Behind The Book
Childhood traumas damage two families decades before we meet Joy Harkness and Teddy Hennessy, the off-center characters of The Season of Second Chances. While we can easily identify the ways in which their individual brands of self-protection have kept them insulated from the emotional tolls of real life, it is their talent, intelligence, humor and heart that make us care about them. And it’s those things that made these two characters so fulfilling to write about. Given my own childhood and family background, I’ve been, I suppose, especially sensitive to the inventive, self-protective and sometimes funny ways we cope with a world that feels too precarious. And I look for the hints that might show us how to move beyond the comfort levels that shelter our own terrors and tears.
The family in which I grew up was pretty high WASP, in all the denial and quiet good behavior that cliché suggests. No one ever raised their voice. Scenes were avoided at (almost) all cost. But there was more than a small amount of tragedy in that house that carried into our daily lives. From a brother who was intermittently ill through my childhood, to the ghost of my grandmother, dead at the age of thirty-three, daily remembered and mourned by her daughter, her mother and her husband (my equally fragile and intermittently ill mother, my great-grandmother and my grandfather). All lived (ghosts and otherwise) under our roof, and were my daily caretakers. And yet, in the face of their losses there was the remarkable staff of strength, irony and humor that extended grace and protection and made me feel well-loved and safe, despite their fears about what turn life might next take.
The insulating nature of humor, the good manners of the gentle joke in the face of terror or loss, might lighten the burden a bit, and remind us we are not the only person in the room (or on the planet). Or it might allow the fact that if there is this small thing to smile about today, perhaps there will be a larger thing to laugh about tomorrow. That’s the atmosphere in which I grew up, and that approach to life—both good and bad—is what I wanted to write about in my main character, Joy Harkness, an intelligent, successful college professor.
To the outside world, Joy’s professional life seems an unmitigated success, yet she’s taken very little pleasure in it and has systematically learned to step away from people and emotional involvements. But a new job, a new town, and a new house that needs a lot of work, force Joy to face, if not embrace, change. The other character who figures significantly in the book, is a very talented but emotionally stunted handyman/home-restoration artist, Teddy Hennessy.
Teddy has limited his life to include little outside his work and his mother, with whom he lives; but Joy and Teddy each allow larger joys of creativity in design and literature to enrich their days. As I wrote the book, I wanted to show two characters who, despite themselves, find ways to integrate their passions with their lives, something I’ve found so rewarding in my own life and work.
I believe that the celebration of an authentic personal style can enhance a person’s life, as an outward gesture of their personality, and internally, for the comfort of personal recognition. Allowing Joy’s house to come together as a home beomes a metaphor for that process. That it happens as she integrates her life into those around hers, feels emotionally accurate to me. From noting her ‘colors,’ to asking her to care for—and about—a critically ill acquaintance, Joy’s world of intellect and cynicism are shaken hard, until she finds a way to develop a real life that can stand up to the written lives she’s treasured between the pages of her beloved books.
My career as a marketer has been about little but Style – with a capital S. From my earliest assignments, I have had to interpret cultural signs to set the look and strategy for brands and products that you’ve all known and used, from cosmetics and fashions to home furnishings and food. What we choose and the ways we choose to express ourselves, as individuals and as a culture, continues to be a subject of endless fascination to me. I suspect the subject will surface in any story I might write. In life and work, we can see the evidence of lives as collages of choice, showing us, pretty clearly, how we communicate in signs, infinite and specific – which is another definition of style.
To separate these choices from those driven by status or commercial intent can only be done when we are allowed to find and express authentic ideas of delight and self-knowledge. Joy learns from Teddy and the rich community of friends and co-workers who fill her life, how to express herself, in the truest sense of that phrase.
In a culture as commercially driven as ours, this is a challenge many people find overwhelming. But if they demur, what joys they’re missing! Our lives are our canvases. The only eye we need to delight is our own, reading the signs of our lives in our choices. My job has always been reading the signs. This time I got to write about them.
