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When I began to research and interview the later-life achievers featured in my new book, I tried to maintain a warm but objective distance. It wasn't always easy.

They were very engaging. They introduced me to friends and family and opened their lives to me. They shared their goals, struggles, and victories along with their intimate secrets, their most painful memories. They made themselves transparent and, therefore, vulnerable.

Some nights, as I sifted through notes or listened to recorded interviews, I was terrified that they had entrusted me to shape and edit their lives as I saw fit.

Once the writing was finished, our sense of kinship grew. Now, I sometimes catch myself speaking of "my" sculptor, psychologist, inventor, or dancer.  Some of them have told me that they speak of me as "my author." We have, it seems, become proprietary about each other.

We have also become a kind of extended family. Many of them have told me how happy and proud they are to be in the company with the others in the book. They've also said what a hoot it would be for everyone to get together for one night. Or, in the words of Betty Reid Soskin, 88, the oldest ranger in the National Park Service, "Oh, what a party that would be!"