My name is Taffey Brodesser Ackner and I'm a staff writer for the New York Times magazine.

I grew up in Brooklyn, but I spent the first few years of my life on Long Island where my father was raised.

My father had this childhood friend named Jack Taish, and as adults, they actually work together at the Steel Fabrication

Company owned by Jack's family. Growing up, I knew Jack as this regular suburban businessman, extraordinarily punctual, a consummate family

man, he and his wife were incredible art collectors.

But in 1974, the year before I was born, Jack actually made headlines as the victim of an

unimaginable crime.

He was kidnapped from his driveway in the suburbs of Long Island, dragged off at gunpoint and held in a closet for days away from his wife and his young children.

After a week in captivity, he was his wife and young children.

After a week in captivity, he was ransomed back to his family for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

He made it out, healthy and safe, and by all outward appearances he moved on. I grew up very aware of

Jack's story. As a child I would wonder what it was like to be rich enough to be

kidnapped. But as time went by and I developed empathy and compassion at all the

right stages, I came to understand that someone I knew

and cared about had been the victim of a completely violent crime.

And then recently, as I was working on my novel, Long Island Compromise, which just came out,

a kidnapping kept finding its way into the plot.

The book is about money, and I couldn't resist this idea that in a kidnapping the same money that made you safe in the world also put you in danger

But then it saved you again. Was money good or was it bad? As I kept

writing, I knew I needed to talk to Jack as a family friend to warn him about the fact that I really wanted to use a kidnapping in my book.

When I finally spoke with him, not only did he give me his blessing,

but he told me that he was also writing a book himself.

...