Julia Glass, VIGIL HARBOR: A Novel

2022-12-07  ·  28:17  ·  Julia Glass  ·  Podcast Audio

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[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
[0:18]their book, their life, and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?
[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir,
[0:28]bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature, wherever books are sold starting July 1st, and my children's book prints is charming.
[0:36]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors and that is what we're going to do.
[0:43]Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the Zcast Podcast Network.
[0:48]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well.
[0:58]Julia Glass is the author of Vigil Harbor, a novel.
[1:01]Julia is the author of six previous books of fiction, including the best-selling three-junes,
[1:06]winner of the National Book Award, and I see you everywhere, winner of the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award.
[1:12]Other published works include the Kindle, Single, Chairs, and the Rafters, and essays in several anthologies.
[1:18]A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study,
[1:25]Glass is a distinguished writer and residence at Emerson College.
[1:28]She lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
[1:30]Welcome, Julia. Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[1:33]Don't have time to read books.
[1:34]Thank you, Zivi.
[1:35]I have to tell you.
[1:36]I'm sure you don't remember this, but about, I don't know, 20 years ago or something.
[1:42]When did three-junes come out?
[1:43]20 years ago this past May.
[1:45]Oh, so I'm sorry.
[1:46]So I went to an event in Brooklyn at someone's house and you were there.
[1:51]There were like two or three tables.
[1:53]And I sat at your table, and I'm like the biggest fan of three-junes ever.
[1:57]And it was you.
[1:58]And all these Moms, and I did not have kids then.
[2:01]And the whole time.
[2:02]Literally.
[2:03]Everyone was talking about schools and this and that.
[2:04]I was like, I don't even understand what everyone's talking about.
[2:06]I just want to talk about the book.
[2:08]No.
[2:09]So that must have been at my agent Gail Hockman's house in Park Slope.
[2:13]I'm thinking that's when it was.
[2:15]Wow.
[2:16]Wow.
[2:17]Well, you have got to read.
[2:18]I sort of remember that dinner.
[2:19]You're right.
[2:20]If there are moms, what do we talk about?
[2:21]We don't talk about books.
[2:22]I mean, we do.
[2:23]But we got to get the mom stuff up first.
[2:26]No, no.
[2:27]Now that I am a mom, I understand.
[2:29]Because I remember telling my mom and she laughed.
[2:31]And she's like, oh, just you wait.
[2:33]I heard your show with Anthony Dore and how you guys were talking about being parents of twins.
[2:38]Yeah.
[2:39]You don't have twins, though.
[2:40]Right?
[2:41]No, no.
[2:42]I have two boys five years apart.
[2:43]Not boys anymore.
[2:44]But yeah.
[2:45]Five years is a good split.
[2:47]Don't you think?
[2:48]You know, it's how far apart I was from my sister.
[2:51]It's a little farther than I might have liked.
[2:53]But, you know, mother nature will have her way.
[2:55]Yes.
[2:56]Yes.
[2:57]I have a six year gap.
[2:58]So I understand.
[2:59]But anyway, okay, visual harbor.
[3:01]I watched your interview with the Boston Public Library, which is really fascinating.
[3:06]And one of the things you said was how it was one character from another book.
[3:11]And this is the continuation that the character had landed in visual harbor.
[3:14]And that's where you like started this in the launching off point.
[3:17]Well, listeners, what visual harbors about how you decided to bring that particular loop in to start off and everything else.
[3:24]Well, first of all, every single one of my book starts with a single character who comes to me.
[3:29]And it may be from a previous book, whether I like it or not.
[3:33]And actually, in this case, there were sort of two characters.
[3:35]But one, for the one you're referring to is Celestino, who's a character, very important character in my novel, The Whittower's Tale.
[3:43]And in that book, he's an undocumented Guatemalan law and worker who aspires to have his own tree business.
[3:50]And that novel ends in a town I invented called visual harbor, which is a seaside town in Massachusetts based on the town that I live in, which is called marble head.
[4:00]And you live in a coastal community, so you know, you know, the privileges and the, you know, hazards of what it's like to live by the sea.
[4:09]And so I kept thinking about Celestino through another couple of books.
[4:14]And I wanted to bring him back, but I was also visited by this architect.
[4:20]And sometimes when I'm writing a book, I become fascinated by a particular profession.
[4:24]And I think, you know, I really want to write about an oncologist.
[4:27]I really want to write about a concert cellist and I'll delve into that.
[4:31]So in my town here, there are a lot of architects and it's also a town with a lot of historical architecture.
[4:38]And, you know, I'm surrounded by houses built in the 17th century, 18th century, 19th century.
[4:44]And I'm fascinated by fantasizing about all the lives that have been lived in these old houses.
[4:49]And I think it draws in a lot of architects as well.
[4:52]And this idea about an architect who's in the prime of his profession, who builds houses to withstand the increasingly furious coastal storms.
[5:03]We have it as a Florida is being battered by Ian.
[5:07]And everything has gone well for him, but there's a secret from his past.
[5:10]There's a young architect in New York City.
[5:13]He had a very tempestuous affair with a young woman, very artistic, intense young woman who presented herself as a creature from the deep as it were.
[5:26]And I thought, you know, am I really going to go there, you know, is Julia Glass, the hyper realist writer about families and communities and heartbreak and, you know, going to bring something supernatural in.
[5:37]And I thought, you know, maybe she claims to be a mermaid or a selfie. I wasn't even sure.
[5:42]But I thought, so he works in this privileged beautiful historic town on the Massachusetts coast.
[5:48]And the stranger comes to town.
[5:50]The woman from his past, another woman from his past, who he isn't aware knew of him, who was also in love with this young woman.
[5:58]He said the relationship came to a very tragic end. So it's so it was to be on the one hand, I really wanted this character.
[6:05]So you know, to be for you for the reader to see him decades later settled in this seaside town, married with a child and a successful business.
[6:16]And he works with that architect and people are thinking what is, you know, this is me, you know, what happens inside my head is that characters constellate.
[6:25]And I'm utterly incapable of writing a novel from one point of view. So it's beautiful sentence, by the way, that should be on a t shirt where characters constellate.
[6:33]Okay, well, that's really good to make the t shirt zipping all by a dozen.
[6:37]Okay, I'll make it.
[6:38]So, so I had these, that these sort of two poles, this, this architect with this secret that's going to emerge from his past because this woman who sort of bent on vengeance, but also wants to find out what became of ESA.
[6:51]This, this passionate young woman who presented herself as this otherworldly creature. And this man has this very successful business as an arborist.
[7:00]By the way, I'm obsessed with trees, you know, drive me down a street and I'm going to say, what's that tree? What's that tree? I just planted a Tupelo tree in my yard.
[7:08]I just, I go out and watch it like a baby.
[7:10]You know, my displaced motherhood here now that I'm an empty nest or, but anyway, so, but something different happened to me with this novel. And I think it's because I actually became very intimidated by the notion that I was going to try to work in a fantastical element into my novel.
[7:28]And that is that I stepped aside from that novel. And I wrote another novel, which was a house among the trees my last book.
[7:34]And I don't do that. It felt like I was having an affair. I left my spouse, you know, like I packed my bags and, you know, run off to Spain with this other novel.
[7:45]So when after a house among the trees was published in 2017, I kind of went slinking back toward the 75 pages gathering dust on my desktop.
[7:56]We're a cellist, you know, and this architect Austin and he said this woman in Petra, the woman of the stranger who comes to town and out the secret.
[8:03]There they lurked, you know, and I, you know, as I joke in my authors note to visual harbour, we went into marriage counseling and I salvaged the marriage because I'm a stubborn person and asked my husband.
[8:18]But what had happened is it was 2017 and our world had changed a lot in three or four years since I had left those characters behind
[8:25]I'll just sort of tell you the story that maybe heard in that interview. I had to go back and do a little Googling
[8:30]But this this was June 1st of of 2017. I was actually I
[8:34]Was at pulling into my garden center to buy a tree is a matter of fact and
[8:39]NPR was on and everyone was waiting for our relatively new president to come on the radio and
[8:45]And everyone knew what he was going to say and I thought no, he's not going to say that because nobody would say that and
[8:50]I waited in the parking lot and listened and yes, our president pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord and
[8:56]Personally, I feel that climate change. I'm partly the only one is the most urgent of so
[9:02]Many challenges facing us and I sat in the parking lot and I cried. I mean, I just thought do these people have children
[9:09]Do they have grandchildren? You know
[9:11]What is going on here? And I thought to myself what is it like at this moment in time to be a climate
[9:18]Scientist or a climate change activist and to feel that
[9:22]Everything all the work you've done is just
[9:26]You know roadkill and I I thought what if
[9:30]What if we reach a time when in order to be heard those people resort to violence to to terrorism?
[9:37]And and suddenly I thought
[9:40]Here I'm writing a novel
[9:42]about this coastal community
[9:45]Which is privileged, you know, I will tell you and I borrowed this line for one of my characters my husband jokes about our town
[9:51]That diversity is represented by brunettes
[9:55]That's about true. I mean, it's a politically mostly very liberal town, but you know be that as it may so
[10:00]What if I set this novel a dozen years in the future when all those big issues that keep us
[10:06]up at night, immigration and productive rights and climate change certainly that the volume has
[10:13]been raised on those issues. Things are more dire. Politics is more polarized. There's actually in
[10:19]my novel a new, a splinter political party called the end timers. But I did not want to write a
[10:25]dystopian novel. First of all, dystopia is above my pay grade. My imagination is not very good
[10:34]on technology for instance. So my joke about this, I was actually emailing the writer,
[10:41]Karen Russell, whose imagination is just out where the buses don't run. I think she's so brilliant.
[10:45]And I said, guess what? I'm writing something and set the future. I said, it's baby steps
[10:50]speculative. So what happened is, I now knew the larger world, the more dire world in which my
[10:58]privileged community was this kind of bubble, in which the people believe in some ways they're
[11:03]insulated from the rising seas. Because for instance, this town like my own town is set up on a
[11:10]sort of granite pedestal. It's not like towns on Cape Cod and the mid Atlantic coast where I mean
[11:18]almost daily, you can see the coast eroding and houses going under water, even regardless of hurricanes.
[11:24]So I kind of knew when and where this novel was set. And then the characters began to gather.
[11:29]And one of the most important characters, and this actually surprised me, you know, I write forward
[11:34]into the dark. I do not plot a novel. So sometimes characters that I thought were incidental become
[11:40]very important. And one of those characters is the architect Austin's stepson, whose name is
[11:46]Brecht. And he is essentially the first voice you hear in the novel. And he's in his early 20s.
[11:52]He was in New York City for college and something very violent happened. He survived a very
[11:58]traumatic event. And so he came home to Vigil Harbor. That was a Union Square, right? Yes. I mean,
[12:04]there's a bombing in Union Square where when I lived in New York City, I went to the farmers market
[12:09]three times a week. So Brecht is someone who's been traumatized and his life is on hold as he
[12:16]tries to figure out where he's going. And he lives in his father's house with his mother,
[12:21]and sorry, stepfather, Austin. And he works for Salastino. He works building walls. He works planning
[12:28]trees. And his view of the world in which he lives as a 20 something was really the greatest
[12:34]leap of imagination for me. There's also new language. Because of course, you've two
[12:40]teenagers yet. I do. Come home and use these branch, these adjectives. And you're like, that's
[12:47]not how that word is used, especially if you're a word monger. And you realize this is the language
[12:52]evolving. So I had some fun with Brecht's, you know, new twists of phrase and so on. But in addition
[12:58]to Brecht, who becomes in a way, not the heart of the novel, but he's seeing the world through
[13:06]his eyes is where I really encountered this near future, you know, most directly. Most of the other
[13:12]characters are older. And I had a little fun with so that so visual harbor has a yacht club that is
[13:18]for people very much a social center. Now, if I tell you that my town has five yacht clubs. Now,
[13:23]imagine if I'd tried, that would nobody would believe that a town has five yacht clubs. And
[13:27]see, I love visiting book groups. And I visit book groups here. And the first question is,
[13:32]which club is it? I say, it's composite. So anyway, another pair of characters that I really
[13:42]enjoyed writing were Mike who's, you know, well, Mike and Marga are these two characters, both in
[13:47]their fifties. They've raised their children. They belong to the yacht club and to their
[13:52]mortification and shock. Their spouses leave them for each other and run away to a survivalist
[13:59]community in Wisconsin because there's this whole survivalist movement, as you can imagine. I
[14:03]guess they're called preppers, but I didn't use that term. And so Mike, who's this very serious
[14:10]marine biologist and Marga, who's the Spitfire of a retired high school English teacher,
[14:16]are thrown together, not romantically, but sort of by virtue of being cast in this town scandal.
[14:23]And, and Marga has taught Brecht. So there are all these connections among, among the characters
[14:30]and Mike's grown son, Egon, who's an actor in New York City, comes home because there's another
[14:36]bombing in New York City. And it makes me feel a little uneasy sitting here talking to you in New York City.
[14:42]I'm probably, and I'm giving, I'm giving your listeners vertigo because, so if I tell you that
[14:48]the novel is narrated by eight characters, seven of those characters are people who live in
[14:55]visual harbor. Perhaps they live there their whole lives or they've come there. And then there's
[15:00]this stranger. There's also another stranger who comes to town who's actually another character
[15:04]from a previous novel. But I'm not going to go into that subplot. The events of the novel take place
[15:10]over only a few days bringing these characters together in an event that is, is, is quite a violent
[15:18]event. I mean, an event that brings the dangers of the outer world into this bubble of a town and
[15:24]throws everyone together. But, but also like all of my books, each character is this deep well of
[15:31]experience. And, you know, I call myself the flashback queen because, you know, by the time you
[15:37]finish one of my novels, you know each of my characters all the way back to their childhood.
[15:43]You know, their gene pool, you know, their struggles to become who they are in whatever profession
[15:48]they're in. So for readers of mine who were a little terrified at the thought that I'd, you know,
[15:56]turned into a sci-fi writer. That isn't the case at all. You know, I'm still really writing about
[16:01]how, how do, how do we endure? You know, I mean, I think all the greatest fiction is about
[16:09]how there's this amazing yin yang in human nature of fragility and resilience. And also,
[16:16]I've said this very often, but one of the things that really interests me in fiction is
[16:21]how do or what happens when, because, you know, it happens frequently, what happens when
[16:27]people who are fundamentally good-hearted and very smart make incredibly foolish choices in their
[16:35]lives. And how do they deal with the consequences of that? How do they deal with the fall have?
[16:41]Do you know, you know, can they rise above it? Can they get through it? So, so once again, you know,
[16:47]I am writing about a group of characters who are, you know, confronted with intimate challenges
[16:53]and and losses and also global issues that are affecting their lives every day, whether they
[17:01]like it or not. And like all of my novels, I, you know, I believe that this book ends hopefully,
[17:08]you know, one bookstore right in an event said, you know, truly the class is amazing and
[17:12]devastating new novel. And I thought, well, thank you for saying it's amazing. But I don't think
[17:17]it's devastating. I mean, it's certainly, it's not the kind of novel that allows you to set aside
[17:22]from your mind the worries we all share as a nation, as families, as towns. But maybe it allows you
[17:32]to immerse yourself in them in a different way and to see that we will all work our way through
[17:38]these things. I mean, this is not a fairytale. Everybody doesn't have a happy ending. But this is
[17:43]very much asking myself, how do we get through this? How will we? How could we? I mean, my imagination
[17:50]of the world 12 years from now because the year that this takes place in is 2034. And by the way,
[17:55]I've been asked by a couple of readers if I chose that because it's 50 years after 1984.
[18:02]And no, I mean, I am so not a numbers person. I mean, I could now claim, oh, yes, of course,
[18:08]you know, it's echoes of door door well, but it's not an Orwellian novel. So no, and in fact,
[18:13]you know, there's another novel that came out last fall that I really was riveted by and
[18:18]admired enormously called 2034. And that's the title that imagines that that's the year in
[18:25]which World War three begins. And I thought, well, if that were actually the case in 2034,
[18:29]my characters would have a lot more worry about than what they were reading about.
[18:34]Isn't that Elliot Ackerman's book? Yes, it is. Oh, my gosh, I would love him.
[18:37]Did you have you interviewed him? I haven't reviewed him.
[18:41]And with what his partner Lee Carpenter is an old friend of mine from business school. She was
[18:46]the very least on this podcast. And that's when I realized I loved podcasting was because of
[18:50]Lee. And so I see Lee and Elliot quite a bit. Other than Alex. But anyway, yes, 2034.
[18:56]So so I also because, you know, I've talked about all the points of view in this book. And
[19:03]I promise you won't get confused. I promise I steer you straight through all these different
[19:08]narrators, but I have to have a little mom brag moment here. So always, most of my previous
[19:15]books have been narrated by by single audio readers and audio books. So I can't listen to an
[19:21]audiobook because my mind wanders. It's terrible confession. I have to read. So, but I have so many
[19:28]friends were that's how they get books. They, you know, they listen to them. And I am, you know,
[19:33]I have come to realize over the past 20 years that the audiobook is incredibly and increasingly
[19:38]important. So imagine my shock when the producer told me that they were going to cast nine
[19:44]performers for this audiobook. Because in addition to the eight narrators, there's a, there's kind
[19:49]of an omniscient overview that I use sort of that punctuates these voices that kind of gives you
[19:55]picture of the, the sort of long history of this town, visual heart.
[20:00]And so, you know, I had the pleasure of being able to ask, you know, that for them to cast a friend of mine who's an actor named Jeremy Davidson, who does audio books as well as stage and screen acting and he reads Mike, the marine biologist who's, who's for me a really beloved character.
[20:19]Some people think he's the character who's the most like me. My friends love reading my books and saying this is usually, you know, aspects of me are in all of my characters.
[20:28]At my 25 year old son who had graduated from college in performance and theater, although the pandemic sentiment another direction and he is now a farmer.
[20:39]I really heard his voice he has a beautiful voice as he gone who is Mike's son, the actor who comes back from New York.
[20:48]So it's actually your son. Well, so I say to the producer over the phone, I say, no, you're going to roll your eyes, but I have his son and she's like, she just interrupted me and said, anyone can send me a tape and try out.
[21:01]And I took him to tapes with her. She gave him notes and Mike. So my son Alec is one of the voices and it just, you know, it really, you know, did it bring us closer. No, but
[21:15]didn't make me go and read all my books. No.
[21:19]So, you know, I had a funny experience where his college roommate who came to us for Thanksgiving asked, you know, I was at the breakfast table with his roommate one morning and my son, I think was still sleeping and he said, so I, I understand your author and I said, yes, you know, he said all the nice things you'd say.
[21:34]He said, but so it's interesting to me that Alec has read any of your books and I said, yeah, that's interesting to me too because he's a really big reader and he's an actor and he's, you know, getting like six Shakespeare plays.
[21:44]And he said, well, yeah, he told me why it is. And I said, why? And he said, because he's terrified that there may be sex scenes and the idea that he might read a sex scene written by his mothers just, and I said, you know what, that's a very good reason not to read your mother's books.
[22:00]Yeah.
[22:01]Not that my books are very racist. No, no, I actually, I had originally written some more Stevie scenes in my memoir about my own.
[22:09]And I was like, I have to take this.
[22:11]Well, kids are going to read this one day. I can't, I can't.
[22:13]Well, the other thing is I've still got a living mother who reads so, you know, that's the other thing.
[22:18]You don't want your mother read.
[22:20]That's true.
[22:21]That's true.
[22:22]Although I have to say that's what people want to read.
[22:25]Like a lot of people want to read have a little bit of that in there.
[22:28]Not in all cases, but in most cases when I, when I write about intimacy, there's, you know, it's like the rock and roll fade out.
[22:35]Yeah.
[22:37]We're watching Tembi Lock, her book from scratch.
[22:40]It was just made into a show and Netflix.
[22:42]Oh, wow.
[22:43]I was lucky enough to get the screener because I'm interviewing her.
[22:45]Anyway, they're, I'm watching with my kids and they're loving it because it's in Florence and it's beautiful and cooking and whatever.
[22:51]And then I was keeping these scenes and so I keep jumping on top of them on the couch.
[22:56]And like, like, no, you're coming out of it.
[22:58]And I just like lunge anyways.
[23:00]It's probably not a good parenting moment, but anyway, it's, it's lovely.
[23:04]What we do for our kids.
[23:05]Right.
[23:06]Well, first of all, you are just a genius.
[23:09]You're like a creative, listening to you describe how your mind works and how you craft stories and create characters and interlink them and plots and how you take the things that are bothering you and that you want people to examine and then twist it around and put it into a story because really that's how people think feel enough to make changes in their own life.
[23:31]They can't.
[23:32]I feel like if you read a hundred articles about climate change, you can put them off into one analytic piece of your brain.
[23:37]If you hear one story about one family affected truly by climate change, it might make more of a difference.
[23:43]Right.
[23:44]Your ability to tie all that in and, and really affect people and the world, that's the goal.
[23:50]Right.
[23:51]It's to get people to re examine.
[23:52]We're all making decisions every day.
[23:54]Right.
[23:55]But I think we are not.
[23:56]Yeah.
[23:57]I know that that's true.
[23:58]And during the writing of this book, I subscribe to the New York Times climate newsletter.
[24:03]So I get those in my inbox.
[24:05]And I have to say sometimes I think, God, you know, I'd start out the dango.
[24:09]Oh, here it is.
[24:10]And I'd read.
[24:11]But you know what?
[24:12]You read really hopeful things too.
[24:14]And I have to say, and I want to say that for especially for parents who have older kids and you wonder, how can they want to go forward and make a family?
[24:23]I mean, I have a 26 year old in a committed relationship.
[24:26]But and I don't go there with my kids.
[24:28]But as recline in the New York Times wrote this beautiful piece called Your Kids Are Not Dumed.
[24:34]And I recommend that op ed piece to any parent in particular who has older children and wonders, you know, how do you talk about the future?
[24:44]How do you, how do you feel hopeful?
[24:46]But there is much to be hopeful about there really is.
[24:49]And I hope that my book is a part of that conversation.
[24:52]Yeah.
[24:53]It's wonderful.
[24:54]I know my son and I talked to him about some of this the other day.
[24:56]And there was a whole group of us.
[24:57]And he was like, oh, yeah, no, we're all like totally screwed for life, basically.
[25:02]Like there's no hope for us.
[25:03]And I'm like, really do you feel that way?
[25:05]Because I don't know the that's this.
[25:06]And he's like, no, that's what every all my friends like, you know, that's what they all think.
[25:10]That's what this address is also when I have those conversations with my older son, sometimes he's like, you know, when it's your generation that did this to us.
[25:19]And, you know, mine, I mean, I'm older than Mississippi, but you know, we were very, very privileged and fortunate generation of Americans.
[25:28]You know, my generation escaped by a few years being drafted for the Vietnam War.
[25:33]Personally, I feel that the war that I was witness to it because I was very close to it.
[25:38]And I did volunteer work as the, you know, the AIDS epidemic in New York City.
[25:43]But I was right square in the middle of that, but I wasn't personally affected by it.
[25:48]But no, he's right.
[25:50]I mean, I cannot argue with him that the excesses in which my generation that we perpetrated are very real.
[25:56]But of course, my generation is still around to try to help amend that and and his generation.
[26:01]You know, the ingenuity, you know, not just the resilience, but the ingenuity of human beings is incredible.
[26:08]You know, I see that our time is drawing to a close, but I want to say that while I was, I'll just tell you one little story here.
[26:14]You know, while I was sort of getting ready for this book to come out and I was in this kind of nervous state.
[26:18]I was looking around my book case one day and I saw this book I picked up at a cash register and it's called the world according to Fred Rogers.
[26:25]So in a way we go back to children and you know, it's these gems that Mr Rogers said over his lifetime.
[26:32]And I opened it up to one and it was, he said, parents sometimes asked me when something catastrophic is happening and their children see that catastrophe, whether it's on TV, you know, whether it's a hurricane or terrorist bombing.
[26:44]And I was there with a five year old in New York City 911.
[26:48]He said, what you say to the children is look for the fixers wherever you see catastrophe.
[26:55]Whether it's the Red Cross, whether it's, you know, whether it's Anthony Fauci on TV, you know, there are always people who's whole heart and whole life, you know, is dedicated to fixing to getting around getting through and during that.
[27:12]And I thought maybe that sounds simple, but it's not.
[27:16]And that's where my attention, that's where I want to draw the attention in my book. And you know, in my parenting, there are always people working as hard as they possibly can to make things better.
[27:28]And I'd like to think fiction writers are among those people.
[27:30]I think so too.
[27:33]So great. I could listen to you all day. You're just such a masterful storyteller.
[27:38]Thank you so much. It's a privilege. So thank you for coming on.
[27:41]Well, thank you. I had a great time.
[27:43]Good. Me too. All right. Good luck with the rest of your tour. Thank you. Okay. Bye.
[27:48]Bye.
[27:49]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:53]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:58]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[28:05]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[28:09]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.