"It's the first full-length novel I've written that has anything to do with family," Ferriss said.
But don't expect children to be at the center of this work.
"The focus of the story is more on the adults," she said.
Ferriss said she was inspired to write her story by a New York Times essay on heart transplant recipients. In Nerves of the Heart, Ferris explores not only the trauma of having to undergo the surgery but also human emotions.
"It's really a book about love," she said.
An avid reader, Ferris said she became interested in writing by reading a lot as a child.
"For me, there was not a whole lot of distinction [between reading and writing]," she said.
Ferriss has also recently published Leaving the Neighborhood and Other Stories, a collection of short stories. She said that in these stories, she is talking about the "emotional neighborhood." Ferriss has written several other novels, such as Against Gravity and Philip's Girl. She has also written essays for the New York Times.
Ferriss has been recognized for her work with awards from the Faulkner Society and the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to writing fiction, Ferris teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., where she is currently working on several new projects. In fact, she just completed a new novel about a group of "wannabe" poets in southern France.
"It's about poetry, death and the south of France," she said.
Death and loss seem to come up a lot in Ferriss' work, but Ferriss insists that she does not have a morbid outlook on life.
"Everything in love, we lose," she said. "I don't think it means you have a depressing outlook -- that's the way it is."
Who: Fiction writer Lucy Ferriss
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