When Your Father Reads Your Novel Inspired by his Life

By Lisa Montanaro

My father doesn’t really read. Well, okay, he reads boating magazines and car manuals, but not books. Certainly not novels. And yet, when I received the publishing deal for my debut novel, he called, and after congratulating me, said, “So, when am I going to read this manuscript?”

“You want to read the manuscript?” I asked. “But you don’t really read?

He chuckled. “Well, I want to read this. You wrote it and it’s based on my life. Send it to me.”

And so, I did.

Or rather, I procrastinated for weeks.

Why, you ask? Because deep down, I was nervous. It’s not every day you decide to write a novel inspired by your parents’ story. My father is still alive. He is a young and healthy eighty-plus year-old living in Los Angeles. Sadly, my mother is deceased. She passed away too soon at the age of sixty-three from pancreatic cancer.

When I first came up with the idea for this book, it was a series of personal essays based on some journal entries that I wrote on my very first trip to Italy in 2005. Fast forward ten years later to 2015 when I visited Italy again (Are you sensing a theme here? Italy inspires creativity for me!), and I circled back to those same journal entries, and realized I wanted to expand them. But something kept nagging at me. I didn’t really want to write a memoir. Many of the experiences I wanted to write about either happened before I was born, when I was very young, or when I wasn’t physically present. I wanted the freedom to imagine the complete story, even the parts of it I didn’t live or experience myself.

I started by asking my father if I could interview him. I approached it as a researcher, spending a lot of time with him on the phone and taking copious notes. And something fascinating happened. Often, he would tell me the facts, and I would seem surprised and question him, saying something like, “Are you sure about that? Is it possible it happened like this? Is it possible you felt this way?”

The first few times, he laughed it off. But after a while, he stopped and asked me a very important question: “Are you sure you don’t want to write a novel?”

That question changed the trajectory of my writing and launched my fiction author career. Because the answer was yes, I wanted to write a novel. 

I then spent the next six years from 2016 to 2022 drafting my debut novel. It was a long, scary, wonderful, beautiful, therapeutic, sometimes angst-ridden, but always rewarding, journey. That journey comprised mining the real-life experiences that would inspire the fictionalized story and converting previously written personal essays into fiction. It also included taking tons of writing workshops on craft, especially description and dialogue, two areas that were not required, or used often, in my many years as a non-fiction writer. I also found the wonderful writing communities that would take me under their wings, and connected with my amazing writing and critique partner, who has stuck by my side faithfully during this entire process. I wrote draft after draft, worked with a book coach, solicited the feedback of beta readers, and revised and rewrote the manuscript countless times.

I finally found myself with a finished manuscript, and, after submitting to the publishing gatekeepers, was grateful that Red Adept Publishing plucked my novel out of the submissions pile and offered me a publishing contract. When I called my father to tell him the news, we both cried. But he still hadn’t read the manuscript.

I eventually got up the nerve to mail him a copy. And then he started reading and reading and reading. He told me he would sit by the ocean on his lunch hour from work and read the manuscript. This couldn’t be more appropriate for my novel. The ocean, water, and boats play a pivotal role in the book and show up frequently. Without even intending to, my father stayed “on brand” even while reading the manuscript.

A few weeks later, my father called to let me know he’d finished the novel. He told me which scenes were his favorite, made him cry, surprised him, or touched his heart. He tried to guess who some characters were based on. Sometimes he guessed correctly. Sometimes not at all. When he asked me about the inspiration for a particular character, I told him it was entirely fictional, which disappointed him. I laughed and reminded him, “Hey, this is a novel, remember? I get to make stuff up!”

As we were getting ready to hang up the phone, my father gave me a gift — one that has made this entire journey worthwhile. One that will help me stay strong if a reader dislikes my book or writes a negative review, or if a hater posts a negative comment online, or worst-case scenario, if a bigot filled with hate and prejudice attacks the content of my book and demands it be banned.

He said, “You made this beautiful work of art inspired by our family story. I am so proud of you. And I know Mom would be too.”

Thanks Dad.

***

Lisa Montanaro is the author of the debut novel, Everything We Thought Was True, which releases on January 27, 2025, by Red Adept Publishing. At turns heartbreaking and hopeful, the novel explores not only the consequences of secrets—even secrets kept out of love—but also the courage it takes to speak the truth, to forgive, and to let go. Lisa is part no-nonsense Italian American New Yorker and part sunny Californian. She has a unique background as a performer, teacher of deaf students, lawyer, coach, speaker, and author. Lisa is also the author of The Ultimate Life Organizer, published by Peter Pauper Press.

She serves as webinar host for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and is a member of its diversity and inclusion committee. She also serves as co-facilitator of the Retro COLAGE group for adult children of LGBTQ parents. When not writing, Lisa enjoys cycling and hiking with her veterinarian husband, tending to her garden, and chasing after her rescue dogs. Lisa has enjoyed living snow-free since 2012 in Northern California, where she’s made it her mission to sample the wines of the region.

EVERYTHING WE THOUGHT WAS TRUE

Los Angeles lawyer Lena Antinori has dedicated her career to fighting discrimination, including for the LGBTQ community, but her own family’s secret haunts her. At thirteen years old, she made the startling discovery that her father, Frank, was gay and her mother, Teresa, knew. Fearing social stigma, Teresa instituted a code of silence meant to protect their Italian Catholic family—a code Lena adhered to for decades.

Now, Frank plans to marry his partner, and he wants Lena to help plan the wedding. Lena is torn between maintaining loyalty to her mother and supporting her father’s newfound happiness. As her father’s wedding approaches, Lena learns her childhood wounds run deeper than she thought, and failing to heal them might sentence her to a life of hypocrisy and the inability to discover the true meaning of coming out.

Told by Lena in the present, and her parents in the past, Everything We Thought Was True examines how the truth doesn’t set you free until you embrace it.

PRE-ORDER HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing