In IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WHAT HE SAID, Eden Collinsworth has written
an original story of misguided entitlement, inexplicable love and
attempted murder.

Twenty-eight-year-old Isabel Simpson heads a small but successful
publishing house. Dedicated to her work to the point of
consumption, Isabel's sole focus is the book, the turn of the
phrase, the craft. Isabel's life outside the office is lacking, to
say the least; she has had her share of lovers, her share of
friends, and her share of travels, but real romance has eluded her
and her past personal relationships have been uninteresting. Her
familial history, however, is far from uninteresting and the
revelations of her ancestry are strong contributing factors to what
makes this story so compelling.

Isabel's mother's upbringing is a mystery and her disappearance
during Isabel's youth is an equal enigma. Slowly Collinsworth gives
hints at what happened and keeps the pages turning as Isabel's
involvement in her mother's disappearance comes to the foreground.
The unraveling of the history parallels the unraveling of Isabel
herself.

And there is James Willoughby, a freelance writer with a "God-given
talent (that) suggested more than it accomplished" and with blue
blood lineage but an empty bank account and wallet. He's a rogue
who drinks too much, spends too much, and sleeps around too much.
When Isabel and James meet to discuss a potential book deal, sparks
fly and an unlikely couple is born. Friends and family alike warn
each against the other; Isabel's dearest friend John says to her,
"I've logged in enough experience to be able to see trouble walking
toward me. The last thing you do is cross the street to invite it
to lunch." But Isabel replies, "Invite it to lunch."

Isabel and James seem simpatico, in their love of each other and
their love of writing. "Mind, sex, and --- most remarkable --- her
heart were working as one and had miraculously found their
correspondents in the same man," said Isabel. They marry, have a
child together, and from all outward appearances seem to find ways
of forging a union based on compromise and love; they move "with
ease through their charmed existence."

Until Isabel attempts to murder James. The very thing that brought
them together would part them: "Words drew Isabel to James and, in
time, to a place she couldn't have imagined. His words would hold
her there, long after she should have left. They would provoke her
blind rage...and become reason for Isabel to try killing
him."

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WHAT HE SAID is a story of the crashing down of
the psyche, of love, of marriage. There are shades of obsession,
like in THE ENGLISH PATIENT, and reminiscences of excessive
consumption, like in THE GREAT GATSBY. But in the end, this is a
truly original tale of ultimate undoing.