Catherine Marshall-Smith is the author of the new novel The Resilience of Red Thread. She also has written the novel American Family. She is a former English teacher, and she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Q: What inspired you to write The Resilience of Red Thread, and how did you create your character Emily?
A: It was a circuitous journey to Emily. Jake, the abuser, was based on an exterminator I called to our house to kill a rat. I originally named him Roy the Rat Catcher. He had a traumatic childhood, pockmarked by abuse and neglect.
I wanted him to have someone to love and so I created Emily and it turned out she had childhood trauma too. So, I wanted to know if two people with childhood trauma could love healthfully and wholesomely. I began my research and every psychotherapist and social worker said, “Nope, not gonna happen.”
I grieved for my novel and the bitter world that made it impossible and then I deleted it. I like to think I wrote a stronger book, one that’s grounded in reality.
Every story I’ve encountered on domestic violence has a woman at the center who is pure as snow. I listened to stories of women who were not. They had substance abuse and sex addiction. One woman broke my heart when she said, “I felt I deserved the abuse because I was a sloppy drunk.”
I intentionally made Emily an alcoholic so people would have to see her flawed and making mistakes. I wanted them to NOT look away but still feel empathy for her.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I was at a fundraiser for Next Door Solutions, a support organization for survivors of DV in San Jose, California. We were given a quilt tote bag that had a spool of red thread with a note tied to it that said, “It is said that we are connected by a red thread to someone who needs our help or someone who can help us.”
I had written several drafts of what became Resilience and I said to myself, This is my title. Resilience emerged from my own life and I wear it on my wrist now. Emily never gave up hope that she could get herself and [her daughter] Jenna free, but fear is crippling.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Emily and Jake?
A: Desperate and sick. Jake needed to be needed and had to keep Emily close because she allowed him to define himself as “head of household.” Emily thought he was rescuing her.
In the end, she doesn’t need rescuing. How she gets there is the story. The reader gets to go on the journey with her.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I knew she would escape but beyond that I had several different outcomes.
I wanted the reader to see her resolve her friction with her mother. I thought Hannah was well motivated, but Emily couldn’t see that and thought her mother was cruel and selfish. I wanted the reader to see Emily stop fighting with her mother, come to understand her, and forgive her.
My editor felt it muddied the ending so I cut it. I may publish it as a short story.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Thanks for asking. I am writing a novel entitled Just Bloom Blume, which is a delightful romp through embezzlement in a significant venture capital company in Silicon Valley.
The main character is Eden Blume, a freshly graduated philosophy major from UC Berkeley. She owes $26,000 in student debt and agrees to an interview at a prestigious venture capital company that has started successful companies like Uber and more recently, Anthropic and other AI companies.
She is stunned to find herself interviewing with the principal founding member of the company. She suppresses laughter during the interview because she is completely unqualified for the job and is stunned when he offers her a job with a six-figure income.
It would be foolish to turn it down so she takes it, only to find out she’s been hired not to see the widespread embezzlement that is rife in the company. They hired her because they felt she would be too naïve to figure it out.
Instead, because she’s practiced in analytical thinking, she sees the pattern quickly and since she’s steeped in ethics, she can’t look the other way. So, with no credibility, she blows the whistle to the FBI and finds powerful people are willing to commit murder to protect their ROI.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: If I live long enough, I have a fourth book mapped out and written as Elizabeth Strout did in Olive Kitteridge, a series of short stories of people who meet in a vegan restaurant at L.A.’s gay pride parade and find their lives entangled when a protester strikes one of them with a sign.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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