CHAPEL HILL - For a woman who knew very little about men's basketball, it's ironic that legendary basketball announcer Dick Vitale would inspire one of her first novels.

Erica Eisdorfer was having trouble finding the right approach to a fictional story stemming from her brother's death from AIDS until one day in the early 1990s.

Vitale had come to speak during March Madness at UNC-Chapel Hill's Bulls Head Bookshop, where she works as a manager.

While Vitale was "ranting about whatever it was," his wife quietly sat in the shop's literature section reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," Eisdorfer said.

This juxtaposition of the loud, obnoxious husband and quiet, modest wife became the basis of "How He Lived and How I Died," the story of a sports announcer and his wife whose child dies of AIDS.

Although that novel was not published, Eisdorfer has higher hopes for her most recent work of fiction.

Her novel, "The Wet Nurse's Tale," is among the top-10 finalists in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. The competition, a collaboration between Amazon.com and Penguin Group (USA), will award a $25,000 publishing contract to the author whose novel receives the highest ratings by Amazon customers.

Amazon spokeswoman Tammy Hovey said the contest's goal is to let the Web site's customers help discover the next great novel.

"It's not every day that readers can choose which books they want to see published," she said. "So this is a great opportunity for Amazon customers to be a part of this process."

The story

"The Wet Nurse's Tale" chronicles the life of Susan Rose, a witty 19th-century English servant who uses her rank as a wet nurse to become close to the family she serves and manipulate them into giving her what she wants.

After having nursed her own children, Eisdorfer said, she became curious about the women who did it as a profession.

In almost 30 years as a buyer for the bookstore, she had never seen a novel from a wet nurse's point of view, so she decided to write one.

"The wet nurse had an 'in,' " she said. "She was upstairs all the time, not downstairs like the cook and other servants. When you're upstairs, you're going to see and hear stuff. It was interesting to me that this job put women so close to the center of the family."

A Durham native and graduate of Duke University, Eisdorfer has been interested in writing since she was a child.

Out of college, she got her first glimpse of the literary world while working with writer Allan Gurganus. He wrote during the day, printed and edited his work, and then gave it to Eisdorfer to put on a disk.

"I saw what it looks like to edit," she said. "It looks different from what I had thought. It was a good education about how you make those words do what you want them to do."

Hoping now that her own words will work in her favor, Eisdorfer awaits Monday's announcement of the competition winner.