Five By Five: Years of research informs book on walking away from a strained relationship

By Max Bowen

In her new book, “Estranged: How Strained Female Friendships Can Be Mended or Ended,” Susan Shapiro Barash dives into the complexity of female relationships. The book, which took years to research, came about after Susan heard several stories about the difficulties in ending a relationship with a close friend or sister.

In this Five by Five, Susan talks about the inspiration behind the book and the lengthy research she did. She talks about her experience with difficult relationships and what she hopes readers take from the book.

What inspired you to write this book?
I wanted to write this book for a long while and began the research several years ago. I kept hearing stories of women 'breaking up' with a close female friend or a sister and how distraught there were. I was also hearing about a shift in attitude and rather than be ashamed and/or devastated, many reported they felt free and as if they had some agency.

What kind of research was done?
I interviewed 150 women for this project and did a questionnaire with another 111 women. This was comprised of a diverse group of women from across the country. I researched studies, read articles and books about relationships, friendships and looked at pop culture, fiction and history in terms of female bonds.

In writing this book, what reasons did you learn as to why it can be difficult to walk away from a broken friendship?
It is difficult for women of all ages to leave an unhealthy friendship. The reasons include: secrets shared, the years of being close now disintegrating, the societal message that our female friends are our support system, losing ground socially — especially if two friends are in the same group, being judged, being alone, no longer being included.

I was intrigued by the different examples of unhealthy friendships. What’s your experience been with these types?
The types of friendships I established for this book are the result of the 150 interviews. After listening I realized that the interviewees fell into these 'categories.' The scenarios and issues that emerged were familiar and happened frequently. Each 'type' of friend resonates on some level—Like most of you, I have encountered a few along the way. What matters is that we 'wake up' and see the friendship for what it is and consider the value or lack of value.

What do you hope readers take from this book?
My hope is that women identify with the interviewees' narratives and realize they can estrange from an unhealthy friendship, regardless of the history and attachment. That there is power and positivity in doing so. It is liberating and gives women more voice and confidence in themselves. There is no reason to stay in an emotionally abusive, negative friendship, no matter than our culture tells us we are bffs forever. It isn't always so and my findings show that females are beginning to own this, happily.

Don Silver’s new book takes on a powerful coming-of-age story

Many know Don Silver for years in the music industry as a producer, talent scout and much more. But Silver’s also an accomplished author, as we see in his soon-to-be-released book, Scorched (May 7, Holloway Press). Here’s a look at what’s in store:

After his father's sudden death, 14-year-old Jonas tries to support himself and his mother by selling weed and tranquilizers at parties–until he gets busted and sent to a boarding school for fatherless boys. To survive Lafayette Academy, Jonas and his four roommates form a tight bond. The boys vow to have each others’ backs for life--but that promise is broken the weekend before graduation when they’re drawn into a violent encounter that results in a man’s death. Twenty years later, when one of his old roommates shows up unannounced, Jonas is forced to confront his complicated past once and for all.

Max and Don talk about the origins of the book, how he got into the head of Jonas, and how the main character changed over the course of the writing process. Don talks about how he got into writing in the first place and three books later, if he feel he has “arrived.”

This is Don’s second book in the “coming-of-age” genre and we go into what about this type of story appeals to him. We also shed light on the rest of the cast, and how they grow the story in different ways.

Children’s story takes inspiration from real-life friendship

By Max Bowen

Bridget Hodder

“The Promise,” co-authored by Fawzia Gilani Williams and Bridget Hodder, came to life after Williams read a news account of two friends, one of whom pledged to watch over a family graveyard. Though not quite appropriate for a children’s story, it nonetheless inspired the two to craft their own viewpoint of it.

In this interview, Hodder shares how the story came to be, the significane of the interfaith friendship, and her time working with Williams.



Tell me about the true story that inspired this book.
“The Promise” is an all-ages picture book about blooming in the face of adversity and the power of friendship to endure through war, separation and the passage of time. It's loosely based on the story of two best friends in Morocco during and after WWII, which my co-author Fawzia Gilani Williams discovered in a newspaper article and eagerly shared with me. The newspaper piece particularly sparked our interest because one of the friends in the article was a Muslim, and one was a Jew—just like Fawzia and me—and interfaith friendship is one of our primary inspirations.

Fawzia wrote a first draft of “The Promise” that hewed closely to Moishe and Lahcen's original experience, including the central fact that when Jewish Moishe and his family left Morocco after the war to seek safety in Israel, Muslim Lahcen stayed behind and faithfully tended Moishe's family graveyard for 60 years.

But the graveyard motif didn't sit well with our editor's idea of what might appeal to children. So, I suggested that the meaning would still be exactly parallel if we changed the graveyard into a garden...and the whole lovely tale of growth, faith, and love flowed naturally from that one altered detail.


What’s the significance of the interfaith friendship between the two characters?
As a Sephardic Jew, I come from a cultural background on my mother's side that incorporates the centuries-old traditions of Jewish and Muslim Spain, along with the 500 years my family spent in the Muslim Ottoman Empire after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. My grandmother was born into the Ottoman Empire before the Greeks took over her homeland and turned the Jews over to the Nazis.

We Sephardim are a little-known but proud minority in Judaism, and to write about who we are, we must also celebrate the Muslim influences that helped shape our cultural identity. One of the reasons I work with Fawzia is to do just that: to show through our books that Jews and Muslims have a long history of positive interaction and mutual learning, and to sow hope and peace like flowers in young hearts.



This is your second book written with Fawzia. What is your collaboration process and how did it change with this book?
Working with Fawzia is a joy, even though we are separated by space and by time zones—she lives in the UAE most of the year, and I live in Massachusetts. Our collaborative process relies a lot on email and Zoom!

Our first co-authored book, a Kirkus-starred middle grade time travel adventure called “The Button Box,” released in 2022, and took about two years to write together with a lot of back-and-forth. Fawzia has published many picture books before, including the award-winning interfaith work “Yaffa and Fatima: Shalom, Salaam,” so she had a good vision already for how the book would look and feel. As a result, writing “The Promise” took about half the time of “The Button Box.”



I really loved the illustrations by Cinzia Battistel. How did you meet up and what was the process working with them?
We love the illustrations, too! I cried when I first saw our ideas expressed so beautifully in her art. Unless a picture book author is both a writer and an illustrator, the selection of the artist is up to the publisher. So, when the team at our publisher chose Cinzia, Fawzia and I were thrilled.

When we got the first sketches from Cinzia, they were already nearly perfect. We were able to suggest tweaks for details and cultural authenticity, which she took care of on the very next round of sketches. The whole process was a very harmonious and peaceful one—in keeping with the topic of the book!