Inspiration for Finding Grace

This summer, Finding Grace by Maren Cooper (July 19, She Writes Press) brings readers a poignant story of mental illness, unconditional love, devotion, and hope. Narrated by Grace and her parents, Chuck and Caroline, and set against the backdrop of Lake Superior, this is a coming-of-age journey for all three characters.

My second novel, Finding Grace, will be a head-scratcher for readers who read my first novel, “A Better Next” and expected more of the same. Isn’t there a truism, or oft-quoted statement that first novels are autobiographical, even if not intended to be? That must be because writers are pounded with the advice ‘write what you know’ the moment they express any ambition beyond their own self-reflective journaling. 

To a certain extent, my first novel was autobiographical as the setting was health care; where I spent thiry-five years building a career. But the characters were widely drawn and composite. I was hoping to provoke critical thinking about the chaos that can result in high stakes health care merger talk and how it trickles down to all parties in that type of large-scale change. This is true beyond health care, of course, but somehow, I know more about the effects of changes to models of clinical care than I do many other businesses. In “A Better Next”, the human cost of unplanned change gets personal at the family level.….And, that must be the through-line to “Finding Grace.”

Jess Lawson, the protagonist in A Better Next, is a feminist, and the book is a feminist story—you can do it all—stay true to yourself. Of course, Jess had a complicated life and as a flawed character, she had to find her way through a morass of career and personal challenges to get there. 

But, what about a woman not easily labeled?

There were two things that inspired me to write Finding Grace. The first was that I love Lake Superior and wanted to write a story set in the North Shore area of Minnesota. The beauty of the natural world of this pristine jewel has bewitched me for many years, and as I write while watching the lake, I was inspired to tip my hat to it as I conjured up a fitting story-line.

The second was that between novels I tweaked my muse by taking a writing class and one of the assignments was to create an unreliable narrator. What immediately came to mind was a child who may be making up stories, or a villain purposely mis-leading others. I played with this for quite a while, and that playing led me to the conclusion that I wanted to write a unique, bold character who lacked even a hint of self-awareness; a character who defied convention, and was extremely difficult to categorize.  A character who, when displayed on the page, would be untraditional at best and unreliable at worst. 

Finding Grace is the story of this character’s effect on others.

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Maren Cooper grew up in the Midwest and now resides in St. Paul, Minnesota. She currently serves as a volunteer for various nonprofits and retreats frequently to the shore of Lake Superior, where she loves to hike and watch the deer devour her hosta. Her debut novel, A Better Next, was published in May of 2019 by She Writes Press. Visit her at www.marencooper.com.

FINDING GRACE

Charles Booker is thrilled to start married life in Two Harbors, Minnesota, with his ambitious ornithologist bride, Caroline—but he sabotages his own happiness when, blinded by his desire for a family, he tricks Caroline into a pregnancy she doesn’t want.

Caroline, bold and unapologetic, follows her own nature and holds Charles to his promise to parent their daughter without her help—an arrangement that allows her to travel the world and follow her birds, wherever they may take her. This uneasy truce results in near tragedy for their daughter, Grace, who comes of age in a household full of toxic resentment on the one side and suffocating love on the other, and increasingly struggles with her mental health as she grows older.

Told by all three of the characters involved and set against the backdrop of Lake Superior, Finding Grace is a piercing chronicle of the struggles and eventual insight gained by each over the years, starting with Charles and Caroline’s courtship and continuing into Grace’s early adulthood—and a poignant coming-of-age journey for both Grace and her parents.

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Category: On Writing