Behind Every Lie – Finding Beauty in the Broken By: Christina McDonald
I wrote Behind Every Lie in the aftermath of the news story about Chanel Miller (known at the time as Emily Doe), who was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner at Stanford University. Like many around the world, I was profoundly moved by her victim impact statement. After reading it I thought, ‘How do you go on? What does life look like after that? You’d feel so broken.’
I think we’ve all felt broken at some time in our life: we experience trauma, despair, pain that damages and distorts. Life delivers blows that knock us down, kick us around, and leave us feeling hopeless. I wanted to explore the inner journey people who’ve suffered a trauma like Chanel Miller go through in order to find completeness.
So I wrote a story that took a thriller concept and placed my protagonist around a similar situation: Eva knows she was sexually assaulted in her past, but she can’t remember it. Now, after being struck by lightning, she can’t remember something as vital as if she murdered her mother, and it further erodes her self-trust. So Eva embarks on a journey to find out who she really is and what she’s truly capable of.
I realize putting sexual assault in a book is a little taboo, but I felt it was so important for women (and men, of course) to know they have a voice. Sexual assault has often been covered in stories, but the pain is rarely explored through the victim’s eyes. It’s common to see men presented as both attacker and savior, while women as powerless, and I wanted to flip that on its head.
In doing my research and reading through things sexual assault victims said about their experience, the main theme I found was that they felt broken by what had happened to them. That they weren’t the same person they’d been before.
It was extremely important to me to get my protagonist just right. I wanted someone who’d experienced these horrible things, but had a hidden strength she never knew she had. I chose an artist, a pottery artist to be precise, to illustrate the theme of brokenness. And Eva Hansen was born.
While researching brokenness and its effects on the human psyche, I came across a Japanese art called kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold. It’s built on the ethos of finding beauty in imperfection. Much like the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, kintsugi celebrates imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness, embracing brokenness instead of hiding it in order to illustrate the strength and beauty inside.
To fully understand my protagonist, Eva, as well as the art of kintsugi, I started by taking pottery classes. I learned how to craft pots and jars and vases using lumps of clay, shaping them using a pottery wheel, and forging them in a kiln. I then learned how to break this pottery and piece it back together using kintsugi.
Because it was important that Eva didn’t remember exactly what happened the night her mother was murdered, I started researching memory and memory loss. When I came across the short-term effects of lightning strikes on memory, I knew it fit my story perfectly.
Our brains encode new memories so they can be stored and recalled later, but sometimes things happen, say getting struck by lightning, that disturbs this process. This means it can be difficult remembering things that happened around the time the lightning strike occurred.
Interestingly, some people who are struck by lightning are left with Lichtenberg Figures on their skin. These are strangely beautiful, fernlike markings that form when capillaries beneath the skin rupture from the electrical discharge.
While Eva is physically healing from the Lichtenberg Figures that have left her feeling externally broken, she’s also mentally healing from the past trauma that has left her feeling internally broken. When the detective investigating her mother Kat’s murder becomes suspicious of her, Eva decides to leave Seattle and head to London—Kat’s former home—to look for answers. While there, Eva soon realizes that someone doesn’t want her to know the truth. But with violent memories beginning to emerge, Eva doesn’t know who to trust. Least of all herself.
At the beginning of Behind Every Lie, Eva’s mother, Kat, says to her, “I’m not entirely certain one can ever become unbroken, but I do know we can be strong and brave and broken and whole all at the same time. It’s called being human.” And that right there is what I set out to say in Behind Every Lie. Threaded into the mystery of who murdered Kat is Eva discovering a strength, courage, and resilience she never knew she had while learning to embrace her flaws as part of her journey.
Nobody wants to feel broken, but in writing Behind Every Lie, I hoped to show readers that there is beauty in imperfection. That the scars of our past are a canvas for the strength and beauty we have on the inside. And as Kat says, that we can be broken and whole at exactly the same time.
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Christina McDonald is the USA Today bestselling author of The Night Olivia Fell (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books), which has been optioned for television by a major Hollywood studio. Her next book, Behind Every Lie, is out Feb 2020.
Her writing has been featured in The Sunday Times, Dublin, USAToday.com, and Expedia. Originally from Seattle, WA, she has an MA in Journalism from the National University of Ireland Galway, and now lives in London, England with her husband, two sons, and their dog, Tango.
Christina enjoys reading, hiking and lifting weights at the gym. She always wanted to be a writer, and told her earliest stories to her two younger sisters, who were her first audience, cheerleaders and sounding board. She has a BA in Communications from the University of Washington, Seattle and an MA in Journalism from the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Going to college in Ireland wasn’t part of the master plan, but happened randomly when Christina went travelling and arrived completely jet lagged at Heathrow Airport in London, caught sight of the Aer Lingus desk, and spontaneously bought a ticket to Ireland. She loved it so much she went back the following year to study.
She is currently writing her third novel.
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From the USA TODAY bestselling author of The Night Olivia Fell—an “emotionally charged mystery” (Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author)—comes a thrilling new suspense novel about the insidious nature of family secrets…and their deadly potential.
If you can’t remember it, how do you prove you didn’t do it?
Eva Hansen wakes in the hospital after being struck by lightning and discovers her mother, Kat, has been murdered. Eva was found unconscious down the street. She can’t remember what happened but the police are highly suspicious of her.
Determined to clear her name, Eva heads from Seattle to London—Kat’s former home—for answers. But as she unravels her mother’s carefully held secrets, Eva soon realizes that someone doesn’t want her to know the truth. And with violent memories beginning to emerge, Eva doesn’t know who to trust. Least of all herself.
Told in alternating perspectives from Eva’s search for answers and Kat’s mysterious past, Christina McDonald has crafted another “complex, emotionally intense” (Publishers Weekly) domestic thriller. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell’s I Found You and Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her, Behind Every Lie explores the complicated nature of mother-daughter relationships, family trauma, and the danger behind long-held secrets.
Category: On Writing
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