“The Conceivable Future” examines raising a family amidst the climate crisis

By Max Bowen

With dramatic changes in the environment happening at an increasing rate, having a family takes on a whole new meaning. In “The Conceivable Future,” authors Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli looks at reproduction in the context of climate change and the issues at hand.

In this interview, Kallman and Ferorelli talk about the importance of a book like this in the here and now, concerns they’ve heard others express about starting a family, and their activism work.

What’s the importance of a book like this during the current climate crisis?
For the past 10 years we’ve directed Conceivable Future, an organization that we founded to help people address their questions of: can I have a baby when the world is on fire? How do I parent the children I have in the face of such a massive crisis?

When we understand how climate change is harming and restricting our reproductive lives, the whole story–and playbook of solutions to the climate crisis–changes. “The Conceivable Future,” which comes out on Feb. 6, 2024, is that story, and that playbook. For us, reproduction isn’t the whole story, but it reveals the heart of the story. We think of it like a core sample: a cylindrical section of something—ice, earth, or a tree, for instance—that cuts through all the layers, revealing its nature and changes through time. A focus on reproduction in the context of climate change exposes the same unjust core that has inspired many other social movements; it shows us what’s at issue, for all of us.

One of the reasons we think this book is so important is because family planning is at the heart of all human understanding of the future. It is the most personal, the most direct and important connection we have to the shape of our future.

Even so, these concerns have been treated, first, as the province of women; and second, as a footnote to the 'real' story, the boardrooms-and-geopolitics-and-ice-shelves story. So we’re here to say that we are each a part of the real story of the climate crisis. When we share our hopes and fears without judgment, it can bring us together, help show us what we need, and how much power we have to change the institutions of our lives. And when we understand, together, what we cherish, and what our rights are, it helps illuminate the path forward. In other words: reproduction is a lens we can see through to understand both what we’re up against, and how we become bigger than the challenges that we face.

What are the concerns about starting a family that you’ve seen?
Generally speaking, people’s concerns fall somewhere along a spectrum, where on one end is “what harm will my baby do to the world?” and on the other is “what harm will a hotter, more dangerous, less just world do to my baby?” It’s through these fears and concerns that the stakes of the problem become clear. And many people also reflected on the kind of loneliness that our nuclear-family focus and social isolation have created: “If I don’t have my own children, how will I have children in my life?”

But beyond that, we’ve found that people’s climate concerns are woven tightly to all the other ways life has gotten less forgiving, more demanding for everyone but the billionaire class. In other words, worries about climate are linked to worries about accessibility of care, exposure to pollution, the limits of gender roles and an economy that is set up to exclude people–just to name a few.

Prospective parents worry about their job and housing insecurity, about the cost and inadequacy of their healthcare (especially prenatal and birthing care, especially for women of color), about access to affordable childcare, decent schools and healthy foods. Many people–seeing how racism, class inequality, and other forms of injustice are built into our culture and institutions–recognize the additional challenges and dangers they will face as parents, and that their children will confront.

People also see the huge tradeoff that parents make with their finite resources of time, money, and energy. In other words, time spent parenting often means there’s no time available for anything else, including organizing and activism, or community work.

We will note though, that none of these contemporary conditions are intrinsic to parenting. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to create a culture that is supportive of parents and families, of young and old people, single people and partnered people, of small and large communities. Figuring out how we do that, and how we get there, are the aims of this book.

I read that this is an expansion of your activism. How so?
While we’ve gotten a lot of press coverage of Conceivable Future’s work over the years, it’s pretty hard to express this topic’s necessary nuance in short articles. Writing this book gave us the time and space to tell the Conceivable Future story on its own terms. For the first several years of our organizing, we were mostly in listening mode. Our organizing started because we felt that there are enough external forces that want to decide for young people what our bodies “should”—and “should not”—do, and all the while we were careening towards the brink with politicians and leaders ignoring the dangers in our path. To us, the generative move was to illuminate that path by making a place for people to think, listen, and talk without fear of judgment, censure, or bossing. The resulting conversations taught us ten times more than we set out to learn. And so the book shares what we learned.

 

As organizers, we’ve been having various versions of the same two-hour/1,200-word conversation for years. But as authors, we’ve been able to delve into the history of gender and reproduction-focused social movements, the data about how fossil fuels are harming pregnancy outcomes and infant/child health right now. This is a huge, and criminally underreported story. We’ve been able to more fully outline community organizing practices, and explore the work that people all over the country are doing to address the climate crisis in real time. So we aimed to write the guide to meaningful climate action that we wish we’d been able to find in bookstores 15 years ago, when we were coming of age and looking for help.

Is there a central message or theme to this book?
There are a few things we hope every reader takes away from this book. They are:

The climate crisis is making family planning harder, scarier, and more stressful, but that doesn’t mean that “no, you shouldn’t have kids, or yes, you should have kids.” There is no ‘correct’ answer to an impossible question–we’re not here to boss anyone around. The real questions that can direct our activism are: why is it easier to tell young people, especially women, what to do with our bodies, than to tell corporations what to do with their pollution? Why is it so fuel-intensive (and expensive) to have a kid at this moment in history? The climate crisis is not your fault (or your baby’s fault), but it is all of our responsibility to heal it. How do we take care of each other, and all the different kinds of families and communities, in which we live? How do we grow justice-based social movements to the scale and impact that we need to right this ship, in the limited time we have?

This book is about how we help each other keep ourselves and our loved ones safe, by making a world that’s fairer and safer for everyone.

For those who wish to become involved in an activist role, what would be your advice?
We know that climate fears in isolation can be a terrible experience, and it makes people feel helpless. The antidote to that isolation is connection.

The first step is to find your people—Social change is social. It has to be undertaken with others. Look around and figure out who is doing (or wants to be doing) climate work in your local community. Lots of climate organizing groups already exist around the country, like the Sunrise Movement, Mothers Out Front, or the Climate Reality Project. If such a group exists in your area, that’s probably the easiest place to start. But if there aren’t pre-existing groups, or you can team up with one or more like-minded friends or acquaintances (through any kind of social connection, or work connection, or religious connection) with the goal of tackling something big.

The second step is to find your project—Once you’ve connected with a group, you can start brainstorming about what affects you. We tend to think of activism as falling into two categories, what we call the Big No (stopping bad stuff that leads to more harm) and the Big Yes (creating/supporting the good stuff that leads to the world we want). Another way to think about the Big Yes is: what are the barriers to the good thing (more renewables, better recycling, etc), and how do we get rid of them?

Both kinds of projects are urgently needed, so follow your gut to find work that moves you. Whether you go for a Big No or a Big Yes, any worthwhile project will be:

· Bigger than you. That is, a project that will also affect other people’s lives, and that you can’t accomplish alone.

· Inspiring to you. Even if it’s not ‘fun’, it feels worth doing.

· Powered by a vision of a life worth living. You can see the connection between your part and the bigger whole.

· Possible. That is: a project, not a general idea. You can see it through in this lifetime. Maybe this decade or year.

This is where drawing from local community issues can help. For instance: does your school, workplace, or labor union have a climate adaptation policy and a disaster preparedness plan? Does it have sustainability commitments, and has it divested its retirement plan and endowments from fossil fuels? Can it participate in a community-based renewables program? These are the kinds of projects that matter so much.

The third step is to find your voice—This is the community-organizing part of the work; we build people power by being loud. Whatever change you are attempting, let everyone know, from your HOA to your classmates (or parents’ group) to your representatives. Every action is doubled in strength when it also builds people-power. Most people are worried about climate change, and looking (or just waiting) for something useful they can actually do. Most people are troubled by the harm, waste, and exploitation that is built into our society. People may offer you out their own invitations, know-how, and resources once they know you care. If you are looking for more training and resources, there are groups that offer formal community organizing workshops, like the Midwest Academy. These can be inspiring and helpful—although not necessary.

Finally, when we’re collaborating with others, an invitational, non-judgmental stance works best. Everyone brings their own story to climate justice work, and we all start from different places. People pitch in when they feel welcomed and valued, and we need to build welcome, justice, and resilience every step of the way.

A new project and a musical reunion for Lovina Falls

If you’ve been in the Boston music scene, the name Valerie Forgione is likely a familiar one. She made her name as the lead singer of the band Mistle Thrush, and now she’s back with a new solo project, Lovina Falls—trust me, this is one to check out.

In this episode (the first recorded in 2024), Valerie and Max talk about the origins of Lovina Falls, the name of which is family-inspired. While all the music was written, arranged and produced by Valerie, she had some help in the recording portion—from none other than her former bandmates in Mistle Thrush.

We talk about the sound of the debut album, “Calculating the Angle of Our Descent,” how it’s defined, and what we can expect from this great solo project. Valerie had been out of the music scene for a little while, and shares how it feels to be back on stage.

Opening this episode is a brief excerpt from the song “Vaulted,” and closing it is the complete “Hologram,” both of which you can find on the Lovina Falls debut album.

Wage members bring past band experience and life lessons to new project

By Max Bowen

Since 2022, the California-based band Wage has been busy in the studio and making the radio rotations with their debut album, “What Are The Odds?” But this is far from their first time in the spotlight. The band’s members come with a wealth of experience, and in this interview, they share past projects, how Wage came together, and what we can expect from them in the near future.

What kind of experience does each member of the band bring?
Decades of experience, lol! We all have a ton of recording under our belts working on multiple independently-produced albums, live shows, and touring. Scott and Paul, aside from Wage, worked relentlessly in the band Last Issue for years. Roeland went on tour overseas with his band, Old Man Down, and played for US Army troops. Jason’s band, Dr. Package, had a song on KROQ FM in LA for a bit, live TV performances, brand name apparel sponsorship, and was voted best band in Orange County in 2005 by OC Weekley magazine. But the real experiences come from off stage. The life lessons we learn and incorporate into our music. Love, loss and redemption, those are the ingredients to music that moves and inspires.

How did the band come together?
We met through summer jobs in high school. Just starting to play our respected instruments, learning covers, we gravitated towards each other and began writing our own stuff. Throughout the 90’s Jason, Roeland and Scott played together in the band Minimum Wage. We recorded an album and gigged to support it. We split up to try other ventures. Scott and Roeland continued with MW and added Paul to the mix. Years later Jason and Scott would go on to form Dr. Package. Then Scott left to start Last Issue with Paul.

You see, we were always jamming together no matter what groups we were in. Even while in separate bands we would gig together. Then, life happened, marriages, kids, so we all took breaks to be with our families. In 2022, Scott got that songwriting itch again and arranged for us to get together. It was like no time was lost. The language that we created together was still there. Only this time, it was mature, seasoned, kind of like when you open a vintage bottle of wine and let it breathe for a period to allow it to fully bloom, releasing its fragrances. We were ready. It was time.

Since the band formed in 2022, what have you been up to?
The main thing we collectively wanted to do was record. Gotta have songs first! We wrote together, wrote separately, sometimes over the phone if we couldn’t be in the same space. Once we fine-tuned the songs we had, we recorded our debut EP, “What are the odds?” at Iron Tracks Studio. We also made a video to accompany the release of our first single, “Wreckage” with Joe Lomelli Productions.

Then it was time to release it into the wild. The response has been great! Three of our tracks are in rotation on FM stations in various parts of the world. A feat that was so hard to do when we started years ago only loaded with demo tapes and postage stamps. We’ve been a featured artist on Lonely Oak radio in San Diego and Only Rock Radio in Spain. Album reviews and podcasts help us cast our sonic net.

I saw that the band’s based out of Brea, Cali. Any good venues in that area?
Orange County, California, had a pretty good music scene years ago. Most of those clubs have gone out of business or closed due to the pandemic. The fun places to play are the local bars and breweries where there’s not a lot of pressure. House of Blues in Anaheim is still a pretty good gig for local acts and major acts passing through town. The medium-sized venues have always been pay to play. Meaning if you don’t sell the minimum number of tickets, you owe the club money. Not always easy for a Tuesday night 11 p.m. slot. So, to answer your question, any venue is a good venue for us.

What’s on your to-do list this year?
We are currently in the process of writing songs for a follow up to, “What are the odds?”. Shows are starting to line up now. Not just parties and family, but gigs where people pay to see us. We got into this to rekindle our passion for music and to have fun. Remembering the latter half of that statement is important, fun. We are still quite involved in various stages of raising our kids, providing for our families, being supportive partners. The music is therapeutic. The music helps us tap into that section of the brain that often lays dormant. It’s healthy. It’s exciting! It is right and just. None of us have delusions of grandeur about the path ahead. We’re here to create and have a good time. It’s exactly what it needs to be.


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Film script inspires writer’s time-traveling YA novel

By Max Bowen

Hang onto those ideas, writers—you never know when they’ll come in handy.

Michael Dubrow’s inspiration for his young adult novel, “Always Agnes” came while working on a film set and stayed with him through the years. Partially inspired by his own family, the book, released through Brother Mockingbird Press, centers on a woman named Agnes her journey through time to save her mother.

In this interview, Michael explains the book’s origin, creating unlikable characters, and his lengthy writing background and how this helped with the story.

What was the inspiration for this book?
The 48 Hour Film Project is a contest where competing production crews have 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit a short film based on a genre drawn at the kickoff. In 2014, I joined a production crew as a co-writer. We were spit-balling script ideas, and I suggested a funny story about a woman going back in time to stop her mother from sleeping with the wrong man. We ended up writing a different script, but the idea stuck with me.

I didn’t become obsessed with writing it as a time travel novel until I decided the reason the daughter went back in time was to save the mother in the present. That unselfish love between mother and daughter hooked me. Before my mother-in-law passed away, she and my wife were very close. They called each other many times a day. I saw first-hand how deep a mother daughter relationship can be. In a way, this novel is a tribute to mother daughter relationships that can messy and complicated and unbreakable.

Tell me about Agnes Cook and how this character was created?
Agnes Cook is a 17-year-old genius who invents a time machine and uses it to go back to the night her parents created her and stop them from having sex. She knows doing this will delete her existence, but she is convinced this is the only way to save her mother in the future.

I based her in part of some super smart people I know who had a lot of book knowledge, but their social skills and common sense were weak. I like a character who is a bit unlikeable. Her flaws made her more real for me.

You have an impressive writing background. Did this help when it came to this novel?
Thank you for the compliment. Just like a musician or an artist, a writer needs to practice to become a decent storyteller. I’ve written both fiction and non-fiction, short and long form. My 30-plus years doing television promotions was very beneficial. During most of those years, I promoted movies, which meant I had to watch a ton of movies. Action movies, horror movies, dramas, comedies, fantasies, I promoted whatever I was assigned.

As I watched the movies, I absorbed elements of storytelling. But the most important thing I learned working in television was how to overcome writer’s block. I couldn’t promote a movie after it aired. I had to have a script before deadline, or I would be out of a job. I learned how to ignore my inner voice of doubt and play with ideas until I came up with something.

Given that this is a YA novel, how did that impact the cast or story?
Someone asked me if the story had a happy ending because it was a YA novel and I explained that it had a happy ending because I wanted it to have one. But it was a valid question in that a YA novel no matter how grim should have some ray of hope at the end. Also, because it was a YA novel, it was important that Agnes solve her problem. She could get assistance from adults, but this was her adventure. She needed to find the answer on her own.

What’s next for you?
I just completed an urban fantasy about a rabbi who uses traditional Jewish magic to solve mysteries. He frees a family who have been trapped in a time bubble for a hundred years which ignites a feud with another rabbi who uses traditional Jewish magic. The working title is “Sadie Dreams of Coney Island.”

Thirteen journeys into the wild are captured in “Solo Passage”

Over the course of several years, author and artist Glenda Goodrich discovered herself through a series if wilderness quests. 

Traveling into the remote wilds of Oregon, Washington and California, she learned about life, death and what it means to be happy—and chronicled those experiences in her new book, “Solo Passage: 13 Quests, 13 Questions.”

In this episode, Glenda talks about the inspiration for her journeys and what she experienced while on them. We talk about the things she learned and how it’s influenced the person she is now. 

She also talks about the decision to write the book and the editing process—both with an editor and a writing group—that shaped the final product.

Kaitlyn Croker explores Nashville and her musical styles

Currently residing in Nashville, singer-songwriter Kaitlyn Croker has made a name for herself with her debut singles, “Dead Man Walking” and “You’re the Hero.” 

In this interview, Max and Curtis talk about these two songs and their varied styles. Kaitlyn talks about how she’s been exploring music and some potential new paths she’d like to walk.

“You’re the Hero” has a very personal connection, as it’s a reflection on military families. Kaitlyn’s father was a fighter pilot for 26 years and now works for the Pentagon and she talks about her experiences being in a military family.

Raised in Maryland, Kaitlyn recently made the trek to Nashville and she shares some of her experiences there. She also talks about the influence of the city and how she’s changed as an artist.

Opening this episode is an excerpt from “Dead Man Walking” and closing this out is “You’re the Hero.”

 

Zombies and dream horror in Crystal Lake double-header

In this episode, we’re talking to four of the horrific minds behind two recent releases by Crystal Lake Publishing: “Never Wake: An Anthology of Dream Horror” and “Dark Tide 10: The Dead Shall Rise.”

In the first interview, Max talks with Kenneth Cain and Tim Meyer, the editors of this collection of short stories with a dream horror theme. We talk about what dream horror is and how the different authors express it in their stories.

Kenneth and Tim go into the editing process and how they worked with the different authors to improve their work while at the same time preserving their original voice. We talk about the book’s cover art, which has a wonderfully trippy cover.

Following this, Max and Curtis are chatting with Armand Rosamilia and Erin Louis, two of the three writers who contributed to ‘The Dead Shall Rise,” a collection of zombie stories. Jay Wilburn, who wrote “Prepare Because Death is Coming” passed away in 2022. Armand and Erin talk about Jay’s story and their experience with him as a writer and friend.

We also go into their stories—Armand’s has a family on vacation when the zombie apocalypse breaks out and Erin’s main character Tiffney leading a group of survivors at a strip club assaulted by the living dead. Both talk about their interest in zombies and the new directions that this book took them in.

Family history and the steel mill inform this coming-of-age story

By Max Bowen

Jerry Madden’s new novel “Steel Valley: Coming of Age in the Ohio Valley in the 1960s” (Potomac Publishing) touches on his life in the Steel Valley. Madden’s book reflects on his time Ohio and includes staples like Friday night football, dances in the school gym and unforgettable first loves.

In this interview, Jerry talks about star-crossed lovers Laurie and Jack and how their relationship starts and grows over the years, how his background informed the story, and what readers can expect next.


Tell me about Jack Clark and Laurie Carmine’s romance and how it begins and grows?
The story begins in 1960 when Jack Clark and Laurie Carmine are 12 years old. The setting is Steubenville, Ohio, a steel mill town of 40,000 along the Ohio River about 30 miles south of where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet at the foot of Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River. Large numbers of AFL-CIO union workers were Catholic Irish, Italian and Polish. Because of the cheap labor of the nuns, parishes operated tuition-free elementary schools (grades one through eight). A number of those parishes were predominantly Irish, Italian or Polish with the others being a combination of those three nationalities.

Jack Clark, the oldest of nine children, whose father worked at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, lived in a small town, Mingo Junction, a town of 5,000, three miles downstream from Steubenville.

Jack’s first five years of life, however, took place in a new upper middle-class neighborhood in East Memphis, Tennessee. Both of Jack’s parents grew up in the Ohio Valley, but when WW II started Jack’s dad dropped out of college, joined the Navy, and served with distinction in the South Pacific. After the war, his dad did not return to college and his mother dropped out of nursing school.

They moved to Memphis to start a new life outside of the valley. His dad was an only child and with both parents recently deceased, they bought a house with his dad’s inheritance and his dad started a successful business. But because of fraud by his dad’s business partner, the family is forced to move back to the Ohio Valley, penniless. His dad finds work in the steel mill. Jack feels like he has landed on an alien planet. He yearns to grow-up and leave the Ohio Valley behind. He attends St. Agnes Elementary School in Mingo Junction, whose students are a mix of Irish, Italian or Polish.

Laurie Carmine, Italian and youngest of two girls, attends St. Anthony’s located in the south end of Steubenville, almost entirely Italian. She is the daughter of a physician in Steubenville and lives in an upscale part of town. Her dad is a first generation American who worked his way through school and after storming the beaches at Normandy, took advantage of the GI Bill’s education benefits. Her dad raises her to look beyond the limited horizons of the Ohio Valley so as not to get trapped in a life of living paycheck to paycheck.

Jack and Laurie first become aware of each other in the seventh grade when St. Agnes plays St. Anthony’s in basketball. Jack is a good player and Laurie is a cheerleader. Jack couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

All the Catholic grade schools fed into the Catholic high school in Steubenville (Catholic Central High School), and Jack and Laurie end up sitting next to each other in homeroom for four years because homerooms and seating was determined alphabetically. Jack is painfully thin, has All-American looks, and is a good athlete. Laurie is a confident, self-possessed teenager who is a straight A student. Despite his shyness, Jack manages to at least dance with her occasionally at the weekly school dance and their sitting next to each other in homeroom ensures that they are constantly in each other’s orbits. The reader learns through Laurie’s best friend that Laurie finds something attractive about Jack—unbeknownst to her the result of spending the first five years of his life outside the valley—that is different than the other boys she meets.

Jack realizes his dream of leaving the Ohio Valley when he lands a basketball scholarship at a top basketball college, while Laurie goes to the local college on a full academic scholarship.

When Jack’s dad is temporarily paralyzed by an accident in the mill, Jack is forced to leave college and return home to help the family. Jack transfers his college credits to the local college. The transfer provides him with another chance to pursue Laurie but their paths never cross due to Jack working part-time in the mill. Living at home and working in the mill take a toll on Jack’s grades and jeopardize his dream of going to law school.

Eventually, Jack’s dad’s paralysis resolves, and he returns to work. Jack earns a basketball scholarship as a walk-on and moves to campus. Meanwhile, Laurie decides to study abroad in Paris for her junior year. Jack finds that because the basketball season spans both semester his grades continue to suffer.

Early in his senior year, he bumps into Laurie on campus and learns that she is dating a student, Michael Costa, who also studied abroad in Paris during the last semester of his junior year. Jack learns that Costa’s father is an executive in New Jersey with a Fortune 100 company.

Soon after basketball season ends in early February, Jack bumps into Laurie downtown and learns she is engaged to Michael and the wedding is set for late June 1969, just a month after graduation.

At that point, Jack feels as though he has hit rock bottom. He decides that if he is going to realize his dream of going to law school, he’s going to need to retake both semesters of his senior year. Because the U.S. has 500,000 troops in Vietnam on one-year rotations, Jack is sure that if he goes ahead and graduates in May 1969, he will be drafted and sent to Vietnam. He decides to proactively deal with his draft situation and signs up to go to Marine Officers’ Candidate School in Quantico. He drops out of college just before the end of the semester.

The news that Jack quit school and is headed for the Marines—and almost certainly Vietnam—catches Laurie off guard and forces long-held emotions to the surface.

When his fraternity brothers arrange a farewell get-together at a place called The Creeks, a remote spot about five miles from campus where college students occasionally congregated to socialize, Laurie, whose fiancé is in New Jersey, decides to go with her best friend Emma. No longer having the luxury of time, as the party starts to unwind and the sun starts to set, Jack asks Laurie if she would like to go for a walk with him up a grass field, where they can watch the sun set. As they are climbing the gently rising hill, Jack finally tells her he has been in love with her since the first time he saw her in seventh, and Laurie realizes her strong feelings for Jack. They end up making love.

However, the next day—the day before Jack is to leave for Quantico—Laurie tells Jack that it was a mistake that she gave in to her feelings for him and that it’s just too late for them because she is to marry Michael at the end of June.

Jack goes off to OCS and then to Vietnam. Laurie marries Michael and they settle in Shadyside, a suburb of Pittsburgh, where they are high school teachers at different schools.

Soon Laurie realizes that her period is late and that the father could only be Jack because she did not have intercourse again with Michael until after their wedding day at the end of June.

From there, both Laurie’s and Jack’s lives take off in different directions neither could have anticipated nor desired. Although the life that supported their youth is falling away, the values instilled in them have prepared them to participate fully in the American mainstream, either together or apart.

How do they re-enter their lives and what happens?
Laurie decides that the least bad option is to tell Michael she is pregnant but not tell him about paternity. He is overwhelmed with joy. Although she feels immediate relief, as the months pass the conflict between not wanting to hurt Michael and her values grows. She seeks both spiritual and psychological assistance and is preparing to tell Michael when he is killed in a freak car accident. This news aggravates her preeclampsia, and the condition becomes life-threatening. She has an emergency C-section. She then moves to North Arlington, Virginia, to live with her sister, Alessa, who has a 3-year old daughter. Both sisters are working part-time—Alessa as a lawyer at the Department of Justice and Laurie as a substitute teacher at St. Rita’s Elementary School—and share childcare responsibilities.

Just as Laurie is about to start teaching full time in the fall of 1970, she learns that Jack is missing in action and presumed dead. She had written several letters telling him he was the father of Olivia but could not bring herself to mail them. The news sends her into emotional freefall. She eventually convinces her sister, who is having difficulty having a second child, to raise her daughter, Olivia, as her own. Laurie then goes off to join the Carmelites, a denomination of cloistered nuns in Loretta, PA.

Three years later, as she is about to take her permanent vows, she learns that Jack was on the last plane of POWs released from Hanoi. She decides to take a year’s leave of absence and returns to live with her sister in Arlington. Olivia now believes that Alessa is her mother. Meanwhile, Jack retakes his senior year and gets straight As. He is accepted to law school at Georgetown University in D.C.

The evening of his graduation, Jack attends a graduation dance and scholarship fund raiser along with some fraternity brothers. Late in the evening, he sees Laurie coming down the steps to the dance floor where she sits with her friend, Emma, and her date. She is fashionably dressed, and Jack thinks she looks more beautiful than ever. Laurie came to the dance knowing that Jack would be there and determined to tell him that he is the father of Olivia. But, when he tells her of his plans to attend law school, she decides not to tell him, because she knows that going to law school has been his life-long dream. If she told him, she believed he would give up law school and marry her instead, and in time he would come to resent her.

The story continues to unfold from that point.

Tell me about the backdrop of the 1950s-1960s and what influence it has on the story?
In the 1960s, Steubenville, like thousands of similar towns in the United States, was a thriving city, supported by an industrial or manufacturing base. First and second generation Americans with European ancestors were rising into the middle class thanks to the well-paying union jobs and tuition-free parochial schools. The downtown consisted of over 90 businesses from national department stores, local clothing and jewelry stores, banks, furniture stores, restaurants, and much more. Class distinctions were nearly non-existent because most families were mill families or were supported by the resulting thriving economy. Juvenile delinquency was rare, as Life Magazine reported in a feature story about the Upper Ohio Valley in the early 1960s, because sports kept most of the male students in school and off the streets. Hundreds of them earned a ticket out of the valley in the form of college sports scholarships, predominantly football, to schools like Ohio State, Nebraska, Indiana, Notre Dame, and Yale.

That is the backstory.

You grew up in Steel Valley. How did this help you when it came to worldbuilding the story?
They say write about what you know, so having grown up in the area was essential to writing this story. If you looked at the valley from the outside at the time, all you would see is smoke and soot in the air. You would not see that the steel industry and the parochial schools were supporting and shepherding a whole generation of post-WWII children on their way to the American mainstream.

How does the disappearance of the steel industry and parochial school impact the area and the nation at large?
In the late 1960s, simultaneously but for completely different reasons, both the steel industry and the parochial schools became financially untenable. Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, like most steel mills in America, was slow to modernize. As the rest of the world recovered from the devastation of WWII by building new and more efficient mills, the U.S. industry could no longer compete effectively, exacerbated ironically by the well-paying union jobs. The decline was exasperated by the rising use of plastics to replace the use of steel.

At the same time, after the conclusion of Vatican II, when the Catholic Church did away with many of the vestiges of the middle-ages, including relaxing the requirement that the nuns wear habits, the nuns began a mad dash for the exits. From a high of nearly 200,000 nationwide in 1965, their ranks dropped by 70,000 within 10 years, and continued to freefall from there. Today, the vast majority of the approximately 30,000 Catholic nuns are over 70 years old, and less than 5 percent are under 50 years old. As a result, the parochial schools were no longer financially viable and closed.

The twin punches led to deep declines in population, resulting in hopelessness among the unskilled laborers that remained. The 2000 census noted that the Steubenville area lost more population than any other area of the country.

When J.D. Vance, in “Hillbilly Elegy,” writes about the hopelessness in this area of the United States, he is writing about what remains of this once vibrant way of life. My book is to remind the nation of what was lost by outsourcing our industrial base overseas. The costs have been incalculable.

What’s next for you?
Parts of my Irish ancestors—the Clarks and the Blees—came to the United States in the early 1800s. They were among the very first pioneers to populate the upper Midwest, in particular Indiana, where their only neighbors were Native Americans. The Maddens came because of the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s. Several of my ancestors fought in the Civil War on the side of the North, like many Irish.

I am fortunate that anecdotal family histories, stemming from about 1820 to the early 1900s have survived. Some of these stories are priceless and nothing like them exists in novels that I am aware of about life during that period of American history. So that’s my next project. To bring that history to life in a way that reflects more closely what it was really like.