Leslie Gray Streeter: On Writing

By Leslie Gray Streeter 

The story of Dawn Roberts, the writer heart of FAMILY & OTHER CALAMITIES, goes back more than three decades and several major plot changes. She’s been everything from a college student in a garage band finding her voice, the former back-up singer in a 90s R&B group who is getting back together without her, and, finally a successful widowed journalist trying to right long-held lies and complications. 

But whoever she’s been, her story goes back to a song that bears her name. 

Back in high school in the 1980s, I used to turn the dial of my clock radio between the contemporary R&B station and the two Top 40 stations in Baltimore. Sitting in the middle was an oldies station, which played both the Motown songs I grew up hearing in the car with my parents and on Saturdays as we cleaned the house, but also older sounds that were new to me. I became obsessed with The Beatles. The Ronettes. Carol King. And, for some reason, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.  

I was not unfamiliar with doo-wop music, but there was something striking to me about the harmonies and the intricate melodrama of the relationships described in singer/songwriter Bob Gaudio’s lyrics. You had sad misunderstood girls, devastating breakups and, my favorite, a guy dumping a girl before she can dump him on the premise that it’s better for her. Yeah, OK. If you say so. 

When Valli sings “Dawn, go away, I’m no good for you,” the song’s protagonist wants her to believe that he loves her, but that cruel, cruel society will never accept their love. So, he’s nobly releasing her so a better-matched fish can find her. Does he ask her what she wants? No. Because it’s really not about her. It’s about self-protection. 

 I kinda picked up on this at 16, but by my 20s, when I’d been on the receiving end of whiny “It’s not you, it’s me” deflection a time or two, I was intrigued. Who was this guy to say what was better for Dawn? Why did he seem to be blaming her for his own inadequacy? And why did I imagine she was supposed to just stand there, crying softly, and take it like a good girl? 

So, I bought a few spiral notebooks and set out, longhand, to write a screenplay that would examine what it was like to be the symbol of someone’s expectations, even if being “nice” meant denying your own desires. Dawn is a back-up singer in her boyfriend Joe’s band, her role being smiling and singing what she’s told. She meets a fledgling talent manager named Dale, who encourages her to explore her own musical dreams while presenting a new romantic possibility. My template was the script of 1997’s “Some Kind of Wonderful,” another work about a badass young musician struggling with how she sees herself versus how others do. At the end, Dawn’s presented with the opportunity to go solo in New York or stay in Baltimore with the band, and man, who don’t appreciate her. She chooses herself, prepared for the fallout. 

Thirty years later, in FAMILY & OTHER CALAMITIES, Dawn’s back story has changed. In the early draft of the novel, she’s a widowed former 90s pop star who quits her old band, led by her boyfriend Joe, right before they hit it big. Thirty years later she discovers they are reuniting without her and rewriting her history. Eventually, I changed the backdrop of the story. Now Dawn writes about music, rather than makes it, and Joe is a friend rather than a lover. But there still is a moment where his selfishness leads her to make a rash decision, in which she chooses what seems to be best for her in the moment.  

In her 50s, Dawn, like me, has the barbed gift of perspective. It’s impossible to confidently access the fallout of a bomb until you detonate, and she finds that she’s not been honest about how her family and others survive the aftermath. 

There are other elements I could not have imagined when I first decided to write some autonomy for the song’s Dawn – the reality that love stories end. My husband Scott died in 2015, and I decided to kill Dale, a character I created decades ago, to give more depth to Dawn’s life and choices.  

But as I did in my memoir, Black Widow, I wanted the late husband to be his own person, not just a sad jumping-off point for the lead’s new life, which includes another man from her past. Like the song itself, FAMILY & OTHER CALAMITIES is, in a way, about having to reconsider ourselves as the stars of our own movies and remember that our supporting characters have their own lives and motivations. 

We may go away, but we have to consider for ourselves what is good for us. 

—

Family & Other Calamities

A successful journalist returns to her hometown just as her biggest mistake becomes headline news in this vibrant, funny, and heartfelt novel about facing the past, and its secrets, head-on.

Entertainment journalist Dawn Roberts has a lot to work through: a widow’s grief, betrayals of family and friends, and scandals that almost tanked her reputation. Not that Dawn dwells on the past. Well, hardly. When she returns to Baltimore with her husband’s ashes, she can’t avoid it. In fact, she’s diving into decades of backstabbing and treachery for her first trip home in years.

She’s looking at you, Joe Perkins. Her former mentor, whose explosive exposé about big-city corruption is being turned into a slanderous movie, is also back in town. The villain of the piece? Dawn. The good news is that this could all be a chance to reset―heal family wounds, admit to her own mistakes, and maybe even reconnect with the one who got away. Oh, and get even with Joe any way she can.

With the surprising help of an up-and-coming journalist and a legendary R & B diva, Dawn will finally set the record straight. Returning home might just be the biggest story in Dawn’s life, a fresh start―and happy ending―she never expected.

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Leslie Gray Streeter is an award-winning journalist and columnist for the Baltimore Banner. She is the author of the memoir Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title, and the new novel, FAMILY & OTHER CALAMITIES (Lake Union Publishing; June 1, 2025). In addition to being a frequent speaker on grief, she is also cohost of the podcast Fine Beats and Cheeses. Leslie is a slow runner, an amateur vegan cook, and a fan of Law & Order, and she lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her son, Brooks.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing