BY KAREN BOSSICK

Alli Frank was on a bus stuck in a blizzard traveling from Sun Valley to Boise when the idea for a novel came to her.

What would it be like, she thought, if a Black woman became director of admissions to an elite private school. What would it look like if a person of color had control of white students’ fate?

Knowing she couldn’t write such a book on her own, she enlisted the help of a Black friend she had worked with in admissions at a private school. Asha Youmans, whose grandmother was the first Black Rosie the Riveter at Boeing, agreed. And “Tiny Imperfections,” which exposed the hilarious insanity of application season, was born.

Now the two are back with a new book, “Never Meant to Meet You,” which revolves around the unlikely friendship between a Black Baptist who is the self-appointed fixer of other people’s problems and her Jewish neighbor who has just experienced the sudden death of her husband.

The two will launch their new novel at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12, at Ketchum’s Community Library in a conversation with librarian Aly Wepplo. RSVP to attend in person at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/9101180. A book signing with Iconoclast Books and light reception provided by the Wood River Jewish community will follow.

To watch online or later, go to https://vimeo.com/event/2493094.

Though about grief, the new book is riotously funny as the Black woman prepares for a new class of kindergarteners, including an unexpected child with an uncle who has the class moms aflutter, while her son’s budding manhood and her vexing ex-husband presents their own challenges.

The book was inspired by the grief of what Frank and Youmans felt they’d lost during the pandemic

“We’d been watching Master Classes online, including David Sedaris, and he asked: Is there a time when even the worst of things is funny? At the time, we were in COVID and we wondering if it was ever going to be funny?” said Frank. “We also were watching the varied griefs people had of losing someone dear and not being able to say goodbye, the grief of losing your lifestyle, not getting to see your grandson graduate.”

Frank has been coming with her family to Sun Valley since a youngster, led by her father who fell in love with the area at 13 when his parents put him on a train with his friends to come skiing for a week. She lived here two years in the mid-80s working at Scott and then settled with her family in Seattle where she taught high school history and founded a private school.

She and her husband now live in a net zero home in Warm Springs. Working with her co-author by long distance has its challenges, but they make it work with long hours on FaceTime. Every six weeks they take turns going to one another’s home where they read one every word they’ve written slowly out loud, working on every sentence as many as six times.

“We call what we do ‘writing leapfrog.’ I write three to five chapters and send it to Asha, and she works on the character-driven questions. Then I write three to five more chapters,” said Frank. “I’m the story creator. And Asha’s strength is my weakness—she’s good at creating the depth of emotion in characters. The two of us make one good writer.”

The two strive to have the humanity comes first in their characters and their race and religions second. And they dote on humor, believing readers can learn as much through humor as pain.

The result is somewhat sassy, somewhat irreverent. Their characters withhold no punches, often addressing issues some people might be afraid to question out loud.

“We have more than 40 years of working in schools between us, and we’ve spent a lot of observing children and their parents. So, writing dialogue is the easiest part,” Frank said.

It doesn’t hurt that Frank has two daughters and Youmans two sons.

“First time I tried writing dialogue for a boy, Asha laughed at me because I wrote like girls talk. ‘No teenage boy talks that long, uses that many sentences,’ she said,” Frank recounted.

“Tiny Imperfections” was optioned by Netflix for a series but shelved when the COVID pandemic hit. While Frank and Youmans are hopeful their book may yet find its way onto TV, they’re already plunging ahead on their third novel.

“We hope to have it out in 2023,” said Frank.

Frank is ecstatic about being able to launch their new novel of Ketchum’s Community Library.

“I remember in 2017 when the library was undergoing renovation. I was walking between the children and adult section and they were asking people to write what they’d like to see in the library on a plywood wall they had there. I wrote that I wanted ‘Tiny Imperfections’ to be in the library and that I wanted to talk there. I’m doing talks throughout the country but none more important than this--to be able to manifest my dreams, giving my gift, my storytelling, to the community.”