With the publication today of her first novel, “Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him” (Viking), Danielle Ganek finally has it all: A successful husband, hedge fund manager David Ganek, founder of Level Global Investors; three children, who she said are “at the perfect ages, 12, 10, and 6 — great company and they still want to hang out with us;” an illustrious address, 740 Park Ave.; an eye-popping art collection that includes works by Richard Prince and Jeff Koons and has put the couple on Art News’s top collectors list since 2003, and, now, an identity as an author of fiction.

The latter was the hardest to come by. “I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was nine years old,” she said Tuesday afternoon while sitting in the Chelsea office of an art dealer and friend, Stellan Holm. “It was something I always planned to do, and it took me a really long time.”

At age 9, Mrs. Ganek wrote stories about “groups of kids going on adventures” that were inspired by books set at English boarding schools.

At age 43, Mrs. Ganek has written about the adventures of a 20-something woman struggling to find her place in the high-flying, often ridiculous contemporary art world. The title of the book derives from the title of a painting that drives the plot. The untimely death of its artist fuels a breathless demand for the work and, of course, drives up its price. The tale unfolds in various chi-chi settings that include an uptown museum gala, the Art Basel fair, an auction house, and an artist’s studio in Venice.

The art world has embraced the novel. A kingpin among art dealers, Larry Gagosian, and a painter collected by the Ganeks, Mr. Prince, have provided blurbs for the jacket; last night, the Guggenheim Museum, where Mr. Ganek is a trustee, held a party to celebrate the book’s publication.

“So far, no one has come forward claiming that I stole their identity,” Mrs. Ganek said. “Word has gotten out there’s not anything for anybody to worry about.”

Mrs. Ganek has said she collects art “that comments on the human condition with a sense of humor,” and that is an accurate description of the way her book looks at the art world.

Her characters include a dealer who lies, even about where he’s going to lunch; a rich but gauche collector who thinks dealers won’t sell to her because she’s a woman, and a man who flips a painting after only five months because he’s bored with it.

“She got it right,” Mr. Gagosian writes in his blurb.

Are people in the art world this obnoxious?

“Yes!” Mrs. Ganek’s dealer friend, Mr. Holm, who had overheard the question, said.

“No!” Mrs. Ganek retorted. “There are a lot of people who are really educated, passionate, smart, and interesting in the art world.”

There are nice ones, too. Take Mr. Holm’s assistant, Tara Amelchenko, who offered a reporter a glass of Pellegrino. In the book, assistants offer Pellegrino only to top collectors.

Mrs. Ganek honed her powers of observation as an American raised in Brazil and Switzerland. She returned home to attend Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania (where she met her husband), but she has never stopped feeling like a foreigner.

Writing has been her refuge. “Writing is the thing that has kept me sane,” she said. “For me, the process is addictive. If I haven’t written in a while, I have to do it.”

In her 20s, while working at Woman’s Day magazine in New York, she took her first formal classes in creative writing at Columbia University.

“I was writing here and there,” she said. “I’d have these moments of discipline and then I’d put it aside.”

She wrestled with whether she was good enough. “I’ve definitely had the experience of my ambition being larger than where I thought my talent could get me,” she said.

Her turning point was a few years ago, as she approached her 40th birthday.

“I said to myself, ‘Either you do something with this, or you keep it private,” she said.

She decided to do something. Mrs. Ganek started the novel at her home in Greenwich, Conn. The Ganeks’s move to New York in 2005 proved to be a boon to the project.

“It’s definitely a better place to write. Life in the ‘burbs, you spend so much time in your car. When we moved here, that was time I got back for my work,” she said.

She worked for two years, scared to show the novel to anyone. After polishing a second draft, she sent it out and found an agent. Only then did she let her husband read the manuscript. “He was surprised at how good it was,” she said.

The subject turns to whether Mrs. Ganek would ever want to work in a gallery. She’s certainly tiny and beautiful enough to pass as an assistant, or a director.

“I’d hire her,” Mr. Holm said.

Mrs. Ganek isn’t interested. “My goals have always been literary,” she said.

After a brief book tour to such art worldly cities as San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Mrs. Ganek will return to working on her second novel. She won’t say what it’s about, only that it’s set in New York and the narrator is an “older and funnier version of Mia,” the protagonist of “Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him.”

As for art collecting, it will remain a hobby she pursues with her husband. “It’s great to have a shared passion that, for both of us, is outside our realms of work,” she said. “Our kids make fun of us, that all we talk about is art.”

Still, they sometimes they bring the children along on their Chelsea jaunts.

“We’ll take them to two or three galleries, and then it’s time for pizza,” she said.