I found The Catcher in the Rye on my mother's bookshelf. It was the cover that drew me to it. I was in eighth grade, I knew nothing, and I had certainly never heard of J. D. Salinger. So it was the cover - that somber unadorned maroon paperback, the literary equivalent of a brown paper bag - that made me feel as though I'd stumbled onto a secret. Whatever was inside was powerful, that much was certain. One hundred proof.

Published in 1951, the year before I was born, The Catcher in the Rye felt so oddly intimate, so very here and now, that sitting out in my backyard, reading underneath the willow tree, I felt as though the novel had been written expressly for me. The stream of consciousness, the intensity of Holden Caulfield's vision of the world as a haunted and haunting place, the cynicism, the truth, the sorrow, all of it blew me away. I had never had this kind of literary experience before-the gut-wrenching interactiveness of fiction. The sense that while reading someone else's creation, you, as a reader and as a person, are miraculously known and revealed.

The Catcher in the Rye is a coming-of-age story, perhaps the best ever written, but it is so much more. It is the revelation of the power of a single voice. The plot itself, the journey of one teenage boy, is less important than the emotion and the unique humanity. Reading a book became an act of intimacy. Take in a breath and don't let it out until you get to the last page.

In my own writing that is also the place I aim for – the inner heart of the story, the voice that sounds like no one else’s yet feels personal and intimate. Fiction that doesn't just tell a story, but tells readers something about what is deep within themselves. The "inside outness" of The Catcher in the Rye, the sense that as one reads the facts of the story there is an inner core that is being revealed at the very same time, is what I yearn for as both a reader and a writer.

The subject matter of The Catcher in the Rye—one teenager angst-filled journey-convinced me that it is the telling that matters. I want to know everything about you, I remember thinking about Holden, as if he were real, more real than the people walking down my street. Clearly, Holden already knew me, far better than any of my friends. I felt the same way he did; I was as much an outsider, as haunted by deeds done and undone. That was the true discovery when I found that maroon book on the shelf in our living room - the power of fiction.