W
hat motivated you to write this book?
In my professional life, I’m in awe of the ability of parents to accurately recognize illness in their children and to seek medical attention quickly. But, what if they don’t? And what if one of the parents is a physician? Parents are hardwired to protect their children, and an ill child brings out the best and the worst in them. I find these reactions fascinating and wished to illuminate them.
Are the characters real people?
Even though the book is fiction and the characters emerged from my imagination, they represent the many parents, physicians, and others I have encountered during my work. Like real people, the characters are imperfect and their limitations make them unpredictable and intriguing. Yet, they are also resilient. While they are not actual human beings, their motivations, reactions, fears, frustrations, and joys are very real.
How can you stand to work with—and write about—sick children?
All children are beautiful and their parents are devoted to them. Working with them—observing their interactions, their worries, their triumphs and failures, their idiosyncrasies—and writing about them is very rewarding. I emphasize over and over to my students, “There are no bad children. Bad things happen to children and they react.”
When do you find the time to write in your busy life?
Nights and weekends and vacations. Whatever I’m writing is always on my mind, so I jot down ideas when they come to me at odd times and in unexpected places. I keep a notebook beside my bed and in my car. I jot my thoughts on those flyaway cards from magazines, on white space in the
New York Times
.
What is your next book?
It’s a novel about a young woman who defies the cultural norms of North Dakota in the 1960s and goes to medical school. Although my life followed that trajectory, the book isn’t about me, but rather a fictional character surrounded by people, places, and circumstances very familiar to me.
How did you start as a creative writer?
After years of clinical practice, I yearned for a way to express my wonder of the parents and children I work with, the interesting—sometimes adaptive, sometimes maladaptive—coping strategies they employ, the lessons in living I have learned from them. About that time, in a stroke of luck (or maybe fate), I was asked to join a writing group. For years I won the most-improved award in the group, because I had such a long way to go. I’ve attended many summer writing workshops and have come away from all of them with newfound inspiration, commitment, and ideas.
Do you have any advice for a fledging writer?
Follow your heart. Write.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.
Are either Jake or Anna, or both, bad parents? Why?
2.
Who is to blame for Eddie’s serious illness?
3.
Is Rose Marie wrong to worry about the future of her day care, seemingly ahead of the health of the children?
4.
In the throes of Eddie’s illness, Jake turns to Monica, his old girlfriend. Why? What does this action do for him? Was he right to tell Anna?
5.
Chris, a spunky child, regresses to misbehavior in the face of his brother’s illness. Is this realistic? Is it handled well by his parents?
6.
Why did the Campbell marriage survive? What might have happened, but didn’t, to drive them irretrievably apart? What is the state of the marriage at the end of the book?
7.
Should Rose Marie feed her dog zinfandel every night?
8.
What is Anna’s relationship with her parents? Are they useful to her? To Jake? To Chris?
9.
What happens to Anna’s reasoning ability? Is she mentally ill? Why does she hear the angel in the elevator?
10.
Rose Marie blows up at the fellow from the health department. Is she a mean-spirited person? Is she being unreasonable?
11.
The events in the novel occur over less than three weeks. How does time get distorted during this story?
12.
Why does the story start with the wedding in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan? What would be gained, or lost, by starting at the time Eddie gets sick?
13.
Why is the story told from three points of view? What would be gained, or lost, by telling the story from only Jake’s view? From only Anna’s? From the perspective of an omniscient narrator?
14.
What does the epilogue add to the novel?
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2012 by Janet Gilsdorf
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-7990-3