T
orri “T.J.” Newman ’06 stands in her parents’ tidy kitchen in Mesa, Arizona, sipping coffee between glances at an iPhone emitting a cacophony of beeps and buzzes. It’s a rare day off for Newman in the midst of a book tour to promote her debut novel Falling. Crisscrossing the country at 35,000 feet and working out of airport lounges is nothing new for the former flight attendant; it was her time in the skies, after all, that prompted her introduction to the literary world. But it’s here in Mesa she is spending some downtime on a mid-July morning, fresh off a flight and only a matter of hours before she boards another. She’s wearing a casual black dress accented by
a double-layered necklace and a denim shirt tied around her waist, though she’ll hardly need the latter on a Mesa day calling for temps in the triple digits. Newman’s phone comes to life every few minutes, a steady stream of emails and text messages causing it to rattle against the kitchen counter. Suddenly she recognizes a number and knows she has to pick up. It’s Shane Salerno, her agent. He’s calling with good news, something he’s done frequently the past few weeks. “Falling by T.J. Newman. A kidnapper demands that a pilot crash his plane with 144 passengers on board to save his family,” Salerno says, reading the book’s PHOTO/JESSE RIESER
A series of rejections didn’t stop Torri “T.J.” Newman ’06 from writing a story that has become a New York Times bestseller and landed a seven-figure movie deal.
TAKING OFF Story by MAT T WING
