A Woman is No Man | Holly Furtick Book Club

In 2018, I had this idea to start a book club. And really it came because I love books, mostly audiobooks, and I love forcing them on other people and then talking to them about it. And so I just put it out there on my Instagram page. Hey, I'm gonna read this book this month. Read it with me. And then we'll come together and discuss it. And we would just go on Instagram live and have a chat. And then I got this idea. What if I invited the authors to come on and talk with me about that? So I wanted to share these videos with you so that you could see some of the amazing chats that I've had with some incredible authors about some amazing stories. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video. We are discussing this amazing book, A Woman is no man by Etaf Rum. And I am so excited that Etaf is going to be joining us tonight. We're going to get to ask her questions. Those of you who are new to the Holly Furtick Book Club, we do spoilers. So if you have not finished the book, you probably are going to come back and watch this later because this is a book club. This is a conversation for people who have read the book. Because that's what you do in book club. You read the book and you come together and you talk about it. That's why I started this book club, because I wanted to talk about the books that I love with the people that I love. I really enjoyed this book. I was reading and listening to some interviews of Eta from and she said that this book is about the strength and resilience of women. And I loved watching these characters interact with each other, putting myself in their position. I was just, I was hooked from the very beginning. What's gonna happen? What happened to the parents? Yeah, all of those things. So let's just chat for a minute. The book is about three generations of Palestinian women who are living in, in modern day Brooklyn. And you're watching them live out their Palestinian culture. And you have the mother in law and her name is. Sorry, guys, I want to make sure I get this right, Farida. And then you have the daughter in law whose name is isra. And you know from the beginning that something or pretty, pretty soon on that something has happened to isra. And then. And you learn that they, her and her husband Adam died. Oh, Etaf is with us. Hi, I can't wait to get you on. We're so excited to chat with you. And so Daya is Isra's daughter. So her grandmother is farida and so you've got these three women who are grappling with their. Their culture and their family. And one of the things that I just, I. I love to learn when I read. And I think that there's nothing better to invoke empathy and to. To teach. To teach you. There's no better way to learn than to read a story. And so I just love stories. And this was such. Such a heartbreaking and beautiful story, and I think so such a great picture into a world that unless you live in that world and in that culture, it's very difficult to really know anything about it or what goes on inside of the Arab culture. And so I just absolutely loved this story. I think at the beginning, I felt very frustrated with Farida and some of the choices that she makes. And as the book goes on, even, like, her choice of how she communicates with the granddaughters and what she tells them and how she treats isra. And, you know, you get so frustrated with her. But as the book goes on, you realize that Farida is also trapped, trapped within her culture and trapped within the family that she's been born into. And so a lot of you are saying that you loved ISRA the most and Sarah and Daya. Yes. You rooted for them. You're like, why? Like, you wanted Daya to get out so badly, and you wanted her to understand what actually went on, and you wanted to know what actually went on in the story. And it was so such great character building. I think there's nothing better than an author who builds these characters, and you love them and you hate them, and you cheer for them, and you want them to get out and you feel sorry for them. Stace, 33, says, I felt sorry for Adam, who had to do it all, and it just ruined him in the end. So true. Like, he was so overwhelmed with being the oldest son and with trying to support his family. And in some ways, you were mad at him and you were frustrated with him, but then you also, you could sort of feel. I thought. I felt like Atef did such a great job making you feel. Feel the burden that he felt. Yeah. She reached truth. Says, I felt sorry for Adam. There was so much pressure on him. And dawn says, I wanted ISRA to rise up. I mean, the opening story, when you. When ISRA comes over to Brooklyn and she sees that she's going to be living in this basement without windows, I mean, you're automatically, like, put in this position, like, what would I do? How. How would I handle this? Don says, I did not Feel sorry for Adam, somebody saying he was the abuser. And others go through experience without abusing. That's a great point that. I mean, I'm not in any way condoning his behavior, but I thought that ETEF did a really good job making you kind of sense the pressure that he was under. Jennifer says the culture was a character. That is so true. What a great point. You know, we've talked before in book club about how a great author can take something that's not human and make it a character. Like this isn't a book that we've done for book club. But I don't know if any of you have ever read the epic western, the. Oh, shoot. The name is Emily. Help me out. What's the epic western that we read? The Lonesome Dove and how the Horse and the Pigs were like actual characters. I think that's so true that their culture was a character. Somebody saying, Adam was a sad character. He was trapped like Israel. What else somebody else says? I felt sorry for him, too. He didn't ask for that pressure to provide for his family for forever. Shan Gray. I felt sorry for him on one side, but then not at all. His parents definitely drove him to drink, which started the abuse. So interesting how within the culture, the men it was. There was so much more shame put on a woman. And a man's actions were just sort of overlooked with his drinking and obviously the way that they treated women. Okay, here's something interesting. This is not representative of all Arabs and their culture as a whole. Hold that thought because we're going to chat with ETAF about that. What else are you guys saying? What did this culture bring to the. Bring the families through other than pressure and pain? Well, I mean, I think they had a really great sense of family. To be loyal to your family to the point where you would keep a secret. I think even people who aren't in an Arab culture have felt that before and, you know, feeling the.

The.

The fact that they were immigrants and. Yeah, Beth, what you said about them coming the camp that they came from. Yes, Jennifer. We're going to ask her all of these questions. So many questions. You're going to get to ask them. I'm going to do the best I can. I think that I've written down the questions that you're wanting to ask. And so we are going to get ETAF on and chat with her. Let me see if there's anything else I want us to talk about. I think for me personally, I also heard ETAF say this. So don't think that I'm like super smart. I made this connection all by myself. But it was interesting how their culture was so much about their family. Family was everything. Everything revolved around their family unit as opposed to in more of an American culture. Everything revolves around the individual and the individual leaving your parents home and becoming your person and getting your education. And everything for them revolved around preserving the family unit. Ashley Tucker says, can we talk about how Israel was blamed for the four girls when the man is actually the one who determines the gender? This is coming from a mom of four girls. That's totally true and, and pretty unfair. Erica Lopez says, I thought it was interesting that their faith was more of their culture instead of the guiding force. It's totally different than having a relationship with God. And somebody else said, I think we're all. I think we're also reading the book through Western eyes and perspective, so it's easy to question Isra's inability to get out. That is such a great point. I mean, obviously we're reading it through our own culture in our own eyes, and we're like, yeah, why don't you just leave? But obviously it wasn't that easy. And she had no education. She didn't even know. I mean, as you see at the end of the book, she didn't even know how to ride on the subway. I mean, she was living in a basement and completely captive to what the men of the family decided they were going to do. Jen Some somebody Erickson said they, they love this because they've lived in the Palestinian culture. I resonate. This resonated with me because they could be so sheltered in their own culture that they were not reached by outside resources.

So true.

The pressure to have a boy, not allowing the women to breastfeed so they could get pregnant right away, I was like, oh my gosh, no, no, no, no, no. I just felt so bad for her. Somebody says, oh, hey, Christine Caine is on. She says the Greek culture is very similar. Somebody said, what book are we talking about? We are talking about A Woman is no man by E. Tafrem. And if you have not read this book, you should probably get off and come back and watch this later because we are going to talk about the ending. We have to talk about the ending. Beth says how they wanted to leave their land. To think about how difficult it would be to transition as an immigrant into the American culture. You would really have some driving force to make you leave your own culture. Another thing that I thought was really interesting was how in order to preserve their culture. How they would go back to Palestine to get the. Farida and Khalid went back to Palestine to get a wife for their son because they said that the. The Arab women who grew up in America were too. I don't remember exactly how they said it, but they were too, like, corrupted by them. They were too American. And they wanted to preserve their culture so much that they went back and would get a wife from Palestine. All right, guys, this is great. This is gonna be a great discussion. Let's get ITAF on.

Hi.

Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Thank you for having me excited.

Oh, my gosh. We. We loved your book. And I can't tell you how many people. I was a little bit nervous when I picked the book because I try really hard not to pick books that are. Make it on some of the big book club lists like Reese's Book Club and Jenna Bush Hager, just because I wanted. I don't want. When I picked a book for everybody, like, oh, I read that book. I loved it. But I have to say that a lot of the people in our book club have never read the book before and kept telling me throughout the month, I love this book. I could not put this book down. And to me, that, like, every lover of fiction is waiting for the next page turner. And this was so well done. So first of all, thank you for joining us and thank you for your story. It's so great.

Thank you for having me and thank you for everyone that's logged on and I've been reading along the comments, and it's also exciting, and I'm just really honored to answer questions and clarify and be here. Good. Awesome.

Okay, so give us a little bit of your. Of your background, because I know that bits and pieces that I have read, you have alluded to the fact that a lot of the story is autobiographical. So take us from maybe even, like, you know, you like, what happened to you at age 19 and where you from age 19 to sort of where you are now?

Okay, well, I was born in Brooklyn. My parents immigrated from Palestine to Brooklyn, and they gave birth to me and my brothers and sisters. I'm the oldest of nine. Wow. And at 19, I got married at 19, and I live in North Carolina now. I've been here since I have two kids. The story is based on an Arab family. So just to clarify. And I clarify this all the time. It is semi autobiographical in the fact that I'm an Arab American woman and that I am writing about an Arab family and about Arab culture. Because I feel like Arab literature or Arab American literature is very underrepresented. But the story is not representative of all Arabs. It is not representative of Islam. It is strictly based on one Arab family and a very conservative Arab culture that this family practices. So I always like to start out with that because I feel like people in, you know, in contemporary fiction, we don't read Arab stories. You know, most of the stories that we read are white. And so once we read something that's different from anything we read before, we automatically assume that this is how all Arabs are. Or if you read a Spanish or Hispanic story, this is how all Hispanic families are. You read a Greek story, this is how all Greek stories are. Because we don't have a lot of stories on the bookshelves to compare to that. Whereas when you read a story by a white woman or a white man, there's so many other stories out there by white women and white men that you don't. You don't automatically make that stereotype. You're like, it's just a story. It's just a story like, oh, I can read American Psycho, but I don't think that all white men are serial killers. You know the story about a white serial killer.

Right.

I really want to make this clarification. I make it all the time that this is a story based on truth, but it's a story of one family, a conservative family. And it's a story about women whose stories need to be told, women whose shame is the center. The center voice of their life. But I do not like people to use the story as a way to further stereotype and marginalize people.

Of course, I'm so glad that you. That you clarified that, but also that you gave us such a great peek into the Palestinian culture. Okay, so at 19, you were arranged marriage, and obviously 19, so not educated past high school. So take us through what happened next.

I. Luckily, my husband didn't care that I wanted to get educated. So I automatically. I was in college for a year. And then I continued after I got married, even though I had a kid, I got pregnant, like, a few months in. But luckily I was able to stay in school and I had two kids. And while I was writing the novel, like, years later, so maybe my daughter was about 6 and my son was 4. And I was teaching, and I realized that a lot of. I was teaching literature. I had English degree. I loved reading. So I went into English, and I was teaching at a community college. I was teaching a literature class, and I realized that a lot of the stories that I was reading, most of them were white stories. And that women like me, Arab women or Arab American women, their stories weren't being told or represented in literature. And that made me want to start writing. And so I started writing a Woman as no Man.

And so you were working, you were a mom, and you were writing. How did you find time, what you have to do, what you have to give up? How easy did it come?

I didn't have to. Well, after I wrote the story, I had to give up a lot of things in the process. But while I was writing, I didn't really have to give up anything. At the time, I think that I was in a really bad place. And the book really just started out as a journal, and then it just evolved. In about a year's time, it went from a journal to a full manuscript. And I think it was more so because the story was already there. It wasn't something that I had to make up. After I wrote the novel, I realized that my life wasn't really aligned and I wasn't living authentically. And I think writing it, as you can see in when you read the stories of Farida and Zaya and Ezra and Sarah, I think I started seeing a lot of, like, truths in the way many women around the world live. Not just Arab women, but many women in the US And Hispanic cultures and Greek cultures and immigrant cultures are really shamed and are not living according to their own authentic truths. They're living in a patriarchal society and are being abused in many different types of ways. So I think. I think writing a woman is no man helped me realize that I wasn't really living the life that I wanted to live. So I just got a divorce.

So would you say that writing the book was therapeutic for you or was difficult for you at times? Was it.

Did.

Did you find healing through the story by writing it and.

And.

And sharing it with others?

Yeah, I did. I think it gave me a lot of perspective about certain patterns in not just, as, you know, at the time, you know, I was a mother and I was thinking about my mother. I was thinking about many, you know, role models in my life, women that I've. That I know, stories that I know. And. And I was thinking, how did we get here as women in this culture? Or how did we get here as women in many cultures? And I think that writing this really allowed me to understand the patterns and the cycles of trauma that are passed down from generation to generation. And if it wasn't for me sitting down to Think about these things. I don't. I think I would have continued to live my life on autopilot. It was definitely therapeutic and healing.

When did you know the title?

I didn't know it till, like, really late in the publishing process. We changed it twice. So it was eventually just a line in the novel that I think Farida says to Sarah that we just. We made the title, but it was two different titles before that.

Well, I think the title is brilliant. And I know that titling can be like just the. The title is everything. The title is what makes a person say, I think I want to read that book. And. And I think I think you titled it brilliantly. Okay. I seriously have so many questions I want to ask you, and I have never had people asking the author as many questions as the people in my book club have for you tonight. So I'm going to try and get to everything. But. Ok, so let me. Let's just like, dive in because as I was preparing for this, I realized that I made a huge mistake. When I put on my synopsis on Instagram, I said that this story is about three Muslim women. And then as I was reading some of your interviews and watching some interviews, I started to clue into the fact that you never use the word Muslim. It's not on the back of the book. It's like, that's not how you describe these women. So tell me, because I already know. I already know the answer. But I want to hear you and share with our readers, like, what is the difference between you saying this is about three Muslim women and saying this is about three Arab women or three Palestinian women?

Thank you for that question. I appreciate it because it is very important to me. And it's something that in the publishing world, which is a predominantly white world, I had to be very careful to make sure that that was clear. A clear distinction not just in the writing of the novel, but also in the publishing of the novel, that this isn't a book about Islam, it's not an anti Islam book. It's not trying to promote, like, Islamophobia. Because if you notice when you read the novel, I try to make a very clear distinction between Islam and Arab culture. The women in the novel are not devout Muslims, Muslims by name, just like how we in America, not me particularly, but America, Americans in general are Christians by name. Right. But, you know, 98% of them, you know, party, do drugs, have sex before marriage, and all the things that are anti Christian, you know, but there's. But American culture and Christianity are not the same. So I make clear that Arabic culture and Islam are not the same. Islam promotes equality, female rights. It's the most beautiful, peaceful religion. Arab culture, on the other hand, is a very patriarchal culture. It's rooted in female submission. And that's really what I wanted to talk about in the novel.

I think that besides all of the amazing topics that you tackle, for me that was the most eye opening thing was to realize that as just a white American woman living in North Carolina, that I was just using the word Muslim as a generic term for a culture instead of using it as a religion. And I was so blown away when I realized, oh my gosh, first of all, how embarrassing of myself to have just put that it's about three Muslim women. But then when I heard you talk about it and I realized, yeah, they're not like there's the scene where the grandmother tells Deya, don't wear the Hajib to school. So it's not really even a book about the religion. And as a Christian, I think I would feel the same way. I feel the same way when people misrepresent Christianity because there's Christian culture and then there's people who actually live out Christianity. And so, so to see the, to realize how much I had just stereotyped this whole group of people was just so eye opening. So thank you for that. And so you are speaking out a lot about the Palestinian culture. How much of it have you kept for yourself? What are the good things about the Arab culture that you still practice today or that you still want to instill in your children? What have you kept?

I've kept a lot, actually. It's an I. It's actually really surprising to me how much I've kept now, like as a mom, I. Well, in terms of language, I try my best to instill, to teach my kids the Arabic language. Food and hospitality. When people come over, the Arab culture is very, it's very food centered. So it's, you love and you share and you give through, you know, opening your home to others, you know, cooking for them. Those are things that I've continued that I've shared with my kids. Kindness to neighbors and strangers. That's something that is, I think, very Arab. So other things that I'm not really thinking about, but there's a lot of beautiful things about the Arab culture that, you know, music, poetry, stuff like that. The toxic things I don't pass down, but just the beautiful things as with any culture.

Right. What did, what did you lose? Okay, in the first of all, I just. I have to say, I'm an audiobook person. I would say 80, 90% of the books that I read, I listen to on audio. And one of my biggest beefs with Audible is that they don't always include the afterword and they don't always include, like, the little interviews with the author. And so I was reading. So for those of you who did Audible, go to a bookstore and pick up the book and read the end of the book, for all of you who love Audible books because you give so much clarity and so much insight into your life, and you wrote this in an interview or this is in the interview that's in the back of the book. And you said this was before the book came out. You said, my book hasn't launched yet. So every night I wonder what's going to happen. I wonder who's going to say what. I wonder what my family will think. I wonder what Arabs at large will do. So now the book is out, and can you answer some of those questions?

I forgot. When did I say this? This was.

I don't know. Chicago Review.

Okay. I'm like, wow, I forgot that I said that. To be honest, I'm actually blown away by the overwhelmingly positive responses that I've gotten to a woman is no man. I think that when I said that, that girl that said that was a very scared little girl. You know, I was afraid. I didn't set out to write a novel. I didn't set out to. To bash my culture. In a way, I think I did. I didn't set out to do that. I really set out to write a story about these women who I felt so immensely sorry for and I wanted so badly to. To tell their stories and to give them a voice. So I think a part of me was still afraid of, you know, any lash back that I was gonna get by the community for stereotyping them. Because, you know, in all honesty, we do live in a Western society that already stereotypes and marginalizes this community. So I felt like a traitor for adding to that.

Yeah.

But, you know, after got published and I realized that there were, you know, I had to do my part in clarifying that this is not representative of all Arabs. Right. That this represents the conservative Arabs. And it's really literally, literally a story about three women or three generations. It's one family, Right. But I think the feedback that I got from so many women and so many different cultures and communities really commending me for, you know, sharing the story and seeing themselves in it, seeing their mothers in It. Seeing their sisters in it made me feel so proud that I took the risk and I followed my heart, you know. So, yeah, I've gotten some negative feedback. Of course I have. But the positive outweighs it so much more.

How about your own family?

My sisters and my brothers, they. They love the novel. My friends back in Brooklyn and in Tampa love the novel, but I haven't really heard from my extended family, like, my parents, my uncles. Like, I don't really know my grandma. Like, I don't know what they think of it.

A lot of people are commenting. I know sometimes it's hard to talk and read comments at the same time, but so many people are saying that they're so relieved because they were just afraid that maybe you were, like, really attacked or shunned by your family for writing. For writing the story. And I think it's true that I think that there are the. Most of us are put on earth to do something, and a lot of times it takes so much courage to do the thing that when it feels so risky and you don't know what's gonna happen, that that's when you should. That's the confirmation that, yes, this is what I'm supposed to do, and this is a story that I'm supposed to put out, but yet in the process of it and actually doing it, it's so scary. And. But yet your story has. You know, I think, based on what you're saying, too, that a lot of Arab women are so thankful that you had the courage to talk about a group of people who are really overlooked and misunderstood in so many ways. And so tell me, like, which character did you feel like you personally resonated with the most? Who were you the most? I've heard so many authors talk about just this, a literal grief when you're finished writing the book because you're so connected with these characters. Which character did you find yourself in the most or miss the most when you were done with the story?

I think people really expect. I get this question a lot. People expect me to say Daya or Sarah. And while I can see why I would probably relate to them the most, the most person that I related to writing was Ezra. Like, every time I would write any chapter with her, like, I would start crying. It was very emotional for me to write about her. And I. And I connected with her emotionally. And I don't know, it was just tough. And then Farida also. I know people, a lot of people don't like Farida, but she was one of my favorites. Because I just found her so complex.

And so complex and so just stuck.

And.

Yeah, I mean, you just. It's so easy to judge what you would do, but you don't know what you would do if you were. If you were in that position. And, Ezra, just. Even her. I was really touched by her. How she had to push through so much darkness and so much depression to be the mother that her girls needed her to be, and how there were days where she succeeded at it and there were days that she failed at it, and I just thought that was really, really beautiful. Okay, so Books and Beans, a lot of people don't know, and Books and Beans is Instagram account that you have where you recommend books. It's also an actual coffee shop. Is it your coffee shop?

Mm. Yeah.

Okay, so you. So then, which came first, the Instagram or the coffee shop?

The Instagram.

Okay. And then. Then the actual coffee shop. And then you just put it in the book?

Yeah, no, the. I put it in the book first, and then I told myself, I'm gonna put it in just in case it's a real coffee shop and it could be advertising. No, I put it in because I just. It was something that I created during my teaching career, and I created it because I love books, and I just thought it was fitting that Sarah would own the bookstore. And I was like, why not? Just. It was probably cheesy, but I'm like, why not just call the bookstore Books and Beans since I had created this account just solely for, like, sharing the love of reading.

So talk about how you love reading and how you made reading, because. All right, like, I think this. My book club has been around. I think we've read 15 to 20 books, so we've been around for, like, a year and a half. And a theme that has developed unintentionally is books about women and books about books.

Great.

So just talk about your. Your love of literature and how you wanted that to almost be, like, the escape, the salvation that. That Ezra. And then Daya. And then. And then coming up, because somebody, My sister, already asked this question. We want to know about your favorite books, too.

Okay, well, to answer your first question, I just think that books, to me, have played a really huge part of opening my eyes to different cultures and different perspectives and growing up in a sheltered house. Books were always my bridge to the outside world. And I never realized that books held such an important place in my life until I started writing, because I'd never wrote before. And so, like, when I was writing, I was like, How. How am I writing this? Like, I don't understand how. It was almost as if, like, I've done it before, you know, writing a novel. And I started, and I found all my characters love to read, and it was their cure for how lonely they were. They were connecting to the world through other worlds and these stories. And I think just. It was so clear to me in the writing process of these characters that books have played such a large role in my own life and personal development, to the point that reading not only taught me about the outside world and allowed me to connect to people, but reading also taught me how to write. I wouldn't have been able to write that story had I not been taught by so many other stories, since I wanted my book, in a sense, to, like, be a love letter to all the books and to say thank you.

Well, it was. You accomplished that. So tell. Tell me. And. And I don't want to veer too much from the book, but we. I always love to ask our authors, what are some of your favorite books? Like, give me, like, a book or two that maybe, like, made you love reading. A book or two that you. If you could read again for the first time. Time.

Okay. A book or two that made me love reading. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. And I Know why the Cage Birds Sing by Maya Angelou. Matilda. When I was very, very young, I remember falling in love with, like, the idea of being a book nerd. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khairat Husseini. A more contemporary novel that I. I'd read over, like, five years ago.

I think I read that one. Was that his first one?

No, his second one, I think that book is just, like, from. He has three. Well, four count as his children's book.

The Kite Runner. That's the guy that wrote the Kite Runner?

First one, yes. And then the Suns is my favorite of all his books. And I think that one, because it's about asking women, and it's set in Afghanistan, and it does the same thing that a woman is no man does, except it's. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful book. So I'm not even putting a Woman is no man in in the same bracket, but, I mean, in terms of theme, it shows you how women could be so strong even when they're so weak. Mmm. It's a beautiful book.

I'm going, I'm gonna read that one. Writing it down. All right, keep going.

What am I reading now? Is that the question that you were asking?

I said, what book would you read again for the first time.

Oh, what book would you read? I would say, I would say that book. A Thousand Splendid Sons by Khairat Husseini. That's the book I would read again for the first time.

Okay.

Gone Girl. Even though I'm not supposed to say contemporary fiction, but that book just, it always like, stays with me just because I love the, the strong female. The themes of how women are just always trying to please everybody.

Yeah.

Even. Even in like a twisted thriller type way. Like, the themes of womanhood are really strong and I really love that, like when you're reading a commercial book, but it's still, it resonates on a thematic level 100%.

So you read for a living now. You, you teach literature, but you also, you're like one of the readers for the Book of the Month club. And do you still love reading or is it ever, like your job and.

No, I, I wish I didn't have anything else to do but read. Like, I wish everybody else would. Just all the emails that I have to answer, all the other like, job, jobs. I wish I could just sit at home or like in my coffee shop and just drink my coffee and read and like. For real.

And you're, you're working on another book.

Yeah.

So can you give us a little sneak peek?

No, it's, it's, it's not like ready for a sneak peek yet, honestly.

Okay. Is it harder because you don't have this, like, story that you're writing about, like, that's sort of autobiographical? You're having to make it all up? Is that like a completely different thing?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think I still made the first one up. In a sense, it was autobiographical in terms of culture and experiences. And I think this one is, I think all writing is. I think all writing is autobiographical or in or semi autobiographical in terms of experiences. That doesn't take away from you having to make plot up. Right. Structure and make it page turning and that, that's the hard work. But what is hard about this one is that I have so much to live up to. Yeah, that's the hard part. And I think I'm just crippled by my own fear of failure at this point that, you know, before I kind of was like, oh, I'm going to write this story to represent these women. And I wasn't thinking that far ahead. Like, I still had dreams and ambitions, but it wasn't like, oh, I need to do this now. It's like, oh, no, I need to do this. You know, I think that's just a little Bit scary. I have to get past that 100%.

The pressure to live up to. There's a saying about. You know, my husband loves music, and he always talks about how it's easy to have a hit album is very difficult to have, too.

Yeah.

So that pressure is insane. Okay, last question. We need to talk about the ending of this book. So everybody's saying, the ending.

The ending.

The ending, please. So tell. Tell me how. What made you decide to make the Into. Because. Okay, let me just say I. When I was done, I liked how you made me work. How you made me go back and be like, wait, what? Especially when you're doing an audiobook, because you don't really know. Like, this is the last page. And so, like, I was like, huh? And I listened to it. Like, I backed it up and listened to it again. And so just take us through. Like, did you have another ending first, or is that what you always wanted it to be?

Yeah. First of all, I feel really bad for everybody that listened to this on audiobook.

No.

Because the number one thing that I get at book club readings or inter. You know, when I. When I was on tour was the ending. The ending, the ending. And some people, like, a lot of people love the endings, but a great handful of people were so confused. Yeah. And I did a horrible job. Like, I should have done a better job at this. But I really. I really love the way that the ending was because. So the ending was always like that, except it's like a chapter missing. Yeah. In terms of. Can we spoil it now? Or are we.

Yes, absolutely. Spoil away.

So we all know that Ezra gets killed, Right. You know, like the climax of the novel. We. We figure out that, you know, Adam kills her and then commits suicide. So I didn't want to keep showing her getting beaten because it was kind of getting tiresome. Like, we already know that, you know, domestic abuse is a theme of the novel, and we already know that she's getting abused. So to me, there was no point in showing the scene that killed her, because domestic abuse happens worldwide for numerous reasons. It doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter why women get killed. It doesn't matter. Did they, like, what. Were. Were they wearing something wrong? Did they say something? It doesn't matter. So I didn't want to go there. I wanted to really highlight her growth, and I wanted to show her arc at the end of the novel. She goes from being passive, being a victim, to wanting to stand up for her daughters. And so I wanted to show her in her Very last scene of standing up for her daughters at the train station so she. Her daughters to run away. And we kind of have hints of this throughout the novel from Daya's perspective, because she tells us in the novel, not like, overtly, but there's numerous scenes where she's. Where she tells us that she remembers her mom and her dad together at the train station. And it's very odd. Like, they've never been on a train before. She doesn't know why her dad's there. So it's like, there's little hints, but it's nothing that's, like, obvious. But another thing was also that by the time you get to the end of the novel, you realize that Day is actually the one writing it. Because, you know, the last scene of Daya is her in the library. She's in college now. She's looking at the bookshelves and she's saying, like, you know, she still doesn't know her mother's full story. She doesn't know her father's story. She doesn't know Sarah's full story, but she knows that their stories could be in the bookshelves. And she says, I'm gonna tell their story one day. So I want the readers, by the time they get to the end to, like, think, yeah, not everything has to have a cliched ending, you know, so, like, maybe Day is actually the one that wrote the story, and maybe she decided to write her mother's ending this way because, you know, she is the writer. Like, she's the one that opens up the story and ends it. So I wanted it to just be a story of. Of hope, and I wanted to end it with hope as opposed to just making it like a very Hollywood cliched ending, 100%.

And that's what I thought was so brilliant about it. Because, you know, again, like I said, you left a lot of work up to the reader, but in a good way. Because I always think I'm thinking of a book that I read recently where the. I was like, trucking 100% along page turner with this book. Three fourths of the book I absolutely love. In the last quarter of the book, I was like, what the heck? Because, like, nobody died. Nobody. You know, everybody's story got wrapped up perfectly. And it's like, as a reader, I want to kind of imagine what Day is life was like if she, you know, or with Sarah. And I loved how you didn't. It wasn't gory.

I just.

I just thought it was so perfect. And you just you left it up to us to piece it together, but then also to see that. That Ezra, she. At the end, she was fighting for her daughters. And. And no matter. No matter. Even though you didn't give us the ending that she escaped, she. She went down fighting for her daughters.

Yeah.

And well done. So well done.

Thank you.

Well, thank you for your time tonight. Thank you for sharing with us. And we just. Everybody has loved hearing from you, and we can't wait to see what you. To read, what you put out next. And so. So if you guys want to follow, Eats after I. And also books and beans.

Yay. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me. And thanks to everyone that logged in. And the comments and the questions, it was just so refreshing. It was. It's like a dream for me. Every time I get to interact or read comments from, you know, people, it just reminds me. It's just very humbling. And it reminds me how we're all so connected. And anything, just any story, any piece of work can really bring people together. So I'm just so thankful. And I'm thankful for you for sharing me with everyone. I appreciate you so much.

Thank you. I hope we can meet in person one day soon.

I hope so. Thank you so much, Holly.

All right, good night.

Bye.