Q&A with Lynne Hugo

 

Photo by Alan deCourcy

 

 

Lynne Hugo is the author of the new novel Mothers of Fate. Her other books include the novel The Language of Kin. She lives in the Midwest.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Mothers of Fate, and how did you create your characters Deana and Monica?

 

A: Thank you so much for having me! I’ll start by saying that all my novels have at their heart some social issue that I think is important and multi-sided. I never aim or presume to offer answers, but rather to give readers a strong, gripping story in which sympathetic characters with understandable backstories, emotions, and motivations are somehow affected by that issue.

 

In Mothers of Fate that issue is adoption. I think many adopted children struggle with their origin stories; this has certainly been true in my own family and I’ve also found it an often emotionally weighted issue among the family members with whom I’ve worked in my other career as a licensed psychotherapist.

 

Birth mothers, adoptive mothers, and teenage/adult adoptees often harbor many unspoken questions and worries about each other, especially in the case of closed adoptions, although of course there can also be issues that arise in the  open adoptions that have become more common now.

 

In Mothers of Fate, I wanted to portray some typical question, fears, and conflicts.

 

Deana, a birth mother, has truly tried to respect what she understands to be the boundaries of closed adoptions—and 30-year-old Daniel’s adoptive parents would be fine with the mediated contact and invitation to meet that she seeks.

 

Monica, the attorney Deana finds to represent her, doesn’t seem to conflate Deana’s notions about closed adoption rules with how she’d feel were her own toddler’s birth mother to seek to meet her in 30 years—and if she did, it might have given her reason to refuse to take the case, but I needed this to really strongly hit home with a realistic fair argument for why, in a closed adoption, only the adoptee can conduct such a search.

 

So it made sense to give Monica’s wife, Angie, a compelling backstory, that of a child who’d been in multiple foster homes, before parental rights were terminated and she’d become an adoptee in a closed adoption, with excellent and devoted parents.

 

This also helped me to raise the stakes because taking the case (against her wife’s passionate insistence that she not) becomes an ethical issue for Monica, insistent on autonomy and control in her work even as it cost her dearly in her personal life.

 

That brings me to a secondary theme in Mothers of Fate: sexual politics and abuse of power in the workplace—especially the aftermath, and how it may affect a woman’s life years down the road.

 

When her wife wants to influence Monica not to take Deana’s case because she believes it’s “wrong,” another ethical conflict is involved for Monica.

 

She has to know that in her workplace, she has total control of decision-making according to her own professional judgment, which is that what Deana is hiring her to do is perfectly legal and aboveboard and has nothing to do with Monica’s own family.

 

She tries to explain to Angie what’s happened in her past to make professional autonomy so critical to her; the result is cataclysmic.  

 

I did quite a bit of research on that topic, and wanted to depict how common it was in the second half of the 20th century, and especially how usual it was for women to be blamed, even to blame themselves because the prevailing notion was that they must have invited it.

 

By citing a specific time frame, I am certainly not suggesting that it’s no longer a problem, only that it does happen that men are more often held accountable.

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Mothers of Fate isn’t the original title, but it’s a much better one! The novel started out as “The Sparks from Distant Stars,” which was a reference to the notion that many people believe in: that our destinies are “written in the stars,” or that our fates are somehow determined by a destiny with which we are born.

 

One character lived out that belief and has suffered enormously for it—another character puts her marriage and family on the line, insisting that we are each  the mothers of our fates and that the course our lives take is a result of the choices we make.

 

Q: The writer Randy Susan Meyers said of the book, “Mothers of Fate places self-determination on the stand.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: It certainly goes right to a major theme of the novel: is there such a thing as destiny? Or is the course of our lives entirely a result of our own choices? I might have said, “Mothers of Fate puts destiny on the stand.” Both are accurate, in that major characters make very reasoned, and very passionate arguments for both that help explain their behaviors.

 

Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: This is very usual for me—I thought I knew the ending and as I wrote, it changed and then changed again. Usually that’s why my sketched-out plan for any novel only goes to the climax and a couple of scenes immediately after that, now.

 

I am not a happily-ever-after writer, though—I have an aversion to writing a novel with an ending that’s neatly tied up with a red bow as if there’s ever a point in life in which there are no loose ends anywhere, and we know exactly what the future holds for sure.

 

But, on the other hand, I make sure the major crisis is resolved, and I never leave my readers without hope.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My next novel, which is under contract for the fall of 2026, is titled The Corners of the Sky and it concerns opiate addiction.

 

Such a painful topic for so many families—in this novel I especially thought it was important to depict how fentanyl is being hidden in other street drugs and many people have no idea that they’re taking it. The result has been tragic, horrendous sudden deaths.

 

I realize that saying this makes the novel sound like a total downer, but it’s really about two families coping, and coming together to protect the one person who can testify against the dealer who’s responsible.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Just a couple of  things: first, how grateful I am to be with a fine  publisher, to have an excellent publicist, and always, for my readers and those who review my books. And how much I appreciate being invited back to this lovely and smart blog. Thank you so much, Deborah!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Lynne Hugo.