A conversation
While your first novel, Into the Forest, is a mythical tale about two sisters struggling to survive alone in the redwoods in a post-apocalyptic near future, Windfalls is very much a realistic story of our time—a profound exploration of the deepest feelings of mother love that also touches upon such timely issues as abortion and the plight of the homeless in our society. Are these two books as completely different as they appear on the surface, or are there any similarities? Do they share any common themes?

One of the reasons I love writing fiction is that it allows me to explore so many different aspects of experience. Given that, it makes sense (to me, at least) that my stories would all be quite different, as there are any number of characters and situations that interest me.

But at the same time I'm sure there are parallels between my books that suggest their common source. Some of the most striking similarities between Into the Forest and Windfalls are that both books have two female protagonists; both put a specific, human face on abstract political issues, and—perhaps most significantly—there are characters in both stories who must confront losing the very things that gave the most meaning to their lives. How we humans manage to find the strength and hope to carry on—both in extremity and every day—is a question I could not possibly exhaust in a single book.

The idea for Into the Forest came to you one sleepless night. Where did the inspiration for this novel come from?

The "seed crystal" for Windfalls came from a small newspaper article about a woman who had lost a child in a terrible accident. I couldn't stop thinking about that anonymous mother, and wondering how—or whether—she found a way to remake her life after that loss. The more I thought about her, the more I realized that a story about someone like I imagined that woman to be might serve as a container for many of the questions I was currently pondering in my own life—questions about mothering, and art, and home, and the web of circumstances, choices, and chances that make up our lives.

Do you think that maternal love is the most powerful bond there is? Do you think fathers experience similar feelings for their children, or is paternal love a different kind of emotion?

Certainly for many mothers, the love we feel for our children is one of the most powerful and enduring emotions we'll ever have. I know a great number of mothers who have been blind-sided both by the fierce, sensual passion and bottomless tenderness they feel for their children, as well as by the dreadful sense of precariousness that having a child introduces into even the most secure and privileged of lives.

One factor that helps to establish the intensity of that bond is the profound physicality of most mothers' relationships with their children; pregnancy, childbirth and nursing all serve to reinforce that connection, and those are experiences that fathers can only know vicariously. But there are also many mothers who did not give birth to or nurse their babies but who nevertheless feel a connection to their children every bit as profound as mothers who did, and I know that fathers (and other caregivers) can experience those intense bonds, too. In my observation, those fathers who have been able to spend extended periods of time with their children—not merely as babysitters, but as real, in-the-trenches caregivers—develop particularly deep, tender, and vital relationships with their kids.

Anna, one of your two main characters in Windfalls, is a photographer who struggles to find a balance between her commitment to her art and to her two daughters. Do you think it is a difficult balance to achieve? How have you managed to find the time and emotional energy to write and teach while raising and home schooling your own children?

It's a wobbly balance, and one I never feel I achieve for more than a few lucky seconds at a time. Every day I try to be ferocious about finding time to write, and every day I also try to be equally committed to giving up my writing time graciously when the rest of my life intervenes. (I love teaching, too, but it's the one part of the equation I would be willing to let go.)

I doubt I could find the energy to try to fit mothering and writing into the same lifetime if it weren't for the fact that both mean so much to me—and also that they are so mutually enriching. I know that for me and for Anna (and hopefully for an increasing number of other women and men), our work makes us better parents, just as our parenting adds a deeper dimension to our art. Both enterprises—raising children and writing books—require creativity, spontaneity, patience, and discipline, instinct, intuition, and analysis, a profound faith in the process, a deep engagement in the present, a sense of humor, a love of the sacred, and the ability to be steadfast in the face of big messes.

Although Windfalls deals with the explosive issue of abortion, you don't seem to take sides. Do you think there is a right and a wrong side to the issue?

I personally think that every abortion is a loss, and in an ideal world, a combination of self-restraint, contraception, and supportive social services would make abortion exceedingly rare. But I also believe that much greater losses and even deeper sorrows can result when abortion is not a legal and available option.

But even more important than my own stance on reproductive freedom is my deep belief that abortion is too complex and important an issue to be reduced to an polarized controversy about right and wrong. Every unexpected pregnancy is a unique story, and rather than arguing about abortion as an abstract institution, I believe we should be examining the circumstances of women's lives, and looking at the social, financial, spiritual, and personal factors that go into women's individual decisions to nurture or forego the potential a human embryo represents. In the recent past, it has been difficult for women who have considered abortion to tell their stories because of the stigmas—and even the threats—they have had to face. For that reason, perhaps fiction is a very good place to begin a healthy and multi-dimensional conversation about reproductive freedom.

For a long while, Windfalls reads like two separate stories. In fact, readers may wonder if Anna and Cerise will ever even meet. What made you decide to give Windfalls that structure, and to focus your novel on two such very different women?

There's an aspect of both inevitability and serendipity to the way people meet that I find very interesting, and I like how the structure of Windfalls mirrors that. But perhaps most importantly, I like how having two characters whose backgrounds, temperaments, and choices are seemingly so different helps to suggest which aspects of Cerise's and Anna's experience are universal, and which are particular to their unique circumstances and personalities.

In trying to get inside the experience of your characters, you applied for assistance at the country welfare office and volunteered at a drop-in support center for homeless women. What did you learn from your hands-on approach to research?

For me my characters are like imaginary friends. While I'm writing their stories they travel with me everywhere, and one of the reasons I'm able to work so long and hard on a book is that I feel a commitment to my characters to get their stories right. Research is a great aid to my imagination. If I can find a way to experience what a character might actually be seeing and hearing and touching and smelling and tasting in a given scene, it's much easier for me to know how that character would think and feel, and what she would do and say.

Also, I think it's very important to get the facts right in fiction. The sad truth is that writer can say all kinds of wise things about life and love and human nature, but if—for example—she puts the Golden Gate Bridge on the wrong side of the bay, all her brilliant insights will instantly lose some degree of credibility with those readers who are more familiar with the Bay Area than she is. In that way, I feel I'm always writing for the people who know more about a given field than I do. It's a challenge, but I appreciate the opportunity it gives me to learn about all sorts of important and fascinating subjects.

After Melody runs off with her friends and Travis dies in a fire, Cerise seeks a way to end her unendurable pain and her life. She meets a woman in the forest who reminds her that "healing is the human task." Is that the message of hope and redemption that you are sending the reader in Windfalls?

There were many ways in which Windfalls was an emotionally challenging book to work on. It contains scenes I was able to write only because I believed they were so crucial to the story and so necessary to any honest examination of the costs and gifts of motherhood. There were moments when I cried as I wrote Windfalls, and I've been honored to hear from readers who say they wept as they read it. But despite the sadness the story contains, Windfalls is a deeply hopeful and life-affirming book, and I believe that the ability to heal—or at least the willingness to try—has got to be at the heart of hope.

Often a writer sets out to write a work of fiction only to discover that the completed novel is vastly different from the work originally envisioned. How did Windfalls evolve as you worked on it?

A wonderful thing about the time and work it takes me to write a novel is that it allows me to exceed my own grasp. My initial conception of Windfalls did not have nearly the depth and complexity I hope the final work contains. The longer I lived with Anna and Cerise, the better I got to know them and to understand the issues facing them, and also to appreciate their courage and their willingness to grow as human beings and as mothers.

One of the themes that became increasingly significant during the seven years I wrote and rewrote Windfalls is how raising children affects parents' lives. For a long time I've been aware that the circumstances under which a woman has children can have an enormous impact on the practical and material aspects of her life, but until I had children of my own, I never really realized how profoundly our interactions with our children can affect our own development as human beings.

Up until very recently, there have been a great number of stories about what mothers do to us, but very few stories about what mothering does to us. I think there's been an assumption that mothering is too mundane or sentimental a subject to be worthy of a novelist's effort or a reader's time, and yet writing Windfalls reinforced my conviction that there are few experiences as meaningful, significant, and potentially life-changing as having and raising children.

Buy online: Book Sense Amazon