Marianne Stokes fled England at seventeen, spiraling into the manic depression
that would become her shadow. She left behind secrets, memories, and tragedy:
one teen dead, and her first love, Gabriel, badly injured. Three decades later
she’s finally found peace in the North Carolina recording studio she runs with
her husband, Darius, and her almost-daughter, Jade…until another fatality
propels her back across the ocean to confront the long-buried past.
In her picturesque childhood village, the first person she meets is the last
person she wants to see again: Gabriel. Now the village vicar, he takes her in
without question, and ripples of what if reverberate through both their hearts.
As Marianne’s mind unravels, Jade and Darius track her down. Tempers clash when
everyone tries to help, but only by finding the courage to face her illness can
Marianne heal herself and her offbeat family. Writing a Woman’s Life
columnist Yona Zeldis McDonough e-chats with Barbara Claypole White to
talk about the genesis of this dark, haunting but ultimately uplifting tale.
A Brit living in North Carolina, Barbara Claypole White writes hopeful family
drama with a healthy dose of mental illness.
Her debut novel, THE
UNFINISHED GARDEN, won the 2013 Golden Quill for Best First Book; THE IN-BETWEEN
HOUR was chosen by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) as a
Winter 2014 Okra Pick; and THE PERFECT SON was a Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee
for Best Fiction 2015.
YZM: What drew you to this story?
BCW: Normally I find my stories hiding in dark what-if moments, but
everything about ECHOES OF FAMILY came to me differently. My family and I were
visiting my mother in rural England when my mind started playing out an
imaginary scene set in my childhood church. I saw the flower ladies twittering
over wedding flowers up by the altar while an elegant American woman watched
from the back pew, eyes hidden by sunglasses. I felt their rising concern for
the stranger and witnessed one of them dash off to fetch the vicar, who was
attacking stinging nettles with a weed whacker. When he crouched down to say,
“What’s brought you back after all this time, Marianne?” she replied, “I’ve come
home to die.” That was it. I knew Marianne’s pain was mental, not physical, and
I knew the setting had huge significance for her, but I put the scene aside and
returned to a story I would ultimately abandon—about a single dad who ran a
recording studio and his teen daughter who had undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
Fast forward several years, and I started traveling back and forth to the
village more and more frequently to help my mother. Suddenly I was thinking
about belonging, going home, and echoes of the past. Somewhere over the
Atlantic, all the elements slipped into place. (I love writing on planes.)
YZM: Were the characters of Marianne and Jade difficult to write? If
so, why?
BCW: Marianne, my manic-depressive record producer, is the most
challenging character I’ve created. After months of research, Marianne’s thought
process still overwhelmed me, and being inside her head was exhausting. When one
of my early readers pointed out that her voice changed according to her mood, I
realized I’d committed my own cardinal writing sin: I had defined a character
through her mental illness. Marianne had become a bipolar heroine as opposed to
a successful businesswoman, mother, and wife who happens to struggle with mental
illness. Once I put the research aside and listened for Marianne’s voice, she
lit up.
Jade was the opposite—one of those characters who pop out fully formed. My son
is an intern in a local recording studio not unlike the one Marianne owns, and
one evening he came home talking about the chief sound engineer, a young woman.
I woke up the next morning with Jade front and center in my mind. And then the
idea developed of Marianne working with teen girls at risk. Girls no one else
wanted. Jade, I realized, had been one of those girls. I knew from the beginning
she was a survivor, but it took a while to excavate her backstory.
YZM: How did you get your start as a writer?
BCW: I was five years old when I first said, “I want to be an author,”
and even though life intervened, I never lost that dream. I wrote stories and
poems as a child, and did lots of promotional writing and journalism in my
career. After my marriage, I moved from London to Illinois and started a novel
while job hunting. I dabbled with that story for years, but it wasn’t until I
became a stay-at-home mom with a child in pre-school that I decided to finish
it. My first novel ended up in storage—where it belonged—but it had become my
learning curve. I joined writing classes, went to conferences, networked, signed
up for workshops, and my husband supported me throughout. I worked hard—failed
hard—and landed my first pub deal right before me fiftieth birthday. I think
that makes me a late bloomer. ☺
YZM: Do you outline the entire plot first or do you work more from
intuition?
BCW: I have a horrible process! I’m an organic, messy writer who loves to
rewrite endlessly. Left to my own devices, I would meander down every side road
and take endless U-turns. Writing to contract, however, means I’ve had to speed
up and streamline. These days I research and throw down a crappy first draft
while also creating a storyboard based on screen-writing beats. I’m a visual
person, so analyzing a movie makes more sense to me than studying books on how
to outline. The storyboard will change and then I’ll abandon it completely, but
not before creating a chapter-by-chapter timeline that becomes an important tool.
YZM: Which authors have influenced you most?
BCW: That’s a tough question because every novel I read influences me.
The three writers who’ve had the greatest impact are probably Jodi Picoult,
Marian Keyes, and Denyse Devlin. Jodi Picoult pushes me outside my comfort zone
as a reader, which is where I want to be as a writer. Plus, who doesn’t want to
write like Jodi? Marian Keyes taught me you could tackle dark subjects with
humor, and Denyse Devlin showed me how to peel back the layers of a
relationship. Oh, and I have to give a shout-out to Charlotte Bronte, because in
my opinion you can learn everything you need to know about writing fiction by
reading JANE EYRE. Best. Novel. Ever.
YZM: What do you hope readers take away from your novel?
BCW: That the challenges never end when you share your family with mental
illness. Bipolar is a potentially fatal disease. It demands constant management
and vigilance in the same way as diabetes or cancer, and yet most people judge a
broken mind very differently to a broken body. The stigma persists, and families
are left struggling in secrecy and isolation. Like Marianne, I want to make
noise and be heard; I want to do my bit to chip away at the stereotypes and the
shame.
YZM: What’s next on your horizon?
BCW: Novel five (gulp) has a release date of January 2018. It’s based on
the premise: can you be a good mother if you abandoned your baby? It also
highlights a nasty corner of obsessive-compulsive disorder called harm OCD,
which often attacks postpartum moms. Harm OCD bombards your mind with intrusive,
unwanted images of you committing violent acts, often against people you love.
Even though you know you would never do such things, the OCD holds your
mind hostage. My heroine, Katie Mack, is a female metal artist with a dark
secret: while struggling with undiagnosed harm OCD, she ran away from her baby,
believing she was a psychopath. She lived on the streets for several years, and
by the time she ended up in treatment, it was too late to return to her family.
Through a quirk of fate, Katie crosses paths with her 10-year-old daughter—plus
stepmom—and realizes little Maisie MacDonald has untreated OCD. Katie then has
to decide whether or not to re-enter her daughter’s life for the same reason she
left: to protect her baby girl from monsters.
Sometimes the only way through darkness is to return to where it
began.
Marianne Stokes fled England at seventeen, spiraling into the manic
depression that would become her shadow. She left behind secrets, memories, and
tragedy: one teen dead, and her first love, Gabriel, badly injured. Three
decades later she’s finally found peace in the North Carolina recording studio
she runs with her husband, Darius, and her almost-daughter, Jade…until another
fatality propels her back across the ocean to confront the long-buried past.
In her picturesque childhood village, the first person she meets is the last
person she wants to see again: Gabriel. Now the village vicar, he takes her in
without question, and ripples of what if reverberate through both their
hearts. As Marianne’s mind unravels, Jade and Darius track her down. Tempers
clash when everyone tries to help, but only by finding the courage to face her
illness can Marianne heal herself and her offbeat family.
Women's Fiction
[Lake Union Publishing, On Sale: September 27,
2016, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781503938137 / ]
About Yona Zeldis McDonough
Yona Zeldis McDonough is the author of six novels; her
seventh, THE HOUSE ON
PRIMROSE POND, will be out from New American Library in February, 2016. In
addition, she is the editor of the essay collections The Barbie
Chronicles: A Living Doll Turns Forty and All the Available Light: A
Marilyn Monroe Reader. Her short fiction, articles and essays have been
published in anthologies as well as in numerous national magazines and
newspapers. She is also the award-winning author of twenty-six books for
children, including the highly acclaimed chapter books, The Doll Shop
Downstairs and The Cats in the Doll Shop. Yona lives in Brooklyn, New
York with her husband, two children and two noisy Pomeranians.
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