Authors Interviewing Characters: Fran Hawthorne

January 6, 2023 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

FRAN HAWTHORNE interviews MIRANDA ISAACS from her novel

I MEANT TO TELL YOU

ABOUT THE BOOK:

When Miranda Isaacs’s fiancé, Russ Steinmann, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorney’s office, the couple joke about whether Miranda’s parents’ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russ’s security clearance. But as it turns out, the real threat emerges after Russ’s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested for felony kidnapping seven years earlier – an arrest she’d never bothered to tell Russ about.

Miranda tries to explain that she was only helping her best friend, Ronit, in the midst of a nasty divorce and custody battle, take her daughter to visit her parents in Israel. Russ doesn’t see it quite as innocently. In a frantic search to persuade Russ that she’s not a criminal, Miranda either makes the situation worse or exposes other secrets and mysteries.

With everything she thought she knew upended, Miranda must face the truth about her mother, herself, and her future marriage.

INTERVIEW

Fran and Miranda are going for a morning run on the National Mall in Washington DC:

Fran (huffing slightly): Wow, you set a good pace.

Miranda: I’m sorry. I’ll slow down.

Fran: If you don’t mind? A little? I guess you’re used to speedier running partners, like Russ.

Miranda: Actually, Russ and I don’t run particularly fast. We just kind of jog along and talk, and we forget we’re supposed to be pushing ourselves! (She looks to her left, where they’re nearing the Museum of Natural History.) I’ve lived in this city since I was six years old, and I still get awed, every time I see these museums, the Smithsonian castle, the Capitol dome, all these magnificent buildings, and I think: I really live here, in the middle of history!

(They both run silently for a couple of yards, glancing at the massive, sprawling stone buildings to their left, across the grass to their right, and ahead, as a few other runners speed past them.)

Fran: When you moved here as a six-year-old, did you picture yourself someday– oh, being elected president?

Miranda (bursts out laughing): No way!

Fran: What sort of Future Miranda did you imagine?

Miranda: Hmm… I don’t think I had any specific goals for the future. I sure didn’t know what a consumer advocate was, back then. But you know, when I’d go with my Grandpa Seymour on our long Sunday walks, he would always tell me things like, “When you’re bigger, you’ll clear out this rubble and build a playground” or, “When you grow up, you’ll fight those developers.”

Fran: How did you feel, when he said that?

Miranda: I felt special. And powerful. Just like Grandpa, just like my parents, I would do something important to make the world better. All my friends had big dreams, too. They were going to be ballet dancers and painters, and I remember the girl across the street wanted to train racehorses.

Fran: You had interesting friends.

Miranda: Yeah. And then there was Wendy, who was the ringleader when we shoplifted the glitter pens from the drugstore in fifth grade.

Fran: Oops.

Miranda: She’s a surgeon now, at a hospital in Pennsylvania. We had our ten-year high school reunion a few years ago, so I got a chance to catch up with a lot of the gang.

Fran: I guess Wendy found a career where her dexterous fingers were useful.

(Miranda laughs.)

Fran: Then you met Ronit in college.

(Miranda keeps running, without saying anything.)

Fran: What do you miss most about Ronit?

Miranda: It’s so hard to define another person. She was funny and smart and — And always full of ideas to try. Our first year at Georgetown, she persuaded me, at the last minute, to take the train up to New York City to be in Times Square for New Year’s Eve. We didn’t have a place to stay or even a return ticket, but you know what? We did it; we were there, shoved together with all those tens of thousands of people, so jammed-tight I couldn’t even move my arm to wave at the big ball dropping at midnight!

Fran: You’ve got a wide grin on your face.

Miranda: Yeah. Never a dull moment with Ronit. But it was more than that. She was the most loyal, the most loving friend you could have. When I thought I’d twisted my ankle, when we were running in Rock Creek Park? She practically carried me all the way down to the road.

Fran: Do you regret helping her?

Miranda: You mean, the “kidnapping”?

Fran: If you don’t want to call it a kidnapping, that’s okay.

Miranda: Legally, it’s not kidnapping anymore. It was reduced to a misdemeanor for disorderly conduct.

Fran: Okay. But whatever term you want to use, do you regret it?

Miranda: I ask myself that all the time. But what else could I have done? She was my best friend! Her daughter was only five years old, and her husband was going crazy — truly, dangerously crazy.

Fran: Even if you’d known that what you two were doing was illegal?

Miranda: I would’ve tried to talk her out of it, yeah. But Ronit was always so sure of herself, I don’t think I could’ve changed her mind. And then what? What if I refused to help, and she’d gone and done it without me? I would’ve hated myself forever, if she’d gotten arrested, and I wasn’t there.

Fran: So you felt – you still feel – that you didn’t really have a choice?

Miranda: She was my best friend, Fran. And – well, when your best friend is in a tough spot and asks for help, you don’t stop and debate the fine points.

Fran: Does that make you a good friend?

Miranda: I’d like to think so. What do you think?

—

ABOUT FRAN

Fran Hawthorne has been writing novels since she was four years old, although she was sidetracked for several decades by journalism. During that award-winning career, she wrote eight nonfiction books — mainly about consumer activism, the drug industry, and the financial world – and was an editor or regular contributor for The New York Times, Business Week, Fortune, and many other publications. But Fran never abandoned her true love: With the publication of her debut novel, The Heirs, in 2018 and now I Meant to Tell You, Fran is firmly committed to fiction. She’s at work on two more novels, and she also writes book reviews for the New York Journal of Books.