Wally Lamb, THE RIVER IS WAITING: A Novel

[1:09]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at zibby owens. Today is number six in the most downloaded totally booked episodes twenty twenty five. We're counting up from 10 to the most downloaded episode. Tune in every day to find out. Wally Lam is the author of the river is waiting. Wally is the author of six New York Times bestselling novels, I'll Take You There, We Are Water, Wishin' and Hopin', The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She's Come Undone. Also edited Couldn't Keep It To Myself and I'll Fly Away, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women's prison in Connecticut, where he was a volunteer facilitator for twenty years. Wally lives in Connecticut with his wife, Christine, and they have three sons. He has been on this podcast in the past, I am delighted to welcome him back now. Welcome, Wally. Thank you so much for coming back on my show to talk about the river is waiting. Congratulations.

[2:48]Wally Lamb: Happy to be here, Zibby, and thank you very much. Yeah. This book deals with such

[2:54]Zibby Owens: dark heavy topics, and yet there is a hopeful message of resilience all the way through. Can you talk a little bit about where this idea came from and what what it's really about?

[3:06]Wally Lamb: Yeah. Sure. Well, you know, I never know when it's time for me to start a new book. I never know what it's gonna be about. I don't I you know, I don't I'm not moving toward a a certain character or a certain ending or anything like that. But what I do, and this was something that taught that was taught to me by a a long time teacher writing teacher. And she said, you're never gonna tell an interest you know, like, you're never gonna tell an original story. She said, so go back to the ancient myths because they're the stories that have lasted because people need them to be told and retold. So I have done that ever since. And so I was when I was sort of spinning my wheels and trying to figure out what exactly I was gonna take on, I started reading about it's a it's a myth about it's called La La Rona, and she is the wailing woman in Mexican mythology. And she she finds out her husband is unfaithful, and in response, she drowns her children in anger. And and then she is a ghost that haunts, you know, others by the by rivers rivers and and and bodies of water. So I don't know. That's where I started. And I couldn't, you know I kept being interested in that, but it wasn't getting any traction. And then one day in the newspaper, I've, I found a little article on one of the, you know, not on page one, but it was about, it was about these terrible accidents called backovers, where usually a parent, somebody somebody, a loved one who has a little kid will back, not realize that the kid is in not in the car, but back and back in the driveway or whatever, and and will roll over them. And in nine out of ten instances, the child survives. But there is that one terrible example of a child who does not survive. So I was in horror when I read about that. And at the time, we had a we had a our first grandchild was three years old, and we had just welcomed an infant, his baby sister. And I have a have a car with a backup camera. And my son down in New Orleans, Jared, he and his wife did not at the time have a backup camera. And I was so scared. And I think fear probably motivates me more than anything. And so I called them up and I said, look, Jared, if you fly up here to Connecticut from Louisiana, I will give you my car with the backup camera, and I'll get another car. And so fly up and then you can drive it back. And he did that. And I went out and got the exact same car. That car was only about six months old. And the dealership was like, you want the same color? You want, you know, they couldn't quite get it. But yeah, that it started with those two things, really. The, you know, the wailing woman, of course, in the, in the story that, that came about, you know, almost seven years later, you know, there is a woman who cries for her children, for her child specifically. And but and there is water, you know, that that figures into it. And then there's that terrible

[6:33]Zibby Owens: accident that occurs. Oh my gosh. I love that I love that you didn't, like, just tell your son, Jared, like, I'm gonna just buy you a car. You're like, you actually have to fly here and drive my old car so that I can get myself a new car. Right. That's right. Maybe a little bit of selfishness there. Was No. Not at all. You're like, you're teaching your kids to work for it. I love it. You know? Yeah. Right. Right. I like it. Well, I didn't know it had a name backovers. It's you know, as a parent, it's abs oh, he's Terrifying. Horrifying. Just so just the thought of it. So that's that's great that you did that for him. But, you know, reading about it in the the way that an accident and one moment and the ways that you get to some of the worst moments of your life and how you feel you can put yourself in those moments. Like, you're setting yourself up for some bad things to happen. Right? It's not that you're not causing them. It's just, know, it's like when you're walking walking in the street and my you know, nothing good happens on walking on the sidewalk at, like, four in the morning type of thing. Like, he's setting himself up for not optimal conditions. So when this horrible thing happens and then the self loathing after and what happens with his wife, Emily, and and Maisie, his daughter. I mean, it's just it's hard not to read without, like, grasping your chest, like, oh my gosh. Was it hard to write all of that? Like, that must have felt or do you like that feeling of like, oof?

[8:02]Wally Lamb: No. There's a part of me maybe as superstitious that if I write about these terrible things happening to people, maybe maybe they won't happen to to me or my family. But that was only a little bit of part of it. No, it was difficult to to write about. Because, you know, I I become these characters. I always write in the first person. I think probably, oh, hey, Pooch. Oh, what my dog. Don't be sorry. No. But, you know, I you know, I hear actors talk about what they do, you know, for a living. And I sort of nod in recognition because what I do is like, you know, I walk into the room where I write, which is where I am now, and I become somebody else for, you know, five, six hours. And then luckily, I'm able to, you know, shed that skin and go back to my own much more peaceful life. But, yeah, I do feel I feel when I when I'm writing as these characters, I feel what they're feeling. Well,

[9:03]Zibby Owens: the horror of the event just keeps going with I don't wanna give things away. There's so much that happens, and I don't wanna, like, tell everybody, but it just, like, keeps getting worse. It's like when you feel like your main character can't take anything else, he has, like, even more horrible, painful things physically and emotionally happening. How do you come back from this? And that's why I started by saying that it's about resilience because he gets through. It shows us, like, we can get through anything. Is that what you were kinda going for even though it just evolved?

[9:36]Wally Lamb: You know, I wasn't going for anything in particular. I had no idea, and and this is true of just about all the things that I've written, all the novels anyway. I didn't know where it was gonna go. I didn't know what was gonna happen. But another another thing that sort of served me while I was writing this novel is that I had had a twenty year experience working with imprisoned women. I ran a writing program for them, started in 1999 and left the program in 2019. So and this is a writing program, you know, I was a volunteer. The women, you know, once they got to trust me and trust one another, they began to write about their lives, and in many cases, their secrets, you know, they began to divulge, you know, what had derailed their lives. Some of them, many of them had been the victims of incest when they were kids. But anyway, some of the women were, you know, they had had, you know, okay, middle class lives or working class lives. And then like Corby in the novel, one day something happens and, you know, they go off the rails. And so whereas some of the women that I dealt some of the women that I dealt with, you know, had lives of crime that, you know, from early on, others just did something one day and found themselves in prison, which is, you know, I mean, is not to say that Corby didn't, you know, cause him to, you know, to do to do this terrible thing and end up in prison. But that was that was instructive for me, that you could be living your life, you know, ethically, and then something happens, you snap or whatever, and and then you spend a lot of years, you know, having to repent.

[11:29]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. You talk you set it up with, you know, struggling with substances. Right? Corby is Mhmm. Is really self medicating his way through twin fatherhood and as a parent of twins. Like, that is hard. I get it. It is hard to get through some days. But we don't there's a lot written, I feel like, about moms needing wine to get through the tough times. But there's a lot less about, like, how men cope with the overwhelm of parenting. Talk a little bit about that. Well, he's before he becomes the,

[12:03]Wally Lamb: you know, the custodian parent, he he's lost his job. So he was a sort of a conventional 30 guy working for an advertising firm. Then they and then that firm sort of, you know, it it sort of, you know, there's a reduction in force or reduction in in people, and he and he's on the chopping block. And so now he has a wife who is a teacher, and she becomes the chief breadwinner. And he loves he loves the kids, his twins, his his two year old twins, but he also, as a guy, feels somehow disconnected and some something of a failure because he you know, he's no longer, you know, the the family breadwinner. And so he begins to he gets he gets he's anxious. And so he gets a prescription for a benzodiazepine, and he becomes addicted to that. And he also starts drinking, and he does this, you know, sneakily. And his so that his wife doesn't see she knows about the prescription, but she doesn't know that he's also drinking during the day when in fact he's, you know, he's also parenting those kids. So that sort of leads to what happens with him. And, know, I have had my own, you know, problems with alcohol. And I've been sober for about fourteen years now. But I bring my own experience into the into some of his addictive behavior.

[13:37]Zibby Owens: Is there a moment that you think of when you were struggling that's a a moment that you wish so much you could take back?

[13:46]Wally Lamb: Yeah. I think well, not a not a moment, but sort of a a way that my life I didn't seem like me for a while there. And this was this happened to me. I was a late bloomer in terms of alcoholism. And so, you know, I drank enthusiastically before that, but it was in my 50s when it became a real problem. It was at a crossroads. Had just adopted a very troubled kid. You know, we had two of our own children, and then we adopted a third who was mentally ill and and, you know, had come from a terrible situation. So there were and and so there was the challenge of that. He had suddenly, he changed all the rules of of parenting that we we thought we knew about, you know, we could love him. He was four when he when he came into our lives. And, you know, we thought we thought, okay, we can keep him safe, and we can love him and, and he'll come out okay. But we were ignorant about the damage that can be caused in very early childhood. So there was that. At the same time, my parents were I was becoming a parent of my parents. My mother had a number of strokes, and she was kind of losing her mind. And my father had Parkinson's disease. And so they became very much in need of my support. So there was, you know, there were these things happening. And then and then the third element was that, you know, I had I had this glorious thing happened twice with the Oprah Book Club, but I was it intimidated me to write the first sentence of something new because I didn't wanna I didn't wanna disappoint these suddenly millions of readers that I had. And and so I was I was afraid. I was afraid to write. So it was the it was the, you know, that perfect storm of those three things happening. And I began to escape by using by medicating myself with with alcohol, Not not any kind of prescription medication, but it was, you know, it it was easy to go

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[18:40]Wally Lamb: I knew it was a problem about this was for a ten year period. Knew it a problem about five years in. But then I was too afraid to go to any you know, 12 step program because suddenly I was, you know, I had this name recognition, and that was keeping me away. It was pride, really. And so it, you know, it just got worse. It spiraled down and thank God, my wife, you know, hung in there with me. And so eventually, I had to walk in and, you know, sort of declare myself to a bunch of strangers. And what was, what the wonderful thing was, was that it opened me up to all kinds of people who I hadn't known before. And really, and I still go to meetings and I've had so many good friendships come out of it. And so really, you you think it, you think this terrible thing is gonna lead to more terrible things. But in in my case, it led to a very, very good dividend.

[19:43]Zibby Owens: Mhmm. Well, well, good for you for getting to the other side of that and being inspiring to those who might be struggling.

[19:51]Wally Lamb: Do you still feel that fear of starting a book? Oh, yes. Yeah. I have just started a new one. You know? But the the one that that's coming out soon, The River is Waiting, I actually finished that at the end of last year, and so I didn't know what else to do. I thought may well, maybe that's my last novel. And then I was hanging around the house for about a week or so. I go, I don't know what to do. So I'll try something else. And so I started this one. If I knew the other one had to come out first, so I wasn't so intimidated to start this because I figured, well, you know, nobody's gonna have to look at this and, you know, for a long time.

[20:33]Zibby Owens: It's so funny. Oh my gosh. Do you feel like you'll jinx it if you say what this one is about? Can you talk about it at all? Tell you a little bit about it. The main character is

[20:44]Wally Lamb: a feisty young woman named Josephine, who is who's born in 1898, and she's born into a into a family. She's got two brothers. She idolizes one brother, and she can't stand her bratty little brother because he is sick. He his their mother enters him in the the charming child contest in which actually was a thing. I think it was in the Daily News. And, and he wins second prize. And, so the mother, you know, she her younger son, you know, can do no wrong. And Josephine, Josie is just really pissed off about this. And he's a little brat. He's a little manipulator. And and then, you know, the story grows up. Yeah. I mean, she grows up a little bit in the in the story, and he does. And he becomes a a sort of a conniver with women and and her brother her other brother, second her older brother becomes a soldier in World War one. I had to do a ton of research on that horrible war. And so that's I'm about I'm about maybe a hundred hundred and twenty five pages into it. And, again, I'm not sure quite where it's going.

[21:59]Zibby Owens: I mean, if you want, I could throw out some lighter topics for you. You just go right to the it's like you can't think of anything, you know, researching a new board. It's like you're a glutton for punishment.

[22:11]Wally Lamb: Well, I did write one funny book called Wishing and Hoping. And they actually made a movie, a Christmas movie out of it. And that that was a delight to to write. It was the fastest thing I ever wrote. And it was a lot of fun. And being, going to the movie set and everything, that was fun. That one stars Molly Ringwald and the late great Meat Loaf, who I met on the set one time. And he said, Oh yeah, you're the guy who wrote the book, right? And I said, Yeah. And he says, Well, I want to tell you something, Wally. I've had three concussions in my life. He proceeds to tell me about the three concussions. I'm like, Okay. I'm not sure where that came from, but I'm gonna listen intently.

[23:01]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. I was kidding, of course, about the lighter topics.

[23:06]Wally Lamb: Oh, sure. Well, I do I do have to because I write about these bleak things, I do have to sort of save myself by putting in some some comic relief. So usually, there is a friend or somebody in the, you know, the one of the minor characters sort of gives the readers a chance to sort of breathe a little bit. In this case, it is one of one of Corby's cellmates. Yes. A guy named a guy named Manny. Manny Della Vecchia, who is half Italian and half Jewish. And he's a you know, he's he's a he's sort of a good guy in in this prison where there are a lot of bad guys. And so he becomes

[23:48]Zibby Owens: Corby's friend. Which is lovely. When you finish a day of intense writing and you walk back into the other room, how is that transition? Are you able to just shake it off, or does it linger? Do you feel it? Is it heavy like a coat you're wearing?

[24:03]Wally Lamb: No. I can usually shake it off. Although, my wife, Chris, sometimes she can she knows I don't usually talk tell her, you know, on a day to day basis what's happened in the story, but she can tell if something really hard happened because she says your behavior will sort of reflect that. I don't necessarily feel that, but but, you know, that's her observation. And I I play a lot of music. Music, lots of times, will pull me out and pull me out of the plot. And I also sometimes play music while I'm writing, usually, you know, on a low volume. But and and sometimes it it sort of helps me if I'm trying to figure out what the story is, or what the next plot element might be, sometimes the lyric, a song lyric that I kind of overhear while while the music is going on will direct something. Sure. And that and that happened. It's why it's it's why I like to tip my hat to songwriters. So I've I've always every one of my novels either is from a song title or has a, like, an excerpt from a a song from a song lyric. And this latest one, The River Is Waiting, actually came in the middle of writing the story, and it's a it's an old John Fogarty song. He was the lead singer for Breden's Clearwater revival, and there's a beautiful version of the same song by Irma Thomas, who's one of the mainstays of New Orleans music. So, that's I like I like to sort of tip my hat to the musicians for helping me find the way. And and, you know, the river is waiting. So I decide, okay. That has to be the title. I'm not sure why, but what is the river waiting for? Then I have to ask myself that question and try to try to solve that riddle. So

[26:01]Zibby Owens: interesting. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, what advice do you have for aspiring authors?

[26:07]Wally Lamb: Well, I've worked with a lot of aspiring authors, high school kids for about twenty five years, and then I worked as the head of creative writing at the University of Connecticut for a while. And then I worked for the prison with the prison writers and so forth. And I I I tell them the same message that the real writing comes in revision. You know, don't ever feel that you can get it right in a first draft. It doesn't happen to me and it doesn't happen to any of the professional writers that I know. And I've been in a writer's group for, oh, god, almost when I started writing, first of all, at Vermont College, and and then later, you know, with a private writing group that and we've been going together for years, decades. And so you humble yourself to the process. You listen to other people about how you might add something that's going to make it better or cut something that's going to make it better or clarify something that you think is clear, but other people don't. And sometimes reordering, putting things like you might have a great paragraph that's buried in the middle of an essay story. So try it at the beginning, you know, see if you like it. In other words, I like to I really like to revise. I think a first draft is grunt work. I mean, becomes really hard to me. And then after that, there's more play involved.

[27:39]Zibby Owens: I love that. Wally, thank you so much. The River Is Waiting. So beautiful, so emotional. This is what good books do. Right? They make you feel like you're going through it yourself, and it was really beautiful. Thank you. I really I really enjoyed this. And the,

[27:56]Wally Lamb: you know, the way I know it is because I thought about ten minutes had gone by, and and instead,

[28:03]Zibby Owens: we it's time to close. So that me that that's a tribute to you. You're a great interviewer. Thank you, Zibby. And thank you for all you do for books and for for readers and writers as well. Thank you. That's very sweet. Mhmm. Thank you so much. Alright. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye bye. You too. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.