Interview with Author Caroline Leavitt: Is This Tomorrow

Caroline Leavitt's new book, Is This Tomorrow, encompasses a rich tapestry of characters who struggle with family secrets, loyalty and the complexities of real love. All this against the backdrop of the 1960s, when the American Family was forever changed. Here's more from Caroline:

Jennifer Haupt: How did this wonderfully complex mystery come to you — through a character, a plotline, an emotion? And how long did it take you to flesh out the whole story?

Caroline Leavitt:

I always write about the things that haunt me, the questions I have. I grew up in a 1960s neighborhood where there actually was an outcast divorced woman. None of us kids were allowed over the house (it was supposed to be dirty and dangerous), and we learned early on that you could buy the loyalty and friendship of her two kids with just a cookie. But when the girl turned 13, she was actually adopted out of her family to go live with the wealthy dentist she babysat for! And two days later, her mother and her younger brother vanished. I always wanted to know what happened to all of them--and I never did. So I started writing a possibility, and then of course, with all writing, everything changed!

Caroline Leavitt:

It took me six months to figure out a basic synopsis, and that synopsis changed through the writing over and over again. I had character maps and outlines and charts all over my office, along with photographs of what I thought the characters looked like!

JH: As you got to know Ava, a divorced mom raising her son alone in the ‘50s, were there things about her that surprised you? Is she someone you’d like to be friends with?

CL: I knew Ava so well that I inhabited her, though her baking pies really startled me since she couldn’t cook at all. I would love to be able to hang out with her. I think she’s a loyal friend, a risk-taker and someone who is willing to do whatever she can for those she cares about.

JH: How much research did you do regarding the different eras in the book?

CL: After it took me three days just to find out what cops in the 1950s used instead of yellow crime tape (saw horses and rope), I hired two high school assistants and then a professional researcher. I also went on FB and twitter and asked for people who had lived in the 1950s and 60s--and got a lot! That was the most fun. I talked to one guy who had been one of the first male nurses in the 60s and to a 1950s cop and to a master pastry chef!

JH: You’ve said that all of your books are spiritually based in one way or another. How so with this book?

CL: Thank you for asking that question. I’m not religious at all, but I read a lot of quantum physics and most scientists will tell you that the world is stranger than we can imagine. That everything we think we know may not be true at all. I’ve always had this sense that something else is operating in the world, that we can sometimes have intuitions about things, that forces are sometimes at work. It’s not anything woo-woo, but could be science we just aren’t aware about.

In the book, Rose has this feeling that she is connected to her brother. She’s always known when something good will happen to him--or something bad--and she intuits that if he were dead, she would know it. So she keeps him alive with scrapbooks.

JH: What’s your favorite diversion from writing?

CL: I am totally and completely addicted to movies. Jeff, my husband and I, watch movies every night and go out to the movies constantly. I write scripts (and I made the finals of Sundance this year, for their screenwriting lab) but more than watching to study them, I love to just lose myself in the story.

JH: What’s the One True Thing you learned from Ava?

CL: Another great question. I think it’s my mantra: Never. Give. Up. No matter what people say to you or about you. No matter how life punishes you.

JH: What’s next for you?

CL: I sold my next novel--well, the first chapter and a synopsis--Cruel Beautiful World (thanks to my 16-year-old son for the title!) to Algonquin and it’s due in 2015, so I better start writing!

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Pictures of You, which was also on the Best Books of 2011 Lists from The San Francisco Chronicle, The Providence Journal, Bookmarks Magazine and Kirkus Reviews. her new novel Is This Tomorrow is a May Indie Next Pick. She is a book critic at the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and People Magazine, and she teaches writing online at Stanford and UCLA. Visit her at www.carolineleavitt.com.

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Pictures of You, which was also on the Best Books of 2011 Lists from The San Francisco Chronicle, The Providence Journal, Bookmarks Magazine and Kirkus Reviews. her new novel Is This Tomorrow is a May Indie Next Pick. She is a book critic at the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and People Magazine, and she teaches writing online at Stanford and UCLA. Visit her at www.carolineleavitt.com.

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