Phoebe Fox, a former journalist and actor, is the author of A Little Bit of Grace; the Breakup Doctor series; and—as Tiffany Yates Martin—of the bestselling nonfiction Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide for Revising Your Writing.
“You trying to kill yourself, or are you just stupid?”
Marcie Malone didn’t think she was either, but when she drives from Georgia to the southwestern shore of Florida without a plan and wakes up in a stranger’s home, she doesn’t seem to know anymore. Despondent and heartbroken over an unexpected loss and the man she thought she could count on, Marcie leaves him behind, along with her job and her whole life, and finds she has nowhere to go.
Herman Flint has seen just about everything in his seventy years living in a fading, blue-collar Florida town, but the body collapsed on the beach outside his window is something new. The woman is clearly in some kind of trouble and Flint wants no part of it—he’s learned to live on his own just fine, without the hassle of worrying about others. But against his better judgment he takes Marcie in and lets her stay until she’s on her feet on the condition she keeps out of his way.
As the unlikely pair slowly copes with the damages life has wrought, Marcie and Flint form an unlikely alliance that forces both to face secrets and dark truths from their past—and to decide whether to stay lost in the pain of the past or fight for healing and hope with the people they care about most.
This one took so long to come together! The very first proto-draft of this story was started about 15 years ago. It’s taken so many forms since then and kept getting closer to what I hoped it would be, but it wasn’t until I understood Marcie’s and Flint’s backstories that it finally started to jell.
I honestly think I learned to write on this story: to create and flesh out character, to plot, to raise stakes, to create multiple storylines and POVs, etc. The whole thing was a huge challenge, but also a great education in writing—which is to say the real work of writing: editing, revising, rewriting, developing, etc.
The reward is that this is probably the best writing I’ve done. This story is different from my others, which tend to be more humor-forward. This one has humor—I can’t seem to avoid it—but it’s got a bit more heft too, I think.
And just to finally see this baby in print, by such a fantastic publisher as Berkley, after all those years and iterations…it’s incredibly rewarding and validating. This was the “book in the drawer” that I couldn’t seem to let go of and leave there, and I’m thrilled it’s finally going to reach readers.
What is the inspiration behind The Way We Weren't?
That was pretty much the only thing that survived subsequent rewrites, though. I knew I wanted to write a story about what happens when a longtime marriage implodes, but I couldn’t come up with the right impetus for it.
Then I met my husband--relatively late in life, when I was nearly 40 and he was 45--and we had to decide immediately, pretty much, whether we wanted to have kids. It was one of the hardest decisions I think either of us has ever faced, and made harder by never knowing whether you’re making the “right” choice.
We finally realized there is no right choice. You make the rightest choice you feel you can for where you are in life, and then you decide to be happy with it.
It got me wondering what might happen if two people who loved each other enormously came down strong on opposite sides of such an important issue, and I explored that in both Marcie’s and Flint’s stories. Flint lost his most important relationship over it, and it’s made him withdraw bitterly from the world. Marcie is still at that crossroads, and meeting Flint forces both of them to face some of these hard truths and choices from their past.
If The Way We Weren't was made into a movie, who would you cast in the leading roles?
You are always SO GOOD at this I hate trying to compete with you, but I’ll take a stab. I’d absolutely love to have Kathryn Hahn as Marcie, and for Will I see someone like Jason Segal (maybe a bit too young, but perfect for the way I picture him). Flint has to be someone like Tommy Lee Jones or Dean Stockwell, or Peter Fonda if he were still with us.
What is something you are thankful for this year?
I have been enormously grateful for feeling as if the world has begun to inch back toward kindness and decency from what has felt like a very angry, divided time in recent years. Add vaccines to that mix and it feels as if we’re coming out of a long, dark winter and might dare to hope for spring. I’m cautiously optimistic and hopeful that we as humans might realize we have more in common than we don’t, and that we can find our way to respecting one another and finding a peaceful middle ground that creates a more connected and kinder world.
What is the last movie you saw that you would recommend?
Side note from Melissa: I agree 100%!
What is a unique dish you serve during Thanksgiving or the winter holidays?
Because my hubs and I don’t have kids, our holidays have traditionally been spent with our families at their houses, but lately we’ve begun starting some of our own traditions. One is that I rampantly make toffee every holiday season, an enterprise that has expanded like crazy in recent years: As people hear about the toffee factory my kitchen becomes in December, I get “orders” from more people every year, and I send toffee all over the country. The amount of butter we buy at Costco is mortifying.
The other odd dish we’ve developed a slight Christmas Eve tradition around is--wait for it--fried chicken and champagne. I read a great book about food called Real Food, Fake Food by Larry Olmsted that got me into exploring varieties of specific foods: honey, olive oil, balsamic vinegar…and he mentioned that fried chicken and champagne was considered by many foodies to be the ideal pairing. I’m not especially into either one, but damned if they aren’t pretty amazing together.
Thanks to Phoebe for chatting with us and to Berkley for sharing her book with our readers.
