The One Question Reporters Always Ask Me

It all comes back to the women.

In the last few weeks, while I ramp up publicity for my new novel All the Summers in Between, I’ve been lucky enough to be interviewed by journalists and podcasters about my work. Some questions are predictable: “Where did you get the idea?” Or, “How did your years as a journalist impact you as a fiction writer?”

But I’ve been surprised by another question that keeps coming up: “Why do you set your novels in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s?”

Sometimes I feel like I’ve planted the question, even though I haven’t, because I love when people ask me this! I think reporters must assume I set my books during this time period because of the clothes or the music, or a desire to go back in time and escape the crazy world we all find ourselves living in. All of those things make the time period very appealing, sure.

But I set my books in the sixties and seventies because I love to write about women with big dreams in time periods when they weren’t always encouraged to follow them.

Photo by Ty Finck on Unsplash

Remember that part in the HBO series “My Brilliant Friend” when Elena has to decide if she’s going to move forward with her education despite the fact that Lila’s parents have forbid her to have one? Or consider Marge in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” who is writing a novel in the 1950s, even though all of the characters find it “charming” rather than a serious pursuit? Then there’s NOW founder Betty Friedan, who went around interviewing women about the “problem that has no name,” as a reporter and compiled a groundbreaking (and much feared) book The Feminine Mystique.

These are the types of fearless women and characters that inspire me. Sometimes they’re not fearless, they’re just ambitious. Sometimes they’re confused about what they want, they just know they want more than what they’ve been given.

With this third book, I focused on women characters living in the late-1960s, which is very different than the early sixties. By the end of the decade, there have been marches for civil rights and protests for women’s rights. NOW (the National Organization for Women) has been formed. The Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, even if the Women’s Bureau was still trying to enforce its laws, and there was talk about the Equal Rights Amendment adding a clause against sex-based discrimination (this doesn’t pass until ‘71). There’s the Newport Jazz Festival and there’s Woodstock. There’s hope.

Most of all, there is a sense that times are changing, and I wanted to set my characters amidst all of this change.

I wanted them to be riding a wave of possibility, the idea that things will finally be different for them than they were for their mothers. I always think about “The Wonder Years” when Kevin’s traditional parents don’t “get” their oldest daughter Karen, a hippie who thumbs her nose back at them. My main characters, Thea and Margot, really believe this at the age of twenty. They will advance. They will be different.

And then…ten years later, my characters reunite, feeling like the 1970s were one big hangover. Because now that these women are thirty, they realize that they’re living the same lives that their mothers did. They are still doing the bulk of the housework. They are still not paid an equal wage. They are still talking about those dreams they let go of.

That is why I write books in this time period. Because for women, it’s the nexus of hope and disappointment, dreams and devastation. I love to look at all of the women in these times: rich and poor, married and unmarried, young and old, northern or southern, white vs. a person of color. I like to think about how all of these factors shaped their lives, and how these women may have lived differently if they were born today.

In my book, my characters Margot and Thea reunite and remind each other of all of those old dreams they used to have. They wonder: What happened to us?

I use my novel’s pages to help them figure it out. OMG, my book is out on June 4th. That’s a week from today. Have you ordered it yet? You can here!

xo