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Sara Goodman Confino is the bestselling author of five novels: Don’t Forget to Write, Behind Every Good Man, She’s Up to No Good, For the Love of Friends, and Good Grief. After spending more years than she’s willing to publicly admit teaching high school English and journalism, she is currently writing full time and trying to make a living off of the crazy stories in her head. She lives in Montgomery County, Maryland with her husband, two sons, two miniature schnauzers, and a goldfish that seems to be vying for the world record of longest living fish. When she’s not writing or frantically parenting, she can be found on the Peloton, at the beach, or at a Bruce Springsteen concert, sometimes even dancing onstage. (Bio courtesy of Sara's website.)
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It’s 1963, two years since Barbara Feldman’s husband died. Raising two kids, she’s finally emerging from her cocoon of grief. Not yet a butterfly, but she’s anxious to spread her wings.
Then one day her mother-in-law, Ruth, shows up on her doorstep with five suitcases, expecting a room of her own with a suitable mattress. Abrasive and stuck in her ways yet well meaning, Mother Ruth arrives without warning to help with the children. How can Barbara say no to a woman who is not only a widow herself but also a grieving mother? As Ruth’s prickly visit turns from days to weeks to what seems like forever, Barbara realizes Ruth has got to go. But Barbara has an ingenious plan: introduce Ruth to some fine gentlemen and marry her off as fast as she can.
Soon enough, something tells Barbara that Ruth is trying to do the same for her. At least they’re finding common ground—helping each other to move forward. Even if it is in the most unpredictable ways two totally different women ever imagined. (Courtesy of Amazon.)
One of the questions I am asked most frequently is why I choose to set the majority of my novels in the early 1960s when I clearly wasn’t alive in that era.
It’s a valid question—I’m an elder millennial who never in a million years thought that I’d be writing about a time period when my parents were children.
But it’s a multifaceted answer. The starting point is likely that my favorite movie is Dirty Dancing. I used to lie and say it was higher brow titles, like Breakfast at Tiffany's and Casablanca, which I do love. But if Dirty Dancing comes on the tv, I’m watching it. In fact, my dogs hide if they hear “Time of My Life,” because they know one of them is getting held overhead in the infamous lift.
Did I watch that movie way too young? Yes. Did I understand the abortion subplot? ABSOLUTELY NOT. When I watched it again, older, I was shocked by how much I missed. But even more shocked by how relevant that storyline still was.
Fast forward to college. My favorite class that I took was a seminar on America in the 1960s. I thought I was going to be learning about hippies, but we focused on the whole decade, with a large chunk of it dedicated to the Kennedy assassination and the ways in which that shifted the entire country’s future. And I somehow got to write papers on Simon and Garfunkle and compare the different portrayals of Romeo and Juliet through the era contrasting West Side Story with the Zeffirelli film. No boring analysis essays here!
And then along came The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (you knew I was going there, right?). The clothes! The colors! The family dynamics! The Jewish humor even if Rachel Brosnahan herself isn’t! I loved it all.
So when a bookstagrammer called me “The Marvelous Mrs. Confino” on publication day for my second novel, an idea was born. I wanted to write something set in that bright, colorful era before the Kennedy assassination, where everything looked so happy. But there was a lot going on beneath the surface that was decidedly less so. And like in Dirty Dancing, a lot of the issues that people were dealing with then are still relevant today. And that’s where Don’t Forget to Write and Behind Every Good Man came into play.
For Good Grief, I wanted to tell a more intimate story. My paternal grandfather died suddenly in 1960, when my father was nine. And my grandmother raised him in an era where she couldn’t even get a credit card without a man signing off on it. What jobs could she get? As a Jewish immigrant, who married at 19, and never went to college? And, she persevered because what choice did she have?
Women today can find work much easier, and childcare, while expensive, is available. We can get our own credit cards, car loans, mortgages. But we’re still expected to do it all—balance a career, a family, a home, and with social media, it often feels like everyone is doing it better than we are.
Barbara, the main character, who suffers a similar loss to my grandmother’s, eventually realizes she can’t do everything herself. She has to be able to ask for and accept help—an issue that modern women struggle with as well. She faces antisemitism, inspired by a real incident that happened to my grandmother in that era, but mirroring today’s climate in ways I couldn’t have anticipated when I wrote the book.
I love seeing how far we have come. But writing books set in the past has helped me see how far we still need to go as well. And I think that’s an important lesson for today’s readers—it wasn’t that long ago that we, as women, lacked the rights we take for granted today. And it isn’t impossible that we could revert to not having them again. And that, combined with a love for Dirty Dancing, is why I’ll continue to tell these stories.
Thanks to Sara for visiting with us and to Get Red PR for sharing her book with our readers. (And now we have "Hula Hana" in our heads.)
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3 comments:
Im a fantastic of Dirty Dancing and my favorite part is the dance at the dinner in front of her parents. It was a definite redemption for the troubles she went through in the movie.
I love Dirty Dancing since it is memorable and gives me a great deal of pleasure. I used to visit the Catskills and loved going there. The dance that epitomizes the summer.
I still remember watching this when it came out so long ago!
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