Jeannette Walls, HANG THE MOON
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[1:03]Jeanette Walls is the author of Hang the Moon, a novel.
[1:07]Jeanette graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York.
[1:11]Her memoir The Glass Castle has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years.
[1:16]She is also the author of the Instant New York Times bestsellers, The Silver Star and
[1:21]Half Bro courses, which was named one of the 10 best books of 2009 by the editors of the
[1:26]New York Times book review.
[1:28]She lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer, John Taylor.
[1:31]And you will see just how much of a fan I am by our conversation.
[1:35]This was such a joy and I am so grateful to Jeanette for coming on my show.
[1:41]Welcome Jeanette.
[1:42]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[1:44]Have time to read books to discuss Hang in the Moon.
[1:47]Congratulations.
[1:48]Thank you so much.
[1:49]Okay.
[1:50]A new novel out.
[1:51]First of all, how do you feel about it?
[1:53]How do you feel with it entering the world and all of that?
[1:56]You know, it's so funny because I spent so long with Sally King Cade.
[2:00]And she's a kind of complicated woman, but I grew to really love her.
[2:06]And I feel like I'm taking my baby and showing her to her world and hoping other people
[2:11]get her to.
[2:12]And so far, people have been really smart about it.
[2:15]So it's very exciting, but you know, I never thought I'd write fiction.
[2:19]I see myself as a truth teller.
[2:23]And it was a kind of a long and slow journey to, you know, hang them one of my first
[2:27]fully fictional book that being said, it's a lot of it is based on historical figures.
[2:33]I, my long suffering editor had to prime my bony fingers off facts because I kept on going
[2:40]to the truth and to history because I wanted it to be credible, authenticity is very
[2:45]important to me.
[2:47]So I did a lot of research for this.
[2:49]And I spent probably much longer on this book than I should have.
[2:53]Like what does longer mean seven or eight years?
[2:55]Okay.
[2:56]I mean, is there a should for how long a novel should take?
[2:59]I don't know.
[3:00]That's, that's an excellent question.
[3:02]I just, I got so immersed in the research.
[3:05]I just, I love, I love history.
[3:08]I love finding things out.
[3:10]And you know, I think we have to understand our history to understand where we are now.
[3:15]And so this book is said in the 1920s and I only thought that was kind of a fun jazz era.
[3:20]And people are all reading Gatsby and doing the Charleston, but not in the hills of Virginia.
[3:26]Not in rural Virginia where the life was really, really hard.
[3:29]So it was kind of difficult to research this.
[3:32]And the moonshires who I wrote about were not keeping diaries.
[3:36]So the research was kind of tough.
[3:38]And I ended up reading a lot of newspapers from the period and catalogs and trial transcripts
[3:46]to try to get the language right.
[3:48]It was just very important to me that they felt that the characters felt like real people
[3:53]from that period sometimes.
[3:55]And I'm not not getting anybody else's way of writing, but sometimes in historical novels,
[3:59]I feel that the characters sound and feel contemporary.
[4:03]And I didn't want that, but I also didn't want them to feel archaic.
[4:06]And like, you know, I didn't want to feel quaint and otherly.
[4:10]So it was this kind of trick of trying to make them relatable,
[4:16]but old cash and interesting.
[4:18]And what drew you to this time period?
[4:21]Well, there are a couple of things.
[4:22]First of all, I'd long been fascinated by prohibition.
[4:25]My father was a raging alcoholic.
[4:27]And I learned about prohibition.
[4:29]One is around seven or eight years old because it was a whiskey bottle on the table
[4:33]that mom had repurposed as a boss.
[4:35]And it said it was illegal to refill it.
[4:36]And we got to throw this away.
[4:38]We're going to get arrested.
[4:39]She was, oh, that's a dumb law.
[4:40]Just ignore it.
[4:41]And I was like, that's what my family operated.
[4:44]But she told me about this magical time called prohibition.
[4:48]And because my father was such an alcoholic,
[4:50]I wanted to live during this time.
[4:52]And she said, oh, it was a disaster.
[4:54]Every, it was a big backfire.
[4:55]So I became fascinated with that reason.
[4:58]But beyond that, you know, it was a time when America was really trying to figure out who it was.
[5:05]It was post World War One.
[5:06]And it was moving from being in the agrarian society to being somewhat urban society.
[5:12]And, you know, the technology was revolutionary, especially the car.
[5:17]I think it's kind of hard for us today to imagine what it would like to have
[5:21]car in electricity for the first time.
[5:25]So at the same time that the nation is trying to figure out who and what it is,
[5:30]where it's going, Sally is coming of age, our main character.
[5:34]So I wanted that to be the backdrop for this young woman who's trying to figure out
[5:40]who the heck am I?
[5:41]You know, what does it mean to be an American?
[5:44]What does it mean to be a woman?
[5:46]And what does it mean to be a King K, the most powerful family in the county?
[5:50]And what does power mean?
[5:52]And how do you use that power?
[5:53]So that was the thing that I wanted this character to be grappling with at the same time
[5:58]that the nation was doing it.
[6:01]So not unlike now and away.
[6:04]It's like, I mean, it's hair all out.
[6:06]Yeah, it's like, oh my gosh.
[6:09]And I thought that being immersed in this research would make me nostalgic for the 20s
[6:15]and it actually had the opposite effect because I'd be reading these newspapers about race riots.
[6:20]And it was funny, just the casual racism and the gleeful misogyny in the newspapers.
[6:28]Jokes about women drivers and jokes about African Americans.
[6:32]And I was like, wow, this is so friggin ugly.
[6:36]And I'm not saying where as far as we should be,
[6:39]but we have come a long way.
[6:41]But there are these parallels about, you know, not just about grappling with new technology
[6:48]and the power of it.
[6:50]And it's beautiful and wonderful if you use it correctly.
[6:54]But even more than that, I think that because it was such a time to profound change,
[6:59]it was scary to many people.
[7:01]We're losing the way the world used to be.
[7:04]The world used to be safe and beautiful and simpler.
[7:08]And we're moving into this modern time and it's scary.
[7:11]And prohibition was largely a movement to go back to the past.
[7:16]The way things used to be before these crazy Italians came with their wine.
[7:20]And the Irish came with their beer.
[7:22]Let's go back to this, this better touch.
[7:25]And the prohibitions were well-intending people for the most part.
[7:28]The more little nutty.
[7:29]But some of them actually believed that if they outlawed liquor, they could close the saloons,
[7:37]the dads would go home to their families.
[7:40]We could eliminate law and we could eliminate crime.
[7:44]And all of that money that had been used for law enforcement could be used to educate people.
[7:48]So with this utopian ideal that completely and utterly backed buyers and created a crime
[7:55]wave unlike anything this country never seen.
[7:58]The price of liquor went up, the quality of liquor went down.
[8:01]And in the mountains in Virginia where I'm talking about, this had been the only cash crop for years.
[8:07]So it turned somewhat law abiding people into outlaws who have been shot at.
[8:12]And it was just, it was a very tumultuous and scary time.
[8:16]And then of course we have just the everyday of loss and sibling relationships and step
[8:21]parents and blended families.
[8:24]And how do you make sense of your environments where things in your own home,
[8:29]which was her home for a while, keep changing all the time?
[8:32]Exactly.
[8:33]So as much as there's all of this stuff about chute out, some rum running and all this craziness,
[8:38]hang the mood is essentially a book about family and our role in family and how we're stereotyped
[8:46]to do X, Y, Z. And we see our top eyes.
[8:49]I was like, how do you break free from family once staying true to your roots?
[8:54]You know, hang the moon, some book sellers told me they're going to be promoting it as a
[8:59]mother's daybook and I thought, that's the crazy thing in the world because it's about the
[9:03]opposite of motherhood.
[9:04]But then I realized that's why that's such a brilliant idea.
[9:07]Because Sally, she over identifies with her father.
[9:12]She doesn't really have a mother role figure.
[9:15]Her mother, her biological mother died when she was three.
[9:18]She doesn't get along with her stepmother.
[9:20]She's raised by her mother's sister that and who she loves, but she doesn't particularly admire
[9:27]her other and she kind of admires but doesn't love.
[9:29]She wants to be like her dad and she keeps on being told, no, you can't be.
[9:35]You've got to become a mom and raise a family and in this life and in this world,
[9:41]that one's into the peeling option and you know, and in some ways, I mean,
[9:47]we have so many more options now, but it's still, it's a difficult choice.
[9:52]You know, how do you how do you become, how do you be a mom and a woman and a career woman?
[9:59]And it's just something that.
[10:00]that the core of what Sally's really grappling with because it was with her was more either or choice.
[10:05]Do you want to because you could the woman could become a queer woman? There were a few,
[10:10]but you really couldn't be a mom too. So she had to choose between these two worlds and she loved
[10:16]and idealized her father and much of it is that the book is a journey coming to terms with
[10:22]who her father really was and who her mother really was. I feel like that's some of the work you've
[10:27]been doing for your own life, through memoirs, through very well said. I, you know, I am not
[10:36]Sally King Kate obviously, but I think we all mind from our personal experiences about,
[10:41]you know, I mean, I remember being 13 years old and my mother was 38 years old and looking and
[10:46]I thinking, I don't know about this motherhood thing, this looks really hard. I didn't want to become
[10:54]my daddy and I certainly seem to be had more options, but yeah, the roles that we're all assigned
[10:59]and not just the women, the guys as well. Sally's brother, half-brother Eddie, he's a lovely,
[11:05]young man and he's very sensitive and he doesn't want to become the head of the company,
[11:10]the head of the family business. And, you know, Ben gets stereotyped just as easily as women do.
[11:16]So this is really about how do you fulfill your destiny? What does family mean? Do we choose
[11:23]our families or are we born into them and what degree do we have any control over that?
[11:29]So what does it mean for you as a grown-up, right, when you have thought so much about your
[11:35]own family origin, written about your family origin, explored family so much in fiction,
[11:40]and then you have to make your own choices going forward. Like, how do you, how do you synthesize
[11:46]all of that and move forward? It's something I still grapple with, you know what I mean? It's
[11:52]something I think about all the time, the legacy that my very complicated family gave me. And I
[11:59]think that in my right-fold age, I've really been able to sort of pluck the good out of the bad.
[12:07]I mean, certainly, you know, I think that they gave me an incredibly mixed bag in terms of my
[12:15]heritage, but there were so many beautiful gifts in it. You know, I come kind of late to pure fiction.
[12:25]I always thought I would never write fiction. I was a journalist, I was a truthteller,
[12:31]and I would go around telling people that I will never write fiction. I can't make things up.
[12:35]I mean, I'm incapable of making things. I have no imagination, and that was almost a mantra that I had.
[12:40]And I was at a book reading one time, and a gentleman in the front row kind of
[12:43]raves his hand very gently told me, ma'am, I think you've got a great imagination, but you're
[12:50]afraid of creativity. Oh my gosh. Oh, it's just one of those moments. And I realized that, you know,
[13:01]my parents were both super creative, super imaginative, to the point that it was a little scary,
[13:07]to the point that my father had all these characters in his head who would try it out. Sometimes
[13:12]at his behest, sometimes without his control, you know, and my mother had a relationship of
[13:17]convenience with the truth. So I read headfirst into the truth. I'll be a journalist. I'll find out
[13:24]the truth. But any biographer or journalist knows that we shape our truths by which stories we tell
[13:30]and how we choose to tell them. And that certainly came clear to me while I was writing the glass
[13:35]castle, because you can take the exact same incident. My very favorite memory for my entire child
[13:40]of my father giving us stars. And to me, it's a beautiful, precious memory to my older sister,
[13:46]Laura, who's much smarter than me. It was my dad's El Chippa way of getting out of having to actually
[13:51]buy a thing. So we're both right. And so how do you tell your truths? But, you know, so I slowly,
[14:00]so that was the glass castle. And then the next book was about my mother. And I called it fiction
[14:04]because it was actually about her mother, but it was all told to me by my mother. And I have
[14:08]no idea how much it was true. And I had a film and a little gas and then the silver star. And
[14:12]this was the first book that I really mostly made things up. That being said, a lot of it is based
[14:18]on historical figures and historical incidents. I wanted to make sure that everything that happened
[14:24]was credible. The main character, Sally Kinkauchi, ends up being a rum runner and heading up the
[14:30]caravan of rum. And there was a woman who actually did this. And I wanted to make sure that I
[14:35]didn't write about something that could have never happened. Because I think you lose readers. You
[14:40]lose me. I think the best kind of fiction is rooted in reality. And then you take it and
[14:45]stir it up and do what you will with it. You had one random line. And I don't even know why
[14:51]this is true. I don't know when I was rereading the book this morning. But about how, at the time,
[14:56]you know, like wearing white gloves was such a signal. Like it just, it said so much about who
[15:03]you were, where your place was in society. It signaled to your peers, to everybody else. And then
[15:09]I was, as I read it, I was like, what is the signal? Like, is there a signal? Is there, is it like,
[15:15]where does that take us today? I don't know. I was just like, how, how interesting. It was just
[15:20]so clearly delineated back then with just, yeah, the status symbols. And it wasn't just white gloves
[15:26]to show that you didn't get your hands dirty, um, literally and figuratively. But it was also white
[15:31]dresses. If you look at those fabulous pictures of, of the Victorian and, and Edwardian women in
[15:38]the white dresses, they look so perfect. And you have to think about all that work. It kept,
[15:43]to keep those things were filthy back then. And to keep dresses white, it was a lot of hard work.
[15:49]And, um, so most of these status symbols, it always comes back to money, like what, what you can
[15:55]afford. So after the white dresses, then, you know, dies became popular, but they were kind of
[16:01]expensive, but, but white colors became the status symbol. And, and now it's stuff like the bags,
[16:07]the $20,000 handbags. I mean, you know, these, these things, people shower around, you know,
[16:13]I got money, honey, you know, and the signals that they sent to each other. The, the truly wealthy,
[16:19]I have heard, trying to hide the fact that there was wealthy as well, but, um, they know they have
[16:25]these little rich person signals, but that's, I believe, one of the things I'm that made me
[16:32]less nostalgic for the 1920s is I think it's less important. It's certainly still somewhat
[16:38]important. But I think that society was so stratified back then. It was breaking out of that,
[16:44]because it was becoming a middle class. And there was becoming this, women were, were able to
[16:50]have free time. And what they did with that free time was very significant and all of these
[16:57]women's societies for beautification and better sidewalks and who belong to which society,
[17:04]you know, and my editor said, well, you know, this is a book about an amount,
[17:08]as people didn't have these societies. Yeah, they did. And these small towns, it was just very
[17:12]important, especially, you know, the valley people versus the hill people that was a real
[17:16]divide there. So I think all communities have these little signals to to let each other know
[17:24]who's on top and who's on bottom. And, you know, the struggle, the fluidity with which you can
[17:29]come up and down. Personally, it's very important to me. You know, when I've toured overseas on behalf
[17:35]of the glass castles and people say, your story could only happen in America, you know, and
[17:40]you know, for all our problems, I do love that. There is some fluidity that you can't, you know,
[17:45]with my white trash beginnings that I can, you know, and then I've been able to to do what I've
[17:49]done is is extraordinary. But, you know, I lived on Park Avenue for a while. I've rubbed elbows with
[17:56]those people. But I always felt a little bit like more like I had a green card there. I,
[18:01]you know, I always come back to writing about my people, you know, that this is who I know.
[18:08]These are, you know, when I wrote the glass castle, I originally included a lot more about
[18:12]my first husband's world. And I was an outsider looking in. And I just think, you know, tell your
[18:18]story. Hat truths are, they can become caricatures and there could be some truth in it, but they
[18:25]meant to ridicule. And I believe in getting as deep as you can to get empathy, to get to it.
[18:31]If you tell the whole story, I believe empathy almost inevitably follows. Explain why these people
[18:37]are who they are. And, you know, one of the, one of the things that really, really helped me was
[18:42]writing, hang the moon was, was hanging on the out on the set of the glass castle and watching these
[18:48]actors become people they had never met and understanding them so deeply and so profoundly that
[18:55]sometimes when the director would tell them to do or say something and say, you know, I don't think
[18:59]my character would do that. And it just, it took my breath away that these people knew and cared
[19:06]about these characters who happened to me, my family. So profoundly that they understood how they
[19:12]would think and act. Did they get it right? They did. They did. I think that fiction writing,
[19:19]if it's done right is an act of empathy. And there was one point at which a couple of the characters
[19:25]but particularly Woody Harrell, some particular, he was just, he took my breath away. He went off script
[19:31]and said things that my father had said that I hadn't told Woody. I mean, the first time I saw
[19:38]him in Will Makeup, I was shaking and crying. He nailed it, you know. And he did it with such
[19:45]compassion. And that's what just, it just floored me that these actors, they weren't interested
[19:51]in passing judgment. They were interested in understanding. Why did your parents do this? Why
[19:56]did your sisters do this? What was, what was going on? And the physics.
[20:00]of emotion. They just, they, they got it. And what he, and they only watched with staying character when they were on screen and we went out to dinner one night and they started fighting in her.
[20:10]Oh, this is just too weird. They got it. You know, and they, they understood that loving, bickering, fighting, but, and the degree to which I could channel that. I tried to this, this just understanding these people that, you know, the characters.
[20:28]Some of them are, I don't want to say not sympathetic, but they don't always do good things. But I wanted the readers to understand why we all are a mixture of dark and light and we have the reasons for, for doing what we do. And I just, if, if I could get that across with these characters who lived 100 years ago, that, that was my hope because I just wanted people to get what was going on in their heads.
[20:57]Totally. Well, that absolutely came across to the reader. I don't know. I just felt like all these bad things just kept happening to Sally and all these people she loved. And I don't know. I felt particular compassion towards Aunt Faye and just like, especially when they were about to take her to the feeble minded place. And I don't know. I just this poor woman.
[21:20]But that was the story for so many women that I know it's still horrible to read. I mean, it was, it was, yeah, you know, it was a difficult time for women, you know, like as they despite all the flappers and all that, especially in rural settings.
[21:34]And finding a man was the career choice and, you know, there's nothing wrong with that unless you choose bad.
[21:43]If you, you know, you hook yourself up with a bad man and that's what Sally kept on seeing is these examples of women who thought that getting married was going to save them and it didn't.
[21:55]Or finding that the party who thought that finding a man was going to be the solution to their problems and actually wasn't creating some of their problems.
[22:06]You've had so much success with your book in your movie and now you have this fabulous novel. You're well known. Like, how does that the day to day, how does this play out in the day to day life?
[22:18]Like, when you wake up and you like make coffee or whatever you're doing in the morning, like what does your day to day look like and how much does all of this creep into every moment of your life? Do you know what I mean?
[22:30]I think I'm the luckiest human being on the planet personally.
[22:35]And it's so ironic to me because I just, over so long, I thought that my past, my past wasn't set a source of shame for me.
[22:41]And I'm just, I'm very big on take these things that you don't love about yourself.
[22:46]Flip it over and there's a blessing on the other side. So I love that.
[22:50]But when I'm writing, I'm just, I'm kind of obsessive. I'm a fast, but sloppy writer and I just, I just write and be right. I mean, I'll come clean with you 17 drafts on this thing, 17 drafts.
[23:03]The first, first that it was awful. The first draft was just terrible. I believe in just getting it down. What's wrong with this fix it. What's wrong with it still fix it.
[23:13]But my life is very simple and very humble. I have a nice house now. I have a really, I have four bathrooms with flush toilets and each one of them. So life is good. You got a flush toilet. You got nothing to complain about.
[23:25]But I live on a farm and I have creators and I have a beautiful life and I live in a smallish town. And I kind of love that. I loved New York City. I was head over hills in love with New York.
[23:37]But now when I go back, it feels like an old boyfriend. I will always love it, but she sort of like moved on.
[23:42]But I feed my creators and work on my book and, you know, I just, I love the small town life. I just feel there's so much material there.
[23:53]You know, the arguments that there is a lot of hierarchy, but then there's also a lot of mingling and it's just, it's very interesting to me to see how that works.
[24:02]And are you working on something new now? I am not. I am not. I, one of the things that I realized I'm so sorry about all the suffering during the pandemic.
[24:12]But one of the things that I realized about myself is that I'm not going to all be tasking. Something of moms are very, very good at that.
[24:19]And I realize I just, I couldn't be working on a book and do this right now. I just, I'm kind of obsessive and needed to do things 110% or I can't do that at all.
[24:31]And do you have trouble like do you still find yourself going back into some of the historical stuff of the book. Are you like still reading lots of books on it and all that.
[24:41]I think about it all the time. I think about the period. I think about what happened next. What happened before how we got there.
[24:49]One of the reasons that I love looking into histories is because it's almost like therapy for for the nation. You know, it's like you don't understand where we are now until you understand where we used to be and how we got here.
[25:01]And the progression once you read it's like, oh, that makes so much sense. And I've heard it sad and I love that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
[25:10]And these themes keep on coming up. And that's one of the reasons that I wanted to set this 100 years ago was I think that these issues of family and stereotyping yourself and role models.
[25:21]They are somewhat timeless. You know, it's, it's something we grappled with 100 years ago or something we grapple with today. It's something we'll grapple with 100 years from now.
[25:31]So having read the glass castle of course and seen the movie and all of that and like so many people might feel like, you know, we really know you.
[25:40]But a memoir of course is just your choice of what you put in it and your interpretation of it. So what do we not know about you like what if we if that's all we take away like what do we really missing or what what maybe we're getting wrong or what's the real you versus the.
[25:59]You said I could ask you anything.
[26:02]I know I know I'm just trying to think of the right answer to that because I've been to a lot of classrooms where people will tell me I love speaking to students the fact that the glass castle is read in classes.
[26:14]It's it's beyond a dream come true, but people say you're just like I thought you would be.
[26:20]So I don't know if there's anything more. I don't I don't I believe in transparency. I really do. And I just, I think people see you differently than you see yourself. Sometimes I'll like I'm not trying to be at all cage or hiding anything. I just, I think I kind of, I am what you see. I'm not really I'm not very I'm not a good poker player.
[26:46]I don't I don't hide anything very well. So you know, I am what I am amazing and is hanging the moon going to be a movie.
[26:55]It has been option for a TV series for streaming TV series that they told me too many characters and too much plot for a traditional movie. So they're they're looking at doing something a little bit longer, which would just make me so happy. Somebody who ran it told me it's like the dirty Waldens.
[27:13]So they, you know, a family involved in crime would be a lot of fun. Yeah.
[27:19]Who do you think Sally misses the most?
[27:23]Oh, I mean, growing up without a loving mother without a loving parent, but especially, you know, the Sally's journey is really looking for a role model.
[27:39]That's really what it's about. People say that Sally's fearless. She's not fearless. She's terrified that her father will disapprove of her that she terrified she's not worthy of being a kid.
[27:52]She's terrified she'll never find her place in the world.
[27:55]And it's only when she I don't want to do any kind of spoilers, but it's only when she stops trying to be her father.
[28:03]That she can kind of come to terms with who she really is. And you know, she she has kind of a little bit of a hole in her heart that will never be completely filled up because she never felt that mother's love when she was going up.
[28:22]Last last question. You rewrote the 17 times. Yeah.
[28:26]You said many times that rewriting is like the key to everything. Like, how do you get for you?
[28:32]How do you get over the fear of like getting back into a manuscript and trying again? Like, how do you, how do you like,
[28:41]to just go back and try and try and try again and keep making things better?
[28:48]I don't know if it's fear. I'm kind of obsessive.
[28:52]It's sort of like picking at a scam or something like that. I can't help myself.
[28:56]And I think about the first thing in the morning, last thing at night. And you just you keep on tackling it.
[29:01]The thing that I have the fear of it that I'm going to lose perspective that I don't know when there.
[29:07]It's an I mean, you, you read something like, does this work? Does this make sense? Does this feel right? I read things out loud to see if it works to see if it sounds right to my ear.
[29:18]But that's why we have editors.
[29:21]Well, we have readers out there who say, you know, demands this doesn't work.
[29:26]And I don't mind being told that. In fact, I kind of like it because I, you can lose perspective.
[29:33]You can fall in love with your own prose or your own clever little line or your wacky plot twist.
[29:40]And I just, I love to be told, no, go back and work on it and make it better.
[29:45]Because somebody's going to tell you somewhere that that work and I'd rather be told before it's out there.
[29:50]So that's, that's the fear is that it's out there and I have a fabulous editor.
[29:55]And my husband is so wonderful about being a reader.
[29:58]He's just, you know, I am.
[30:00]research nerd. And I, I, I've done up all this great information about the history of
[30:04]flight paper and history of oranges. I did great big long fact chapters about all this stuff. And
[30:12]luckily he's more easily bored than I said. I was like, this is really boring. Take it out.
[30:20]You've got to have those other babies. You've got to have the edit. You've got to have somebody
[30:24]who will tell you this doesn't work. And John, my husband hasn't had a really good line.
[30:29]He said, writing is so tricky because you have to simultaneously believe in yourself and question
[30:36]yourself. And it's, it's a real balancing act. And you know, the same is true in life. But I think
[30:41]especially with any creatives in Denver, you have to, you know, you have to believe in this thing
[30:46]that in the early stages was got off. Well, it was, it was, it was, and because there's so many interesting
[30:53]things that I was trying to cram them all in and do the history, you know, of prohibition in America.
[31:01]People don't need that. If they want to, if they want to read a book about the history of
[31:04]prohibition in America, they can read, you can't smoosh that. So I just had to keep on cutting stuff
[31:09]and cutting stuff because like I find everything in the world fascinating. And so just stick with
[31:13]this story. And if you kind of fall, you kind of fall in love with the struggles of this woman,
[31:21]which makes me feel a little bit like I've turned into a crazy person on my dad, but she became kind
[31:24]of this person white carrot about Sally. I wanted to get her story and pull it out of those,
[31:30]all of these various other stories that were trying to do it and just tell people about this woman
[31:35]who was struggling so hard to figure out who and what she was and to get that story out there
[31:41]and let people hear it and to meet and know and maybe even like Sally.
[31:48]And lucky for us, he used all that creativity. And here we are.
[31:53]Thank you. Well, thank you so much to Nat. Thanks for coming on and for talking and for sharing
[31:59]and being so inspiring and just such, it's just so amazing. This has been such a joy. So thank you.
[32:05]So pleasure is mine. Thank you so much for having me on your fabulous show. Thank you.
[32:11]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:14]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[32:18]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club
[32:24]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact,
[32:28]texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[32:32]this fantastic intro and outro music.