By Max Bowen
Award-winning
humor columnist and fiction writer Susan Reinhardt’s new book, “The Beautiful Misfits,”is a story of a mother’s love for a son who struggles with an opioid addiction. Partly inspired by events in her own life, Reinhardt explores what it’s like for a woman to walk the lines between loving and enabling.
In this interview, Susan talks about her son’s battle with addiction and how it informed the story, lessons learned from her first book, and the struggles that each character faces.
I read this was partly based on a true story. What part is true and what was created for the book?
“The Beautiful Misfits” focuses on the deadly and escalating opioid epidemic and is set in the mountains near Asheville, N.C. where I live. Parts of the novel, in order to break the tension and heavy material, are set at the cosmetics counters of a local mall where the main character Josie is a makeup artist for a high-end line. Lots of comedy and quirkiness come into play during these scenes.
After I left a long career as a syndicated humor and human-interest columnist, I took a part-time job with Lancôme, a luxury French line, and became a beauty advisor and regional makeup artist. I loved it, and decided it would become a key setting in the novel to lend humor and levity to the book.
In the book, Josie is a former celebrity news anchor who is dealing with her adult son’s addictions to opioids and other drugs as he refuses to get treatment and continues to land in jail. Josie knows she’s running out of time to save him. So the novel is a race to get him help before he succumbs to his monsters.
My own son, Niles Reinhardt, is now 30 and sober. The novel was inspired by his courage and the lengths he went to in order to get clean and start his own business. He lost so many of his friends who died from overdoses, mostly due to fentanyl-laced street drugs.
How did the real-life aspect of the story influence the characters and events?
I visited many treatment centers and interviewed those battling addictions. I based the character of Josie’s son on the patterns and lives of these active and/or recovering addicts I met. What I noticed is that treatment centers are failing, most only offering the traditional Twelve-Step programs, which are great for some, but not for all. Many of those addicted cannot make it on the Twelve Steps alone. They need other avenues to stay clean. A great many require medications to stop the cravings and block any highs. They need harm reduction skills since relapse is part of recovery and typically inevitable.
In “The Beautiful Misfits,” I created a treatment center that’s a working resort and rehab. The clients work the resort, which is a vintage camper park on a beautiful river, and are able to choose the treatments they think will work best for them. They learn new skills as they renovate the campers, run the resort and farm, and they get paid for their work. The center is run mostly by volunteers from area colleges and tech school who teach the clients various trades and engage them in relaxing hobbies such as art, massage, even dancing.
Was any time spent on research or plotting the story?
I guess you could say I spent years on research, in that I had a son who was addicted to alcohol and benzos for 10 years. I also ended up working as a Lancôme artist and advisor for five years and wrote the book while still employed with the company. This is why the scenes at the makeup counters are so authentic.
What struggles does Josie face with her son’s opioid addiction?
Throughout most of the novel, her son refuses the treatment centers she begs him to enter. Since he’s over 18, she can’t force him to get the help he needs. Josie’s main struggle is one that resonates with so many parents of those suffering addiction. And that is guilt. Josie is crushed with the guilt that she didn’t do enough, wasn’t strict enough. Guilt over divorcing her son’s father. Wondering if she’s to blame for her son’s addiction.
At the novel’s climax, she is faced with a shocking incident. I’ll stop here so I don’t spoil the twists. But I will say the novel has a wonderful ending. I don’t write novels that end poorly. I get so mad when, as a reader, I’m enjoying a book and then bam! It ends horribly.
The book eventually goes to North Carolina, where you live. How did this help with writing?
I’ve lived in the Asheville area for more than 30 years, so I consider it home, though I was raised in LaGrange, Georgia. The gorgeous mountains and the funky art-deco downtown made for a perfect setting as Asheville was long ago known as a destination where people come to heal. I guess, to a degree, people still relocate here for the same reasons. Mountains are God’s great healers. They seem to give the soul a hug.
Who is the man the Josie goes to see? What about his rehab is outlandish?
Josie runs into a man from her past, someone she encountered briefly but made a profound connection with. She discovers him again, and he’s running the out-of-the-box resort and rehab nearby. So, the novel has a slow-burn love story as well.
The man is convinced that a “pick-your-own” custom treatment facility is the answer to saving lives and reducing addiction rates. But at first, Josie isn’t sure.
This is your second novel. What lessons were learned writing “Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle,” and how did it help with the new book?
With “Chimes from a Cracked Southern Belle,” I had a top literary agent and fully believed she’d sell the novel to one of the big five publishers. We got close, but no one took the novel on. So, I researched small, reputable publishers and found the novel a home. In all, the process took five years. The big lesson I learned was patience, which isn’t one of my virtues by nature. But in this business, if you don’t have patience, you’re not going to last.
With “The Beautiful Misfits,” I wasn’t in a hurry to see it in print. I wanted to make it as strong as I could and put in years of research. Once again, I found a wonderful smaller publisher, Regal House Publishing, and am happy I went that route for this novel.
As a writer, how do you balance hope and despair as the story progresses?
That’s a great question. I’d say that being Southern helps. Actually, being human helps. Few people want to consume a diet of tragedy and angst with no sunshine and laughter thrown in for relief. It’s the same when I’m reading a novel. I want all the emotions: I want to laugh, cry, seethe, and cheer for the characters. One of my favorite novels, “Rachel’s Holiday” by Marian Keyes, does a brilliant job of this. The subject matter is about the ravages of addiction, and yet I laughed throughout the book. Keyes knows exactly when to insert comic scenes. And that’s my goal when I write as well.
“Chimes From a Cracked Southern Belle” won Best Regional Fiction in the Independent Publishers Book Awards international contest and was a No. 1 Amazon bestseller. Do awards impact how you write?
Not on a conscious level. But I think bubbling underneath the surface is that notion, that fear, that I’d better write books either equal to or better than those prior. I’m the type of writer who could revise for a century and never feel the work was ready to submit. At some point, I have to let it go. And once it’s published, I don’t read it again. It’s like when an actor says she can’t watch her movies. She’d find too much she’d want to change. I’m the same way.
