to fix when time and circumstance allowed.               If Boy’s Life has allowed that forgotten possession to be reclaimed, that box to be opened or that kite to fly again, then I have done what I set out to do. What was forgotten was never far away, never very far away at all, but never, never was it lost.               Again, I thank you so much for including me in your Big J Read project plans, and I hope to see you in August.                                                                                                               Best Wishes,                                                                                                       Robert McCammon