Seven years ago, Megan Miranda and her husband, Luis, found Huntersville to be a happy halfway point between the cold climate of Boston and muggy heat of Florida.

Now, thanks to that compromise and Miranda's gift for writing and plot, Huntersville can claim a hot new author in the "young adult" book genre.

Miranda's first book, a thriller titled Fracture, published by Walker/Bloomsbury books, already has a favorable write-up on the Washington Post's Web site, and the publisher launched Miranda on an out-of-town book-signing tour Monday, Jan. 16. The new author will return to Huntersville briefly for a book-signing appearance Saturday, Jan. 21, at noon at Barnes and Noble in Birkdale Village. Then she takes to the road again Sunday for a week of appearances.

Sarah Davies, the literary agent who negotiated Miranda's initial contract with Walker/Bloomsbury, says Fracture has the kind of compelling plot that already has caught the eye of an influential co-agent in Los Angeles. That agent, who negotiated the book/movie deal for The Hunger Games, is trying to interest a studio in putting Fracture on the screen, Davies says.

In Fracture, 17-year-old Delaney Maxwell falls into an icy lake in Maine. While conventional medical knowledge says anyone submerged in icy water is completely dead — brain and heart — by 10 minutes, Delaney's friend, Decker, pulls her out in 11, and she survives. The experience leaves her with the ability to sense when people are about to die, leading her to meet Troy Varga, a psychic and near-death survivor with the same ability, but with questionable motivation.

Davies and Washington Post reviewer Mary Quattlebaum say Miranda's mix of hard science and the paranormal make the book compelling reading.

Miranda, 30, brings a strong scientific foundation to her writing. She earned a degree in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and worked in biotechnology research in Boston for two years.

So how did she and her family end up in Huntersville?

"It was really random," she says.

She met Luis Miranda, a native of Puerto Rico, while at MIT and, after getting jobs following graduation, "we were looking to move from Boston to settle down," Miranda explains. "My parents lived in New Jersey, and Luis wanted to move to Florida. So we looked for somewhere in the middle."

Luis Miranda works for Accenture, which has an office in Charlotte, and co-workers there said the couple should visit. During a few weekend trips, the couple came to admire the Lake Norman area, moving here in 2004. Megan Miranda taught high school biology at North Lincoln High School for a couple of years, until their daughter, Alexa, 5, was born. Their son, Jake, 3, followed two years later. When the children began sleeping through the night, Megan became a nocturnal writer, developing her work beyond hobby to a serious effort.

"I've always written as a hobby, and I've always been drawn to science, particularly what we couldn't explain," she says. "We know so much about the heart and diseases and how they work, but there's so much about the brain that we don't know. So that's what I wanted to explore, and my book crosses the line between science and the paranormal."

Davies and her partner at the Greenhouse Literary Agency specialize in representing authors in the young adult category, receiving 10,000 to 15,000 submissions a year. "We're consistently swamped, which makes Megan's achievement all the greater," Davies said last week from her office in Washington, D.C. Writers always send Davies a short bio of themselves, and the first five pages of their book.

"I was going through some. No, no, no, none of these," Davies says. "Then, I came upon Megan's and thought, 'Ohhhh.' There's something about the best ones. They have an indefinable feeling. Megan had an idea that was very compelling and arresting ... a scientific mystery, but one grounded in science."

So, she asked Miranda to send her first 50 pages, and after reading them, Davies found "something that we in the fiction industry call 'voice.' She can get into the head of her main character and speak authentically to the reader. We agents can help a writer with plotting, but we can't give a writer voice. That's instinctive."

Of course, Davies did help with plotting, and Miranda ended up rewriting Fracture twice before her agent was ready to go to publishers. Obviously, author and agent did a pretty good job because Miranda received an initial contract for Fracture plus a second book, which is drafted but not yet titled.

Miranda's friend, Tabitha Hancock, got to see an early version of Fracture and loved it from the first read. Hancock also taught locally — at Bradley Middle School — leaving the teaching profession to raise her two children, Savannah, 5, and Caleb, 2. The two met when they brought their children to a program at the Cornelius Public Library. Miranda began sending sections of Fracture to Hancock about two years ago.

Hancock says she might have offered a few questions about sequencing, but she found that Miranda usually already had her eye on that part. "I was just a sounding board," Hancock says. "I didn't find much. I'm very excited for her, and I can't wait to see her at Barnes and Noble" for the book signing.

Miranda's parents, Jon and Jeanne Colpitts, will also be in the crowd at Birkdale Village on Saturday. The Colpitts moved to Cornelius from New Jersey to be closer to the Mirandas and their grandchildren.

Jon Colpitts, who volunteers at the Lake Norman Visitors Center in Cornelius, says he and his wife had no idea their daughter had a gift for writing, and they were completely surprised when she announced she had finished a novel.

"Her parents didn't have a clue," Jon Colpitts says. "She certainly didn't get it from my genes. ... It's amazing, and she loves what she's doing."

The grandparents will play an important part in Miranda's book tour. They're helping watch Alexa and Jake while she's gone.

Here's a review:

Written by Mary Quattlebaum in The Washington Post

My teenage daughter recently pointed out a disturbing trend: the increasing number of dead girls — prone, glassy-eyed, beautiful — on the covers of young-adult novels. But don't judge Megan Miranda's debut by its dark cover. The author, who trained as a scientist, turns in a compelling medical thriller-cum-romance that proves to be surprisingly life-affirming. The premise is chilling, literally and figuratively.

Delaney Maxwell, 17, falls through the cracked ice of a Maine lake and awakens from a coma six days later to find herself a medical miracle. Following her dramatic rescue by best friend Decker Phillips, the straight-A student should be dead or severely brain damaged but appears to suffer only (only!) from an uncanny ability to identify those on the threshold of death. Did Delaney's brush with the Grim Reaper rewire her brain? Heighten her sense of empathy? Frightened and frustrated, Delaney looks for answers and comfort from Troy Varga, another near-death survivor and psychic who surfaces not long after her accident.

The tension mounts as Delaney struggles to better understand her feelings for brooding Troy and solid-guy Decker and to cope with her realization that someone may be hastening the predicted deaths.

The science angle gives this mystery a fresh, intriguing twist, and Delaney's intelligent first-person voice and sensitive reflections deepen it. Teens will respond to Delaney as she negotiates the changes that fracture lives and create beginnings as well as endings.