Q&A with Susan Dormady Eisenberg

 

 

Susan Dormady Eisenberg is the author of the novel The Voice I Just Heard, now available in a revised edition. Her other books include One More Seat at the Round Table. She lives in Baltimore. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Voice I Just Heard, and how did you create your character Nora?

 

A: I came of age while the Vietnam War was raging. I was at Michigan State when the shootings at Kent State happened in May 1970, a time when many campuses—including mine—shut down. Two years earlier, I’d lost a friend in Vietnam, a 19-year-old enlistee, and his death stayed with me. So when I began to work on my first novel in 1990, Vietnam was still on my mind.

 

My first idea was to create a struggling soprano protagonist, Nora Costello, who suddenly faces the 1970 war death of her brother Liam, the one person who supported her plan to sing on Broadway. (I had studied singing by this time for years; I knew its challenges.)

 

I also wanted to explore the theme of vocation. Early in my novel, Nora works at a summer theater where she meets Bart Wheeler, a gifted baritone starring in Annie Get Your Gun. Both are juggling vocational and family problems that will affect their ability to perform, but they start a heated affair.

 

At one point, Bart asks, “If you have a talent, should you build your life around it? Or suppose you have two talents. Which one should you use to earn a living?” I think many of us have faced these questions. In my novel, Nora and Bart ultimately find ways to embrace their singing, but neither takes the path they’d intended as the novel began.

 

Q: The book is now available in a revised edition--why did you decide to revise it?

 

A: My current book originally came out in 2012. Two years ago in 2023, I published a second novel, One More Seat at the Round Table, and that summer I reread The Voice I Just Heard. I realized with a jolt that I’d devised the exact wrong ending for Nora and Bart, one that had glitz and glamor but was lacking in emotional resonance.

 

I decided to rewrite Voice, tweaking every line and adding two new chapters that incorporate an original song I’d commissioned from composer Lori Laitman. The new ending takes the characters to a richer, deeper place in both their singing and their relationship.

 

Q: The author Stephanie Cowell called the book a “luminous novel of love, family, and faith,” adding, “The Voice I Just Heard is a deeply felt coming of age love-story.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It’s the perfect description. The plot alternates between Nora’s grief for Liam (and concern for her devastated parents) and her passionate summer romance with Bart Wheeler, a man who knows a lot about singing, but has thorny problems of his own.

 

Nora comes of age through the crucible of losing her brother, who was her personal north star, and finding the courage to move forward without him. She must also decide whether her love for Bart is real or just a passing crush on the star of a summer stock musical.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I hope that by reading Nora’s story they will consider the importance of pursuing a vocation or avocation that brings soul-level satisfaction. In the words of LL Cool J, “Dreams don’t have deadlines.” There’s always time to rethink whether we are fulfilled by our life choices.

 

At some point, the need to earn a living may mean that we can’t pursue our original dreams. Yet by staying open-minded and flexible, we might find ways to pursue some of what we always wanted, even as a hobby.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: For some years I’ve worked on a novel about Annie Oakley, “the peerless lady wing shot” and American icon. Annie Oakley possessed Olympic-level talent for exhibition shooting, but was also a proper Victorian lady.

 

My book follows Annie’s journey from an aspiring “trick shot” in the circus, partnered by her husband Frank Butler, to her solo fame as the star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1887, when the show played London during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. I hope to finish a final draft early next year since the centenary of Annie Oakley’s death is November 3, 2026.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The Voice I Just Heard: Revised Edition is set in and around my hometown of Cohoes, New York, which is known for its turn-of-the-century mills, its 1874 Music Hall, and its waterfall, the second largest in New York State after Niagara.

 

The Cohoes Falls play a major role in my plot, and the Lori Laitman song I commissioned sets an 1804 poem, “Lines Written at the Falls,” by the national bard of Ireland, Thomas Moore (1779-1852).

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Susan Dormady Eisenberg.