Q&A with Kerri Maher

  

Photo by Kate Eden Renyi Photography

 

Kerri Maher is the author of the new novel Summer of Love. Her other books include All You Have to Do Is Call. She lives in Massachusetts.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write Summer of Love?  

 

A: Many threads came together at once for this book. I’d been wanting to write a road trip novel set in California, where I grew up. And I wanted to write about addiction and recovery. And I wanted to write about the craft of storytelling.  

 

But I couldn’t figure out how any of those threads wove together. I was really struggling, and I also pitched a number of other ideas without those themes to my publisher and those were getting dinged.  

 

Desperate, I finally bought a copy of Julia Cameron’s famous creativity-course-in-a-book The Artist’s Way and vowed to do all 12 weeks. I’d been avoiding this book for a long time even though so many creators I knew swore by it for improving their process and garnering new ideas, largely because I knew the foundation of Cameron’s advice is a morning journaling practice.  

 

I hated journaling. My past is littered with the beautiful journals people have thoughtfully given me for birthdays and holidays (thinking that because I’m a writer I’d fill them in no time), in which I write one page then cast aside.  

 

But this time I committed. I bought myself some cute spiral Deconstruction Notebooks and got going. To my enormous surprise, I loved Morning Pages. And within one month of doing them, they served exactly the purpose Cameron promises, which is to take out the trash in my mind and clear the way for the good stuff to arise.  

 

Lo and behold, seemingly out of nowhere, the characters of Winnie, Miranda, and Dawn walked on stage in my mind and introduced themselves.  

 

Q: The story deals with several women--how would you describe the dynamics among them?  

 

A: Fraught.  

 

This is the story of two sisters who start close in the 1960s, then grow apart. And it’s the story of one sister’s daughter who in 2015 is afraid of telling her mother the truth about herself.  

 

These women love each other deeply, but the secrets and wounds between them have made each of them debilitatingly suspicious of their own ability to show up in the relationships. 

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?  

 

A: Since I was raised in California by native Californians, a lot of the background information for this book was lived experience—I’d been hearing about San Francisco and Berkeley in the 1960s, where so much of the novel is set, my whole life. Still, I read a few books about the era to make sure I had facts and dates and even vibes correct.  

 

Most of my research had to do with California wine country. I had to learn how wine was made, and the history of winemaking in The Golden State.  

 

I was surprised-not-surprised to learn that winemaking started with the Spanish missionaries who essentially enslaved the native population to make “holy” wine. I was fascinated by the social history of how California wine emerged from such problematic origins to become the juggernaut of sophistication and “the good life” it is today.  

 

Q: The author Marjan Kamali said of the book, “Maher skillfully pairs a deep sense of place with a refreshingly honest look at addiction and the quiet power of storytelling to help us heal.” What do you think of that description?  

 

A: I’m so grateful for it, especially because I deeply admire Marjan’s writing. And I’m flattered, because that “sense of place” in California was exactly what I was going for.  

 

It’s funny, because as a reader I loathe long descriptions of places; Thomas Hardy was really tough for me to read in college. But as a writer, I’ve become known for my particularly vibrant settings, like London before the war and Paris in the 1920s, and now California in the 1960s.  

 

I’ve devoted a lot of effort to writing place without the long descriptions. I want people to feel like they are really there with my characters.  

 

As for the “honest look at addiction,” I’ve been really honored that so many early readers of the book have given me feedback saying versions of “I’ve never heard anyone talk about addiction in this way before.” I hope it will feel fresh to others as well.  

 

And storytelling as healing? All I can say is YES! Storytelling heals.

 

 Q: What are you working on now?  

 

A: I can’t tell you much, other than that it involves a magical Book of Hours and the karma of a centuries-old love story.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?  

 

A: I am so incredibly grateful for readers, and the independent booksellers who serve them. This might seem unrelated to the subject of Summer of Love, but it’s not. One of the characters in the novel is a writer who struggles to find her way, as so many of us do. I don’t like spoilers, but let’s just say readers and bookstores are key to that character’s development.  

 

And thank you for having me on your site. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb