#1 New York Times bestselling author! Laura Dave, THE NIGHT WE LOST HIM
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[0:38]Thanks for listening. Laura Dave is the author of The Night We Lost Him, a novel. This is her second time coming on the podcast.
[0:49]Laura is the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me, 800 Grapes and Other Novels. Her work has been published in 38 countries.
[0:58]The Last Thing He Told Me has sold three million copies and is now a limited series on Apple TV+.
[1:04]Which, by the way, I watched and really loved. She resides in Santa Monica, California.
[1:09]Welcome, Laura. Thanks for coming back on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss The Night We Lost Him.
[1:15]Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I always love seeing you.
[1:19]Oh, you too. I was so excited to get this book. I was like, oh, yes, Laura Dave.
[1:25]Bye, Deli. Bye, Deli. May time and read it so good and you're so good and oh my gosh.
[1:31]Anyway, tell listeners what it's about, please.
[1:33]Well, the book focuses on the death of a family patriarch, Liam Nune,
[1:39]and he dies but when he falls off the cliff near his carpentry at home. And his children,
[1:46]he has three children from his three different marriages, two of whom are estranged,
[1:51]and they sort of join forces to try to figure out what actually happened to their father.
[1:56]And uncover this family secret of about 50 years that sort of changes the dynamic of what they
[2:02]thought they knew about the man they loved. Amazing. So you have backstories on all the characters,
[2:07]which are really interesting, including one of the brothers and he had an old injury and his
[2:14]baseball career is gone. So now you know he's sort of this like frustrated. You had a word for it
[2:19]and quote, it's so funny, but I can't remember. Like that he went, I don't know, like a,
[2:23]you know, he was seeking, okay. So he's like the seeking trying to find his place in the world.
[2:30]He's a strange from Tommy. And then you have your being character who is the successful
[2:35]architect, but she's kind of like, I'm doing this on my own. And so when you put them all in
[2:40]this conflict and she doesn't even want to know what's in the will, you find a way to like lure
[2:46]her back. Tell us, tell me how you get a kid, like a reader right into it because you're so good
[2:53]at that. You know, for me, all of my books, including the night we lost and really start with the
[2:58]question. And here the question was, what does it mean to be the witness to someone's life?
[3:04]And so I immediately know when I'm writing, I often don't know anything that's going to happen
[3:08]down the line or how I'm going to answer that question. But what always comes to me very strongly
[3:14]is that opening scene, that opening moment in which we're going to ask the narrative question of
[3:22]the book that's going to lead us to that emotional answer. And I just have this idea of these
[3:26]two strange siblings and that she is so accomplished, as you said. And really, she was the child
[3:33]from her father's first marriage before he sort of had the hotel empire success that his later
[3:40]children, that was their reality. And so she was very much, as you said, self-made. And I knew
[3:45]that I wanted her to have chosen to extricate herself. And I imagine the scene, this opening scene
[3:53]where the brother knows enough about her to know to lure her in on her terms. And that's exactly
[4:00]sort of what he does. And they meet under the auspices of her work in a way. I won't ruin the
[4:05]opening scene. But, you know, that is sort of very surprising and gets her on her heels and immediately
[4:13]has her asking some of the questions that he wants to know the answers to as well.
[4:17]I would also like to know who the influencer is modeled after in the opening stages.
[4:23]Did you have a particular account in mind?
[4:27]I did not have a particular account in mind for her, but something that really actually
[4:31]influenced Liam Nune. And that whole storyline was, I don't know. And if you remember when the
[4:37]scholastic succession. Yes, I do remember that. Yes, I do. And I just like with the last thing,
[4:44]he told me when Enron sort of had like an inspiration, which is to say it doesn't necessarily
[4:50]look or feel like that. But when I read that and I read what was going on there, I started to
[4:56]have a compromised answer to what does it mean to be the witness to someone's life based on that.
[5:02]So Liam was sort of the one that came out of real-world events a bit. The influencer actually
[5:08]wasn't really based on anybody. Something that was really funny was that I was trying to figure out
[5:15]how to name her. And I had the name Morgan written down. And as a mom yourself, you know that sometimes
[5:22]these manuscript pages make it with you to tennis lessons or baseball practice or whatever. And I
[5:27]was sitting in a sports practice for my son. And there were a bunch of moms and other caretakers
[5:34]around. And I was like, you know, what is a good name for an influencer? And Morgan was currently in
[5:41]the book as Morgan. And, you know, obviously there's a gazillion names in the world. And one of my
[5:47]son's friend's caretakers actually said, what about the name Morgan? It was the first name she said
[5:53]and it was already in the book. But you know, it just felt like this very weird zeike, I speak
[5:58]moment of, I guess Morgan. I guess everyone knows an influencer name Morgan somehow.
[6:03]I can think of an influencer. But yes, so that was going further into the book. We meet
[6:11]CC who runs like a big chain of hotels versus the noons who have a small smaller thing. And she
[6:19]has these giant thing. Oh my god, I can't even make a sense. We don't know. That's exactly correct.
[6:26]Like a Marriott or a Houston. Like a huge, huge hotel. And he's like a luxury boutique hotel
[6:32]page magnet either. I love living in the world of hotel owners and how they build their competing
[6:42]brands and attempted merger acquisition, perhaps question mark, question mark, or not. So tell me
[6:49]about how you learned about the hotel industry. My secret dream is to own my own hotel one day called
[6:54]this would be hotel and make it all full of books. But we'll see. Anyway, tell me about everything
[6:59]you learned from hotel world. I literally first saw it would be your first guest because that's
[7:04]not streaming. And you could also even do like how your wonderful bookstore has, you know, it's
[7:09]divided by themes. Like the different rooms could be different themes. Like you could stay in the
[7:13]romance room and all the books in your room are romantic. Oh, I thought about it like that.
[7:19]You know, all my things. Anyway, I'm very much like that hotel. So I did two sort of huge
[7:25]tronctions of research for this book. One was around the luxury boutique hotel industry, which for
[7:32]me was lovely because I went to several of them to sort of get a feeling for how you individualize
[7:39]and specify on that level. And something like learn that was sort of interesting about
[7:44]hotel ownership that I hadn't known going in is quite often. Like what you think of as the four seasons
[7:49]is that's a management company. And it's actually owned by somebody else. And they sort of
[7:54]manage those hotels, which I never thought of it that way. I just always imagined it was
[8:00]that four seasons was the owner. But there's so many different rules for how a small hotel is
[8:06]run and what, what, you know, how you make that both feel expansive across the brand, but also
[8:12]individualize. So I spent some time with different people in the hotel industry who were very helpful.
[8:17]And then I took a lot of liberties to make it work for this character. And then I also spent a
[8:23]a lot of time with Nora learning about Nora architecture. And I spoke with several Nora architects
[8:30]that that was something that I didn't know going into this book when when you were mentioning that
[8:34]Nora, the main character is an architect. I liked the idea. And I had heard of this idea that
[8:41]there are some architects who lead not with like structural innovation, but lead with sort of
[8:48]of emotional innovation. How is the room going to hold you? How is this place going to
[8:53]add to your life in some way or another? But I didn't know that that was a field of architecture
[8:59]until I was well into the writing of the book. And then a good friend put a movie in front of me
[9:06]called a documentary. It finally called my architect, which is this wonderful story about a son
[9:12]learning about his father through his father's building a son that didn't really have a father.
[9:17]Ready to dance? Go ahead and watch it. Oh, it is so incredible. It is really wonderful. And through
[9:24]him, this is the architect who created the Salt Institute. And when the more I started learning about
[9:29]him, I learned that he was considered to be the four founder of Nora architecture. And so I sort of
[9:35]by accident backed my way into, oh, this is exactly what I didn't know I wanted. And so for me,
[9:42]writing is often rewriting. And so I sort of reimagine Nora within the field of
[9:48]Nora architecture, specifically after I spoke with some of these experts. Interesting.
[9:54]You do a really nice job also. And I'm sorry. Can you hear these lawnmowers? They're not really
[10:00]You hear, no, I can't hear them at all.
[10:01]Oh my God, there's literally like a guy right there.
[10:04]I'm like literally three feet away.
[10:07]You did a really nice job too of tackling,
[10:10]like complicated grief.
[10:11]And what happens when you lose someone you love,
[10:15]but your relationship obviously has its layers
[10:19]and how do you process that grief and unexpected grief.
[10:22]And all of that, talk about writing through that
[10:25]because it very much felt like when I was reading it,
[10:27]like is Laura grieving, it felt very, very raw.
[10:32]So I have had quite a journey, you know,
[10:36]as we all have since, especially since COVID
[10:39]where I think I know that you guys lost someone
[10:42]in your family as well.
[10:43]Like I think everyone sort of grief came to the surface,
[10:47]I think in a very large way.
[10:49]For me specifically, I lost my mom shortly before COVID
[10:52]and then I lost my father nine months later.
[10:55]So the truth in the book is the loss of both parents.
[10:59]I whom I was incredibly close to
[11:01]and they are not like the parents in this book.
[11:05]The mom is in that, my parents were very happily married
[11:08]and you know, but the mom wasn't that like
[11:10]I spoke to her every day,
[11:11]but I think that with the parents in this book,
[11:14]I liked the idea of thinking about grief in a different way.
[11:19]I had heard this interview shortly,
[11:22]actually before I lost my mom
[11:25]and that really it was almost like a gift.
[11:28]It was this idea of thinking about grief
[11:30]not as something to be scared of,
[11:33]but it's a visiting.
[11:35]It's almost a reminder that you had this great love
[11:39]and that love does not end.
[11:40]And I thought just like I don't like to write into violence
[11:45]or into, you know, I like, I don't like to,
[11:48]I want to find the hope.
[11:50]And so I wanted to write about grief
[11:54]and think about grief in a way that there's hope within it.
[11:58]And so that's that sort of where I came to how I came to it.
[12:02]Justine.
[12:03]But it's also true how when sometimes when another loss happens,
[12:08]like compound grief that he feels that all the feelings again
[12:12]and like more intense divide than originally.
[12:16]I think compound grief is a very real thing
[12:19]that could use even more airspace than it gets
[12:23]because it's almost like you're reopening a primal wound,
[12:27]but you're doing it, you know, a girlfriend of mine
[12:30]talked about it, like imagine having two babies
[12:33]within a very short period, the impact on your body
[12:37]of those two babies.
[12:39]And I think the impact of all that love
[12:41]and all that expression and everything else.
[12:43]And in a very similar ways,
[12:45]we were to think about birth and death in that way.
[12:48]But extreme feeling in close proximity
[12:52]really can do a number on you.
[12:54]And you have to you have to really rally up from that.
[12:57]How did you cope with that?
[12:59]Or did you have any, any ways that you really helped him?
[13:04]I think my family and my son really more than anything
[13:08]was and writing always for me as a huge source of inspiration
[13:13]and I think you become your own counsel
[13:16]because you write your way through something.
[13:18]One of my favorite books is Heartburn by Nora Efron.
[13:20]Oh, yeah.
[13:21]Oh, great.
[13:22]I mean, I was going to see if I have it right behind me,
[13:25]but the best present that my husband probably ever gave me,
[13:28]oh, there it is, I'll bring it over,
[13:30]is a first edition of Heartburn signed that he got me
[13:34]in one year.
[13:35]I just love that book.
[13:36]But I always liked that when she says at the beginning
[13:39]of that book, if she made that book funny,
[13:42]so then you control the story.
[13:44]But I think that the lesson there is in the writing
[13:48]you can find funny, you can find relief, you can find joy
[13:51]and you can figure out a way to honor what somebody brought
[13:55]and in the case of Heartburn, which is a story of her divorce,
[13:58]how to let it go, which I think is really, really powerful
[14:02]to think about.
[14:03]And it is interesting.
[14:05]So you have all these sort of real things
[14:08]that we're all grappling with.
[14:09]And yet the book is really, did someone, you know,
[14:13]how did this man die, right?
[14:15]Yes.
[14:15]So I was in a documentary and trying to figure that out and,
[14:18]you know, red herrings and, you know, where is this going?
[14:20]And, you know, I kind of had a different theory.
[14:24]But it's, I'm like, always wrong.
[14:26]Well, I'm glad you're wrong.
[14:27]I would have been more happy if you were right
[14:30]and you're like, I knew it from page one
[14:32]than I hadn't done my job.
[14:33]That's true, okay, good.
[14:34]All right, I feel better.
[14:35]Thank you.
[14:36]Thank you.
[14:37]Did you know all along what the answer so to speak would be
[14:40]or did you, how did you do it?
[14:43]So within this story, as you're pointing to,
[14:46]there's like a 50 year love story,
[14:48]which is really the father's secret.
[14:50]And writing that love story is one of the most joyful
[14:55]experiences I've had writing in all of my books.
[14:58]I loved imagining this love story over 50 years.
[15:01]So the answer's yes and no.
[15:04]I always knew who the woman was,
[15:07]which is, I purposely, I hope, buried who that woman was
[15:11]until you read it and you're like, oh my God,
[15:13]and then you get the joy, hopefully,
[15:14]of reading through again and being like,
[15:16]oh wait, they were the clues and I saw it,
[15:18]but I thought it was this other woman and in any event.
[15:21]So I knew it was her and I knew that she was linked
[15:26]to his death, but it was only through the writing
[15:29]that I figured out how she was linked.
[15:32]There were many other iterations in which someone else
[15:35]in her life or someone else in their life
[15:38]was responsible for his death as a result of this love affair.
[15:42]So I like the idea also I think of,
[15:46]I don't ever like there to be a villain in my stories
[15:50]rather that everything is, you know,
[15:52]I love the word you just use with compounding
[15:55]because I think also there's compounding pain
[15:58]and compounding evil and compounding ways
[16:01]that we create injury when we're on the wrong path.
[16:05]And I like the idea that there is no villain here,
[16:08]but the pain around the secret
[16:11]had reverberations just like any time we lie
[16:14]or keep secrets, it can have reverberations,
[16:16]which is why it's so freeing when we let that go.
[16:19]I feel like that is the heart of every single story
[16:22]is just right behind it.
[16:24]And like the damage it does when you keep a secret yourself.
[16:28]Yes, exactly.
[16:29]I cover this most.
[16:30]I totally agree with you and I think also
[16:33]what's really interesting is the secrets we keep
[16:36]from ourselves because if we know someone else
[16:39]is keeping a secret from us,
[16:40]that is a different kind of pain,
[16:42]but very often it is about unearthing
[16:44]what you don't want yourself to know.
[16:46]You know, like you hear people often say,
[16:48]I knew my relationship was over
[16:50]or I knew that this career wasn't working for me
[16:53]or I knew I had to be brave enough to do X,
[16:56]but they don't know it until they know it.
[16:58]And then they look back and they're like, I knew it,
[17:00]but I didn't have it in me to tell myself that yet.
[17:03]And so I get, I'm really fascinated
[17:06]about how we can help people, you know,
[17:09]the history and siblings here really help each other,
[17:13]tell themselves the secret on Earth,
[17:16]the secret that they weren't willing to say out loud yet.
[17:19]Yep.
[17:20]And I didn't even mention the chef
[17:23]and the restaurant owner,
[17:24]because another great thing.
[17:25]I'm like, this is awesome.
[17:26]She's taking me out to eat.
[17:28]I'm getting good at nice hotels.
[17:29]And I get to go to like this beautiful house
[17:32]and all the, most of all houses in California,
[17:35]like, I'm in, this is great, what a ride.
[17:37]Well, I did have this feeling when I was,
[17:40]when I knew she was gonna be an architect,
[17:42]I spent a lot of time at different houses in these places.
[17:46]I'm like, if it's her story and she's an architect,
[17:49]she would be looking at these houses
[17:51]and thinking about them in a way that I might not normally.
[17:54]And I wanted the reader to have a visceral feeling
[17:58]of being places that they don't normally go necessarily.
[18:02]And the other piece of that with the chef
[18:05]and that recipe is actually,
[18:07]I make that recipe every Sunday night at our house.
[18:10]We have some of that piece on Sunday nights
[18:13]and we have friends over and I learned about that recipe
[18:16]from this wonderful chef, Jeremy Fox,
[18:18]who at that point was in Napa Valley
[18:20]and my husband and I were just dating at that time
[18:23]and we went to Napa Valley for a weekend or something.
[18:27]And we ate at his restaurant there
[18:28]and the strawberry piece was the best thing
[18:30]I ever had in my life.
[18:31]And so I spent years and years trying to recreate it.
[18:33]And then he actually moved to Santa Monica,
[18:36]the chef had opened several restaurants,
[18:37]blocks from where we live.
[18:39]So it felt like he was arrested Canyon here.
[18:42]I know you would probably know.
[18:43]He was the chef there and at Birdie G's
[18:48]and he's wonderful.
[18:49]So I credit him with that pizza.
[18:52]That's brought so much joy around here.
[18:54]Are you gonna do events in those restaurants?
[18:56]You have to.
[18:57]I should talk to him about that.
[18:59]I should be, they should be for sale there.
[19:02]So since I think since our last interview,
[19:05]it must have been before your last book came out,
[19:07]but anyway, became this massive sensation,
[19:10]three million copies, that's crazy, huge movie
[19:14]with Jennifer Garner.
[19:15]So how, if at all did that change,
[19:18]you being able to keep writing
[19:21]and not like getting that in your head
[19:23]and also just kind of how cool is that?
[19:26]Well, thank you for that.
[19:27]And I think that it wasn't my first book.
[19:31]So it made it easier.
[19:34]I think about that all the time.
[19:36]I think if it was my first book,
[19:37]I would hope that nothing would change
[19:39]and I would still sit down and write every day.
[19:41]But I don't know if I would have heard too many voices
[19:45]in my head or been too, too.
[19:47]I don't know what it would have done.
[19:49]I always think about it that way.
[19:50]But even my first book, Michael Shavin,
[19:52]who we were just talking about before we started,
[19:54]he wrote this amazing essay called RECT,
[19:57]which I highly recommend to any writer.
[19:59]And I...
[20:00]I can send it to you, Zibi, if you can't find it.
[20:02]It's like, but he was an amazing essay called,
[20:04]Recht, in which he talks about being,
[20:08]the mysteries of Pittsburgh came out.
[20:09]It was met with success and how hard it was
[20:12]to write his second book after that because of that.
[20:14]And he spent years and years writing the wrong book
[20:17]until he pivoted.
[20:18]I think because the last thing he told me
[20:20]was actually so hard for me to write.
[20:22]I took 10 years to write it.
[20:24]I put it down three different times.
[20:26]I wrote two books in the interim.
[20:28]I threw out 70,000 of the 90,000 words I wrote.
[20:33]I realized that every book is just sort of a journey.
[20:35]It was almost like the last thing he told me
[20:37]was preparing me for the last thing he told me
[20:40]for what happened with it.
[20:41]And this book, it was really, it wasn't hard.
[20:45]It was no harder, I should say than any of the others.
[20:48]I'm actually writing a sequel of the last thing
[20:50]he told me now as well, which will come out next year.
[20:54]And so it's sort of a weird, interesting thing
[20:56]to be revisiting those characters again.
[20:58]And it feels like a nice coming home
[21:00]because I spent so much time with them.
[21:02]But this one was really kind of, it was a book
[21:06]I really, really wanted to write.
[21:08]And so I just enjoyed the writing.
[21:12]I mean, talk to me, we're in the middle of writing
[21:16]the movie for it.
[21:17]And for this one, for Netflix.
[21:20]And I'm writing it with my husband again,
[21:23]just like we did with the last thing he told me.
[21:24]And so maybe in six months, I'll tell you
[21:26]you something different.
[21:27]I'll give you these characters, I don't know.
[21:29]But right now, as of right now, the writing
[21:31]of the actual book was, you know, I mean,
[21:34]I know that, you know, with your writing too,
[21:36]like you probably have the same experience,
[21:38]like some things are easier than others,
[21:40]like some books.
[21:41]And this was a book, some books are laborers of love.
[21:43]And this book was sort of a love letter.
[21:46]It was a letter I really wanted to write
[21:48]to my parents, really.
[21:49]Yeah.
[21:50]It's like a nice way to say goodbye.
[21:52]Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
[21:56]Well, I'm so, I'm sorry about the loss of your parents.
[21:58]I'm sorry because it was, I'm sorry for that pain.
[22:02]And I can just imagine them sort of,
[22:05]I mean, you're such a warm, like loving person,
[22:07]just imagine how warm and loving they must have been
[22:10]to create you.
[22:11]And so I feel that loss for you.
[22:13]But another fabulous book that's so cool
[22:15]is going to be another Netflix.
[22:17]I mean, it's just amazing.
[22:18]Yeah, so yeah, I'm just so excited.
[22:21]It couldn't happen to a nicer person.
[22:23]Well, that is so nice.
[22:23]And I do feel like it's so funny
[22:25]because we haven't gotten to see each other a lot,
[22:28]but every time I see you, I feel like I've seen you so much
[22:29]because I'm at the B's bookstore all the time.
[22:31]I know you are.
[22:32]Thank you.
[22:33]And you're all, we literally, we took my,
[22:36]I don't know if I told you this,
[22:37]but your store's so wonderful.
[22:38]And we took my son's class went on a class trip
[22:41]because their school's not so far away
[22:44]and your brother's children are at that school.
[22:46]Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
[22:48]And when we went, my book was up in the store
[22:51]and my son whispered to me to not say that your book is here.
[22:55]And I was like, I will not say a word.
[22:57]So I didn't say anything and you're,
[22:59]and you're the booksellers knew me
[23:01]because I had been there and they did like everyone,
[23:03]it was, I was just a mom, you know, doing the field trip.
[23:06]So, but it, my son loves it.
[23:08]We all just love that store.
[23:09]It's brought so much to the community.
[23:10]So I do feel like I get to see you all the time
[23:13]between that and Instagram,
[23:14]even though I don't get to see you all the time.
[23:15]So it's very lovely.
[23:17]Well, I love following along your journey as well.
[23:19]And I showed my son your piles.
[23:22]I was like, this is what happens
[23:23]when you're really successful objects.
[23:25]You have to sign all these tip-in sheets
[23:28]before you even have the books come out.
[23:30]He's like, wow, how does she know it's gonna sell?
[23:32]And I'm like, she knows.
[23:34]Oh, gosh, I hope so.
[23:35]I'm like knocking on all sorts of books.
[23:36]Oh my gosh.
[23:37]I'm so sorry.
[23:39]Well, come to the store anytime.
[23:41]Sign the books.
[23:42]We'd love to have you back.
[23:43]And yeah, I'll be watching and cheering.
[23:46]Okay, wonderful.
[23:48]Good to see you.
[23:49]Great to see you, too.
[23:50]Bye, La La.
[23:53]Thanks for listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[23:55]If you love it, please leave a review.
[23:57]And follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.