by Lee Woodruff
15. How do you think the book’s central relationships would have played out differently if James had survived the accident? Consider the triangles of Maura, Pete, and Art and Roger, Julia, and Margaret.
16. Toward the end of the book, Margaret thinks, “It was difficult times that let you understand good fortune; you could take an accounting of what you had in a way you weren’t able to when life ran smoothly.” Do you think people need to go through hard times in order to appreciate other aspects of life and family?
17. How were Roger’s and Maura’s motivations to be unfaithful and their entanglements the same or different?
A Conversation with Lee Woodruff
What was your writing process like? How much of the plot did you plan out in advance, and how much came to you as you wrote? Were there any twists or revelations that you surprised yourself with?
This novel grew out of a real-life experience. I was out of town and a friend called me in a panic. A seventeen-year-old driver in her town had struck a child, and I can still picture the hotel room I was in all these years later. The child had suffered a brain injury, and my friend wanted to know if I would talk to the parents and provide some hope based on my own family’s experiences. After I hung up, I kept thinking about that one pivotal “in-an-instant” moment and all the lives that had been affected by a split-second action.
That call formed the basis for a fictional story about how one pebble dropped in a pond ripples out in many directions. Although I never ended up talking to the real-life parents, and thankfully the real-life boy recovered, the seeds for this novel evolved from that one phone call.
I didn’t start the book with a definitive idea of what was going to happen to each of the characters. I began by finding each of them a voice and giving them some secrets, and then the story kind of took over. About midway through, I began to plot out exactly how events would begin tying together. My biggest challenge was figuring out what would happen to Alex, where he would intersect with Maura, and then how his actions and subsequent decisions would change the course of his future.
I think the biggest surprise was what happened to Roger. I didn’t originally conceive of his crisis, and once I had begun writing him, I realized it was the starting point for Margaret and him to forge a solid path back to each other.
This is your first novel, but not your first book. How was writing fiction different for you from writing nonfiction? Which do you prefer?
To me, fiction is so much harder to get right than nonfiction. With my first two books, In an Instant and Perfectly Imperfect, the facts of my life were, well, the facts, and so the art form is in figuring out how to tell the tale or present and edit it in an interesting way.
With fiction, it’s like starting from modeling clay. You can make your characters do or feel or say anything that you want, and so you have a big responsibility to end up with something plausible that hangs together. That also means that the sky is the limit, so it’s more about narrowing choices.
Those We Love Most is an emotionally complex book. Why did you choose to write about such a difficult topic and such a difficult time in the Corrigan family? Was the book emotionally draining to write?
I read and love all kinds of genres, but the books that have stayed with me over time tend to be those that deal with the emotional complexities of real human issues. I am fascinated by the moments when we are tested and forced to reach down to find out exactly what stuff we are made of. People respond to tragedy in heroic and sometimes not so heroic ways. I wanted to examine the process of life coming unglued and then look at all the strengths and the wonderful qualities that lie within us to do the right thing for the ones we love most.
The business of living is chock-full of so many extremes, and while there are parts of this book that deal with sadness, real life is a complete stew of love, loss, joy and sorrow, betrayal, triumph, and achievement.
I think the intricacies within families—the secrets people hold, the love that ebbs and flows in marriages and relationships, and the bond between a parent and child—are all interesting themes we can relate to.
I also liked the idea of looking at multigenerational and cross-sectional layers of the family: fathers and daughters, mothers, sisters, and grandchildren. The father’s and daughter’s decisions about what to do with the choices their infidelities present were an extra layer. Each had the power to destroy what they had built or knit it back together.
There are definitely little aspects of my own real-life journey. For example, I drew upon my husband Bob’s own experience being injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq to write some of the emotions required in the hospital and rehabilitation scenes.
You write, “It was difficult times that let you understand good fortune; you could take an accounting of what you had in a way you weren’t able to when life ran smoothly.” Do you feel this is true, from a personal perspective?
Absolutely. We all get sick of trite phrases about taking life for granted, but the truth is that the contours in life, the good days chased by a bad day, all allow us to get a perspective on what really matters. If there was a blue sky every single day, you would lose the perspective to fully appreciate it. Likewise, having a few challenges makes the happier, peaceful times all the sweeter. It reminds us to be more in the moment.
The most interesting people I know, the ones I want to talk to at a dinner party, are the people who have faced some kind of adversity, in whatever form that may take.
You say on your Web site that in college you dreamed of writing novels one day but were waylaid by the reality of needing a job right away. What does it feel like to finally achieve your novel-writing dream? Do you have any advice for aspiring authors who need a paying job but still hope to write for a living?
It feels amazing to be a published author. I’d tell any aspiring author to just keep finding those moments to write. Dedicated writers say to write three hours a day, but I’ve always worn many hats and have never been able to carve that out as a working mother. Three hours ain’t gonna happen in my life right now! But I write whenever I can, on planes, in hotel rooms, sometimes early weekend mornings. I say to anyone who wants to write a book that you can do it. Just keep plugging. There is no one right formula.
Which character would you most like to take out to dinner? What would you want to ask him or her?
I’d want to take out Margaret. But I’d need to be able to ply her with wine and loosen her lips. I’m fascinated by women of my mother’s era who were taught to keep up appearances: the 1950s–’60s housewife who was supposed to burnish the family’s public image to perfection and not demonstrate weakness, sadness, or fear.
There is so much going on inside Margaret that she has stuffed down, including her knowledge of her husband’s affair. She grew out of someone I knew in real life who confided to me that she would never have mentioned her husband’s indiscretions to him, for it would have opened up the door for him to leave, and she had no idea how she would live if that happened. That generation of women who were taught forbearance formed the basis for a really complicated and interesting character.
About the Author
LEE WOODRUFF is the coauthor, with her husband, Bob Woodruff, of the number one New York Times bestseller In an Instant, and the author of the essay collection Perfectly Imperfect. She is a contributing editor to CBS This Morning and has written numerous articles on family and parenting for Parade, Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, Country Living, and Family Fun. She and Bob founded the Bob Woodruff Foundation to assist wounded service members and their families. Woodruff has four children and lives in Westchester County, New York.
© Cathrine White Photography
Other Works
Also by Lee Woodruff
In an Instant
Perfectly Imperfect
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 B&L Woodruff, LLC
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publ
ication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the original print edition of this book as follows:
Woodruff, Lee.
Those we love most / Lee Woodruff. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4013-4178-7
1. Children—Death—Fiction. Fiction. 2. Married people—Fiction. 3. Betrayal—Fiction. 4. Family secrets—Fiction. 5. Forgiveness—Fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.0673T56 2012
813’.6—dc22
2011049422
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-4285-2
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Cover design by Laura Klynstra
Cover photograph © Jan Baldwin/Plainpicture
First eBook Edition
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