To Genevieve Bos, for your generosity, business sense and all-around fabulousness, and to my early readers and cheerleaders—Kimberly Barnett, Mellissa Steadman Barney, Elizabeth and Greg Baxendale, Christy Brown, Lisa Campagna, Jamie Gallo, Kathy Kay, Dorothy Peterson, Jennifer Richardson, Tanya Sam, Alan and Teresa Schaefer, and K. C. Young. Katennia Dula, I’m so glad we’re on each other’s team.
To my literatuurgroep—Jiska van Ede, Kiki Edelman, Carolien van der Lande, Alette Stache, Petra Strickland, Irene Tyler, Jacqueline Waning and Riëtte van Winden—for agreeing to read an English-language book at a Dutch book club, and for letting it be this one.
To my parents. Thanks for being proud of my writing before you read the very first word.
To Ewoud—my best friend, my biggest fan, my traveling partner and partner in crime. Life with you is an adventure.
And finally, to Evan and Isabella. No matter where in this world I end up, my favorite place will always be wherever you are.
THE LAST
BREATH
KIMBERLY BELLE
Reader’s Guide
Questions for Discussion
In The Last Breath, the story begins with Gia returning home to care for her dying father, a man she hasn’t seen or spoken to in sixteen years. She’s not convinced he’s guilty of murdering her stepmother, but she’s not certain he’s innocent, either. Would you have returned home in this case?
Why do you think Gia chose a career chasing disasters around the planet? Was it to feed her wanderlust, to get away from her past in Rogersville or something else entirely? Does it matter if her reasons were not purely altruistic, as long as she’s helping others?
Alternatively, do you understand Lexi’s reasons for remaining in Rogersville, and Jake’s for settling there? Are their methods of coping with their traumas better or worse than Gia’s?
Think about the bonds of family—the obligations that hold them together and the secrets that can tear them apart. What do you think the author was trying to say with Gia’s story?
Have you or someone you know ever been caught up in a destructive and abusive relationship? How did reading about Ella Mae and Dean make you feel about that relationship? Did it change any of your thoughts or beliefs about how that relationship played out?
Gia keeps finding herself in situations where she’s either disappointed by her family members, or she feels she’s disappointing them. Is there anything she should have handled differently?
At one point, Gia realizes that Cal’s defense wasn’t accidentally shoddy, that he threw the most prominent and important case of his life on purpose. Do you understand Cal’s choice to defend his brother, while also ensuring Ray paid for what he did? What about Cal’s promise to keep Ray’s secret from his children?
Do you understand Jake’s reasons for keeping his true identity secret from the people in Rogersville? What about from Gia? Was he right or wrong in not telling?
After her father’s deathbed confession, Gia forgives her father, even if she will never be able to forgive his action. Further, according to Gia, “And if I can’t do either of those things just yet, the least I can do is give him peace.” Could you do the same in her position?
Where do you think Gia and Jake end up? What do their lives look like a year or two or ten down the line?
A Conversation with Kimberly Belle
What was your inspiration for this story? Where did the plot and characters come from, and what helped them to take shape in your mind and then come to life on paper?
Unfortunately, tragedies like Ella Mae’s happen every day, so finding a story spark can sometimes be as easy as turning on the news. For me, though, what makes a story compelling is not the tragedy, but how it affects the people left in its aftermath. How do they cope; how do their relationships change? In the case of Gia, when her father swears he didn’t do this awful thing everyone says he did, how does she decide who and what to believe? These are some of the questions I loved exploring in this story.
As for where I find my characters, Gia was a gift from the writing gods. She came to me almost fully formed, her name and physical attributes, her strengths and weaknesses already in place. Lexi and Jake, too, to a large extent. I had to work a little harder for the others, mining my memories for some of the more colorful folks, embellishing them to really make them pop. Folks like Fannie, for example. I’m not exaggerating, not even a little bit, when I say there are a million Fannies puttering up and down the hills of Appalachia.
What about the setting? Why Tennessee? What did you want to convey by giving the book a small-town feel, and with the homecoming element for Gia?
The easy answer is that I grew up in eastern Tennessee and wanted to showcase the natural beauty of the Appalachians, but there was more to my reasoning than that. I wanted a place that for Gia would look and sound and smell like home, one that would slam her with a strong sense of belonging while at the same time stifling her with its small-town, small-minded feel. A place where the mountains are big and wide, but the towns are tiny and insular. Where everybody knows your business, and they won’t hesitate to act as if it’s theirs. Eastern Tennessee’s dichotomy served Gia’s story perfectly.
How, if at all, do you relate to Gia? How are you different? Is there anything she does that you would never do yourself?
I imagine every writer puts at least a little bit of herself in her characters, and I’m no exception. Like Gia, I grew up in eastern Tennessee, in a small town about a half hour from Rogersville, and have more than a little gypsy in my soul. I worked in nonprofits for years (albeit a desk job), and many of Gia’s frustrations about what organizations are and are not capable of accomplishing were mine, as well.
But that’s kind of where our similarities end. Gia had this horrible, awful thing happen in her family when she was eighteen, something I can only imagine in fiction, but instead of succumbing to her tragedy, she channeled it into a career helping others. She’s so broken, yet so brave and strong. Returning home was the hardest thing ever, yet she not only did it, she rediscovered her roots, reconnected with her siblings and fell in love. I would have been a puddle on the floor.
What proved most challenging in writing this story? What was the greatest pleasure that you took from it?
Writing Dean and Ella Mae’s story was extremely difficult and took me to dark and scary places. I think a lot of people can relate to losing yourself in a relationship. To getting so caught up in another person that you push aside all the voices that say he’s bad, he’s wrong, he’s going to hurt you in ways you never dreamed you could be hurt. Maybe not to the extent that Dean hurt Ella Mae, but still. I have a daughter, and all I could think about while writing their story was, how do I prevent my daughter from becoming an Ella Mae?
At the same time, I’m a romantic at heart, so the best part of writing this story was easily Gia and Jake. They had everything going against them, yet their love was so strong, so genuine and sweet. They had to work really hard for it, but they deserved their happy ending, and I was glad to give it to them.
Did you know every plot twist and decision your characters would make—and furthermore, the book’s outcome—before you started writing? Or did the characters surprise you and lead you to stray from original plotting at all?
By the time I sit down to write, I always have the basics of the story in my head. I know where it begins, who the major players are, the themes and big-picture messages, and the plot points, including a general sense of the ending. But characters always surprise me. I had no idea, for example, that Gia would pretend to be Ella Mae when she went downstairs to coax a deathbed confession from her father. She did that all by herself. And I didn’t decide on the true identity of Ella Mae’s killer—Ray or Dean or someone else entirely—until about the halfway point. Writers talk a lot about writing the story that wants to be
told. I try to do just that, to point my plot and characters in a general direction while also giving them room to take an unexpected turn.
Can you describe your writing process? Are you an outliner? Do you write scenes consecutively, or jump around? Do you keep a daily schedule?
I’m a planner, but I don’t outline, and with the exception of one or two candy-bar scenes (Jake painting Gia’s house was one of them, and my favorite scene in the book), I write the story in order. I do a lot of polishing as I go, as I find I can’t move forward until the characters feel authentic and the plot points ring true. It takes me longer to get to the end, but it’s typically a pretty clean first draft.
And yes, when I’m working on a story, I sit my butt in a chair for a big chunk of every day, slogging toward a daily word-count goal. Sometimes those words suck, sometimes they don’t. But words make sentences, and sentences make paragraphs and chapters and eventually an entire story.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re working on now?
Gladly! I have two stories in the works.
The first one is about Abigail Wolff, a former journalist hoping to resurrect her stalled career with the story of a fallen soldier and a sweeping army cover-up. She enlists the help of the soldier’s youngest brother, Gabe, but what they uncover points them back to her father, a retired army general whose fingerprints are all over the cover-up. Her father’s increasingly insistent pleas to let the story die only leave Abigail with more questions, while her shattered trust in him drives her straight into Gabe’s arms. But the truth leaves her with an impossible choice—write the piece that will redeem her father, or bury it to protect the man she loves.
In the second one, Carly Rose Wilson chases down new rumors about her mother, a country music legend who died at the height of her career. Two people stand between Carly Rose and the truth—her father, a man who stands to lose everything if the press discovers his secret, and her Alzheimer’s-ridden grandmother. An encounter with her first love, Rex, introduces her to his young son, the one person who can still coax lucid moments from her grandmother. With their help, Carly Rose discovers unsettling truths not just about her mother, but about the people she has always trusted most—while Rex’s nearness resurrects memories and feelings she thought were long buried.
“A twisty, roller coaster ride of a debut. Fans of Gone Girl will embrace this equally evocative tale of a missing woman, shattered family and the lies we tell not just to each other, but especially to ourselves.”
—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fear Nothing
If you’re looking for an addictively suspenseful and tautly written thriller, be sure to catch The Good Girl, a compulsive debut by Mary Kubica, where you’ll find that even in the perfect family, nothing is as it seems…
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ISBN-13: 9781460340233
The Last Breath
Copyright © 2014 by Kimberle Swaak-Maleski
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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