Rachel Beanland, FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER
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[0:56]I had such a nice time interviewing Rachel Beanland, who I had previously had on my
[1:00]ZIGTV show.
[1:03]If you want to watch us in person, you can go to my Instagram at Zibi Owens and watch
[1:07]us chatting on the IGTV feature.
[1:10]Rachel Beanland is the author of Novel Florence Adler Swims Forever.
[1:15]Her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction and Broad Street among other places, and
[1:20]I think by the time this comes out, she will have received her MFA at Virginia Commonwealth
[1:25]University, and she also holds a bachelor's degree in art history and journalism from
[1:29]the University of South Carolina.
[1:31]Before turning to writing full time, Rachel worked in public relations and nonprofit
[1:35]management.
[1:36]She currently lives in Virginia with her husband and three children.
[1:39]Welcome Rachel.
[1:40]Thanks so much for coming on Moms.
[1:41]Don't have time to read books.
[1:43]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:45]And I was just saying that I know we did an Instagram live, so for anybody who wants to
[1:49]see your beautiful face, they can watch that, but I also wanted to do a podcast to go a
[1:53]little more in depth.
[1:54]So thanks for coming back.
[1:55]Oh, no, I really appreciate it.
[1:58]I appreciate everything you've been doing during this crazy time.
[2:01]You've been really keeping readers and writers connected, so I appreciate it.
[2:05]No problem.
[2:06]Okay, Florence Adler Swims Forever, tell me about this book and about how it's actually
[2:12]your own family's story and all the rest of it, how you came up with it and what it's
[2:17]about.
[2:18]Yeah.
[2:19]So I've been kind of walking around with this story in my head since I was a little girl,
[2:23]and at least a portion of the story, I guess, was in my head, you know, my whole life.
[2:27]My mother, you know, always used to tell me the story about what had happened when my
[2:32]grandmother was a little girl, kind of the basis of this book, which is that I had a great
[2:36]great aunt named Florence who was training to swim the English channel when she drowned
[2:42]off the coast of Atlantic City.
[2:44]And that particular summer, my grandmother was actually only six.
[2:48]She was living with her grandparents for the summer because her mother was in the hospital
[2:54]on bed rest.
[2:55]She had lost a baby the summer before and she was pregnant again and, you know, back then
[3:00]you went to the hospital.
[3:02]People, women were starting to have babies in hospitals just barely, kind of, and they didn't
[3:06]know what had gone wrong.
[3:08]And so there she was in the hospital.
[3:10]And so when Florence drowned, my grandmother was actually on the beach the day it happened.
[3:16]The family made the decision not to tell Florence's sister, my grandmother's mother, that
[3:21]her sister had drowned.
[3:23]And so they all kind of went in on the secret.
[3:26]And when I was little, I, you know, heard the story in my head.
[3:29]It was like all summer and, you know, my great great grandmother was visiting every day
[3:33]in the hospital.
[3:34]And my mother always told the story like, you know, what kind of strength this my great
[3:38]great great grandmother must have had to keep this secret, you know, to be able to walk into
[3:42]that hospital room every day and, you know, not breathe a word about the fact that her
[3:47]other daughter had just drowned.
[3:50]And I was always super impressed with the story, but I was also always very interested
[3:56]in the fact that they had kept the secret.
[3:59]And, you know, my mother positioned it when we used to talk about it like, well, of course
[4:04]that's what you would do.
[4:05]You would, of course she would keep the secret.
[4:07]And I just remember, you know, even at a very young age, you know, what if she had wanted
[4:11]to know.
[4:12]And so, even as I got older and we would kind of rehash the story and every now and then
[4:17]my grandmother would weigh in as well.
[4:19]And I still just kind of never wrapped my head around the idea that this secret was keeping
[4:26]the secret was the right thing to do.
[4:28]And when I started thinking about what to write a novel about it was kind of a natural
[4:32]topic that I felt like we could come back to, that there was unresolved business.
[4:36]And, you know, of course, over the years, that story influenced so many other stories
[4:41]in my family.
[4:42]You know, we became a secret keeping family, I think in part because we elevated what my
[4:48]great great grandmother had done as this decision to withhold this information.
[4:53]You mentioned that because you're, there was this big secret in the family sort of
[4:58]high up in the family tree that it trickled down to create a sort of a secrecy Laura in
[5:04]your family.
[5:05]How do you know?
[5:06]What other little secrets and are these big secrets or little secrets I'm totally fascinated
[5:11]by this?
[5:12]Well, I think over the years, because we knew that, you know, my grandmother's kind
[5:18]of action, but of course, that summer had been put on this pedestal.
[5:22]It became pretty obvious, particularly times when one of us was sick or there was some
[5:28]sort of, you know, either a health scare or anywhere we were worried about, you know,
[5:33]your grandparents being worried, and I can remember a time in particular when my brother
[5:38]was very sick when he was, I was 16 and he was 14, and, you know, we really didn't know
[5:45]whether he was going to make it, it was like an encephalitis, you know, it was just a bad
[5:49]illness.
[5:50]And I can remember us not telling my grandparents until he was completely in the clear.
[5:56]And, you know, I knew we were doing it at the time, but I do, even at that time I knew
[6:01]it was connected to the fact that, you know, my grandmother and kind of everyone that came
[6:07]after her had really believed that like what my, what my great-grandmother did, the decision
[6:13]that to not talk about Florence's death was kind of at the root of it.
[6:17]Interesting.
[6:18]Yeah, so it's almost this, like, constant withholding.
[6:21]Yeah.
[6:22]And I can remember when my father got sick with cancer, he died about 10 years ago.
[6:28]We kind of had to sit down with my parents and say like, okay, enough is enough, like,
[6:32]we really, we want to know, like, you know, we want to be able to decide how we spend
[6:36]our time.
[6:37]And, you know, it became important to know that we were kind of receiving the same information
[6:42]that they were receiving.
[6:43]I'm sorry about your father.
[6:45]Thanks.
[6:46]Thank you.
[6:47]Thank you.
[6:48]So when you go to make decisions, now you have children, do you feel the need to keep things
[6:53]a secret as well?
[6:54]Or are you, like, do you overcompensate?
[6:56]I know so much of parenting as a reaction to how people were parented.
[7:00]Do you feel the need to be more open or are you, do you want to sort of keep this secrecy
[7:04]thing going?
[7:05]You know, I think I try to be more open, but it is generational.
[7:10]So like, I try to be more open with my children, but I also know that my mother appreciate
[7:15]having certain information withheld from her.
[7:18]So, you know, there are times where I find myself with holding information about my
[7:24]children, you know, from my mother.
[7:27]I know what she would want, but I do try to think to myself, like, well, would it make
[7:33]me feel better if she knew, or would it, you know, would it make us closer if she knew?
[7:37]Like, is she really going to understand who I am if I haven't told her this important piece
[7:41]of information about me?
[7:42]So it's something I weigh, and it's certainly something that I was weighing when I was
[7:46]writing the book.
[7:48]I think in as I was writing the book, when I was writing my great-great-grimmers character
[7:53]Esther, I ended up having a lot more sympathy for her than I maybe thought I would when
[7:59]I went into writing the book.
[8:01]How so?
[8:02]I think, you know, when I started writing the book, it was very cut and dry for me.
[8:06]I thought like Esther made the wrong call.
[8:09]She should have told Annie everything for Annie sitting in her, you know, hospital bed
[8:16]and is, you know, none the wiser.
[8:20]And you know, as I moved further into the story and imagined this kind of entire family
[8:26]and what they were dealing with, I could see the benefits of, you know, withholding
[8:31]the information from Annie.
[8:32]There's a scene in the book where Joseph and Stuart are talking, and Stuart's kind
[8:38]of asking him to justify the secret keeping.
[8:42]Joseph says something about new life, always being the most important thing.
[8:47]And that's a line that I took directly from my grandmother, something she had said to
[8:50]me in her older years, you know, when I would ask her about the story.
[8:54]She always kind of felt like, no, of course it was the right thing.
[8:58]You always do whatever you can to protect new life.
[9:02]And so...
[9:03]Yeah, I thought that by the time I finished the book, I would have a lot of clarity.
[9:06]But I don't know that I actually do.
[9:12]There was a lot of Jewish influence in the book, including like you saying some of the
[9:16]blessings and that I feel like that really coursed nicely throughout the narrative.
[9:21]Was that a conscious choice or was it just because that's the way the family was or how
[9:25]did that come about?
[9:26]I grew up in a Jewish family, not very religious.
[9:28]I would say more just kind of culturally Jewish.
[9:31]My mother was actually the first generation to marry outside the face and so my father
[9:35]was a Methodist term South Carolina.
[9:37]But I definitely knew some of the customs, I mean, you know, we were pretty relaxed.
[9:42]But so I didn't ever occur to me not to set this amongst a Jewish family because of it.
[9:48]Of course, had been a Jewish family and also I think they're kind of the morning rituals
[9:52]that are particularly significant in the Jewish faith and I think that when you take those
[9:57]rituals away, which is of course.
[10:00]what happened to this family as they were keeping a secret, that becomes like a particularly
[10:04]poignant part of the story, you know, because the morning rituals are of course like there
[10:09]for a reason and can be a help for people as they're grieving. So I did always want to set
[10:15]it with amongst the Jewish family, but that means that I still had to do a lot of research
[10:19]to get the Jewish parts right. And I think, you know, a story I kind of like to tell is
[10:28]when I was selling the book, a lot of the editors who were interested were Jewish,
[10:33]and I would tell the story, you know, they'd want to know what it was based on, and I would tell my
[10:37]family story, and they would say, you know, we read the novel on it, just such a Jewish novel, like
[10:43]it's the secret is so Jewish. And I was like, what? It didn't really occur to me that this idea of
[10:52]secret keeping or this desire to protect the young or, you know, the kind of mother knows best,
[10:59]like idea. It didn't really occur to me that this was a Jewish story. It was just a story, and I
[11:05]was setting it amongst a Jewish family because that was where it happened. But I have since had
[11:10]a number of people say to me, you're like, yeah, this is kind of Jewish, and this respect.
[11:16]So I've been kind of mulling that over, but then of course I took a Catholic to say the same thing,
[11:19]like it's very Catholic. I think anytime you maybe get a group of people where they have big faith
[11:28]and a lot of kind of family members who have differences of opinion and maybe strong matriarch
[11:34]a similar story could take place. You know, it's funny when you talk about the customs of
[11:38]warning because, you know, I know your book is not coming until July, which is when this will air,
[11:43]but when we're talking, we're still in the pandemic, which either way won't have been that long
[11:48]before. And so many people are now robbed of those customs and, you know, zooming Shiva is not the
[11:55]same, obviously, as being able to get together and more and appropriately. And I think that's been
[12:01]one of the things that's been ridiculously hard for people during this time is not to be able to
[12:05]fall back on those rituals. Yeah. And I think that like that was one of the things that always
[12:10]got me about keeping the secret was, you know, I thought, well, first of all, who knows how
[12:17]strong Fannie was or wasn't, you know, in this hospital bed, right? Like could she have
[12:22]with stood like finding out this information, you know, I think women are a lot stronger than we
[12:28]give them credit for being in literature and in life. But I also think that, you know, by keeping
[12:35]the secret from her, she was robbed of an ability to mourn in real time. And I remember after my
[12:42]father died, I really that day he died. It was like, I looked at the world so much differently. He
[12:50]had died overnight. And the next morning, it's like in one way, the family was kind of doing these
[12:54]regular things like we had to eat and we had to go outside and we had to, you know, arrange things.
[13:00]And I can remember looking at this tree and like the way that the buds were coming out on
[13:06]this particular tree, my parents backyard. It was just almost like overwhelming that life was
[13:12]happening at the same time that, you know, that we had just lost him. And I always think about
[13:19]that because I think it would be so strange to lose someone, but not be able to mourn them at
[13:27]the time of their passing. Because there is something about like the energy of, I don't know,
[13:33]just the time and place in which they died. So it is a strange thing to find out much later.
[13:40]Pretty soon. So tell me about how you ended up becoming a novelist.
[13:45]Yeah. So I've always been a big reader and I always had been a big writer, but I was also very,
[13:52]very practical. And so when I went to college, I probably should have been an English major and
[13:58]instead I studied journalism and like concentrating on PR and, you know, after college,
[14:03]I studied art history as well. So that was a little less practical. But I was always thinking
[14:08]what kind of job can I have? Like, I need a job. And I got out of college and I got PR jobs like
[14:14]right out of the gate. And I had worked in PR for, I was about 35 when I started this novel.
[14:21]And I just had this nagging urge, like, you know, I'd been writing on the side. I'd been
[14:26]writing working on other projects. I wrote some essays and, you know, just was kind of always doing
[14:31]something on the side. But I very much had the feeling that like my life was off balance and
[14:38]the writing shouldn't have been the thing on the side. It should have been the thing at the center
[14:42]of my life. And so when I had this idea for this novel, I just got super serious about it.
[14:49]And I would write every morning before I went to work. I was working 40 hours a week and I had
[14:53]three kids and it was crazy. And oh my gosh, I don't know how you did that. So I wrote from
[14:59]4.30 a.m. to 7 a.m. seven days a week for two years. That's great. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I want to
[15:08]give you a standing ovation for that. It was crazy. And I had gone back to school to get an MFA
[15:15]in fiction at the same time. I was doing it part time, like taking a class at night. And so it
[15:20]just kind of like everything was happening at the same time. Like I just, you know, had this
[15:25]kind of couple of years where I was like, if I don't do this now, I'm not going to do it. And so I
[15:30]did it in the novel. I finished the novel. And I guess in the fall of 2018. And we sold it. It's
[15:37]sold in February of 2019. And then I'm graduating from the MFA program this spring. So
[15:43]it's all just kind of come together. Wow. But it was a lot of work getting here.
[15:49]Would you do it over again? Yeah. I mean, no, I would definitely do it over again. The question is
[15:54]like, what would I have done differently in my 20s? You know, like to maybe not take this long
[16:00]to get to this point. You know, it's interesting because you think like, I think myself,
[16:05]like, oh, it would have been so much easier to get an MFA at 22. And why didn't I figure that out?
[16:10]But I also think that I had so much more to write about at 35 than I did at 22 that I think I
[16:18]would have been writing really different material. I know specifically when I think about this
[16:23]book, I don't think I could have written it had I not gone through the experience of losing my father.
[16:30]There's like that experience of going through grief makes for me like made me so much more
[16:35]able and willing to write about grief in a way that, you know, I hope readers signed to be, you know,
[16:41]compelling. So yeah, I think maybe everything happens when it's meant to happen. You know, I certainly
[16:48]have three kids. It's writing about children about parenting is different now than it would have
[16:55]been in my 20s. I feel like most writers now in their early 20s who are writing are automatically
[17:03]shoved into the YA category. Like, it doesn't even matter if their books are about young adults.
[17:10]I feel like every young author they're saying like, okay, you're a young adult fiction author. Have
[17:14]you noticed that? I don't know. Yeah. And yeah, and it's funny. I'm not as like attuned to YA as I
[17:20]should be because I do know like, yeah, it seems to be like the craze now and I know a lot of
[17:26]friends who read a lot of YA. But you know, I think I was maybe in the last generation where
[17:31]you were just thrown into the deep end at 12 and like, I was just reading all my mother's books
[17:35]and me too, which is probably beneficial in some ways because I was reading stuff that was totally
[17:40]over my head, but I was also like, this is amazing. Oh, I got a full-on education from my mother's
[17:45]books. She was like, yeah, she was like, she would just like, you know, plop stacks of these like,
[17:51]you know, sick, juicy dramas on my desk at like age 12. And now that I have a 12 year old,
[17:57]almost 13 year old, I'm like, I can't believe what she was giving me the same thing. I think
[18:03]the same thing. It's like, you know, we have such a better sense of what our kids are reading them.
[18:08]I mean, maybe I guess our mother's knew what we were reading. They just were like, wow, this is
[18:12]all you got. So I guess so. I mean, I don't know. Like Judith Kranz was like my, you know, my go-to,
[18:18]but anyway. Yeah. So funny. Well, having finished this book, are you going to write another book? Or
[18:26]is this like the big story you had to tell? Or like, what's your plan? What do you hope to do now?
[18:31]Yeah. I mean, I know I definitely want to write more. I'm excited to kind of be in a
[18:36]position where I get to write for a living now. It's like, that was the dream, right? So I'm
[18:41]definitely working on, well, up until recently, I've been working on trying to graduate with
[18:47]with my MFA. So it was a weird way to end my final semester. And of course, like everyone else
[18:53]in the country, I ended it on Zoom. But yeah, now I'm kind of turning my attention to the next
[18:58]project and playing around with a couple of things and doing a bunch of research and, you know,
[19:04]hopefully mark your calendars for a couple of years from now. So it'll be something new.
[19:09]Something new out. I'll mark it now. Wouldn't that be funny. But yeah, maybe I will, Rachel,
[19:13]maybe I'll put it in my calendar and April 22nd or whatever in like 20, 25. You know, I'll have a chat.
[19:21]Check in with me. Yeah. All right. And you'll check in. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[19:28]Yeah. You know, I think for me, something big happened like in my late 20s after my, I was 29
[19:35]when my father died. And at that point, I started writing every day. And in the beginning, I was
[19:42]writing about him and that was kind of what inspired me to write that regularly. And then kind of
[19:48]over the years, I started working on other projects that had nothing to do with them. But that was
[19:53]the first time where I really had a dedicated kind of writing practice where I was, I was working
[19:59]every day.
[20:00]You know, in the mornings is usually when I'm fresh and so I would wake up and work and I do
[20:06]think that there is something about showing up every day to do it and I know like there are other
[20:11]people who argue the exact opposite. They're like, no, that's crazy. So for me, that worked
[20:17]really well because it was just kind of it became a part of my day. It became just like a habit,
[20:23]like drinking coffee or, you know, any of the things we do to kind of like get ready and get
[20:27]ourselves psyched up for the day and I became like much more productive during that time period
[20:32]and found that I was like accomplishing goals that I had set for myself, you know, in my writing life
[20:37]and so there was something really kind of magical that started happening when I was doing it
[20:41]every day. So I think for me, that's my biggest piece of advice and I even still have to remind myself
[20:48]of it now that Florence Adler's done and come on to the next thing. It's like, remember Rachel,
[20:53]it feels really good to write everything I think. And you just get more done, you know,
[20:58]the pages do add up that way. So I think that would be my biggest piece of advice and then of course
[21:05]just reading a lot. I always try. I'm not, you know, some people will not read the books that they're
[21:10]trying to write. Like, you know, if they're writing something they don't want to read,
[21:14]that's it similar and I don't really subscribe to that. I try to read lots of really good
[21:20]literature all the time and just kind of get so good up. I agree. There's something wrong with that.
[21:25]Yeah. I was just wondering, did you have any alternate titles? Sometimes people have like,
[21:30]all these crazy different titles that they considered and I just get curious sometimes.
[21:34]That's really funny. It's had the same title for years now and I probably the first year I was
[21:39]working on it didn't have a title for it but by about the midway point I had kind of called it
[21:43]my head porn fabrics and then when I sold it, the feminine shoots are loved it and they never
[21:50]talked about another title. And then recently, as books have been coming out, I'm like, man,
[21:54]there are a lot of titles with first name last name does something. So it made like, you know,
[21:58]they're made kind of a day where it's like, we're all done with first name last name
[22:03]but yeah, I know it, I think it works on a lot of different levels but I found an old note in my
[22:09]iPhone that was like, my husband and I had been on a car trip and we had been brainstorming titles
[22:14]and I had so many silly ones on it and I forwarded it to my agent and said, like, just in case
[22:22]you want to laugh, like, everything we thought of before porn feathers was forever and it was kind of
[22:29]a hoot because they were bad but porn feathers was forever. It worked.
[22:34]It does. No, it's a beautiful title. It's a beautiful title. No, I love it. Thank you, thank you.
[22:39]Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on and for bearing with the technical issues and for also
[22:44]doing the Instagram live show with me and I'm really excited about your book coming out and
[22:49]even the cover is like so calming and like, I don't know, it's just such a great book to have
[22:54]and to give and to read so thank you very much. Thank you for everything. It's really been
[23:01]wonderful to see everything you've been working on this last month or two. You've kept us all
[23:06]same. I appreciate it. I wish I could say the same for myself. Just kidding. Okay, thanks so much
[23:13]and stay in touch. I'll check in with you in five years. Okay. All right. Okay. Bye.
[23:21]Thanks for listening. Tomorrow, I'm still going to have time to read books. Please don't forget,
[23:25]subscribe, rate, and review this on iTunes. Tell your friends about it. Spread the word.
[23:31]Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much to Jiggy Puzzles for sponsoring
[23:35]today's episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Get 10% off with Code Zibi at JiggyPuzzles.com.
[23:41]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing and thank you to
[23:46]Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music. Thanks for listening.
[23:50]You could always email me at Zibi at Zibi Owens.com.