White Picket Fences

by Susan Meissner

Readers of emotional dramas that are willing to explore the lies that families tell each other for protection and comfort will enjoy White Picket Fences. The novel is ideal for those who appreciate exploring questions like: what type of honesty do children need from their parents, or how can one move beyond a past that isn't acknowledged or understood? Is there hope and forgiveness for the tragedies of our past and a way to abundant grace?


The story in a nutshell:

When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen year-old niece. Tally is practically an orphan: motherless, and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands- in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm-and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda envisions that she and her family can offer the girl stability and a shot at a "normal" life, even though their own storybook lives are about to crumble.


What led you to write White Picket Fences?

Several years ago I was a court-appointed advocate for children involved in protective services. There were times when I saw that despite the outward appearance of a less-than-perfect home, a child could be loved there. Just because a parent is unconventional or unsuccessful career-wise or makes choices that buck societal norms, it doesn't mean that he or she is by default a "bad" parent. Likewise, parents who we would traditionally call "good" -meaning they provide, they protect, they don't hit, they don't ridicule - can nevertheless make decisions regarding their children that have hugely negative effects and yet their outward appearance would never lead anyone to suspect it. Even if you live behind a white picket fence, you still have to deal with the fallout of a living in a broken world. You can't hide from it. The perfect, idyllic life is an illusion. Life is a weave of both delight and disappointment and it's precisely these things that give it definition and depth. To ignore what is ugly is to cheapen what is beautiful.


You dovetailed a current day family drama with the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto. Why the connection?

I think it's fair to say that the depth of the atrocities inflicted during the Holocaust wasn't fully appreciated until after the war. There was ugliness happening, if you will, and much of the West failed to see it - for whatever reason. Within the horror, though, people made brave choices, selfless choices. And there were survivors who had to choose what they would take with them from the ashes of their suffering. I wanted to explore how a person makes that decision. Even the decision to pretend it never happened is a decision regarding those ashes.



What do you think interests you about the intersection of personal relationships and perceptions - a theme you wove into both The Shape of Mercy and White Picket Fences?

I see every great work of fiction being about human relationships. Gone With the Wind is so much more than just an epic story with the Civil War as a backdrop. It's a story of human relationships. Scarlett and Ashley, Scarlett and Rhett, Scarlett and Melanie, Scarlett and her father. It's within our closest relationships that our brightest virtues and worst flaws are exposed. That's why there is such tremendous story value within intimate human relationships. We are at our best and our worst when we are responding and reacting to the people who shape who we are. Human history is the story of relationships and what they teach us about what we value. And what we don't.



White Picket Fences is a different kind of novel than your acclaimed book, The Shape of Mercy, but there are some similarities too. Can you explain those?

As with The Shape of Mercy, there is a historical thread in White Picket Fences, though it is not as dominant. The invasion of Poland by the Nazis is woven into the story, and provides the backdrop for Chase's and Tally's discoveries about hope, dreams, and redemption. This thread is enhanced by visits to a nursing home where Chase and Tally meet a man blind from birth who survived the occupation of Poland. It is also a story that draws its pathos from family dynamics and the near-universal desire we have to make straight what is crooked. There are two young protagonists in White Picket Fences, like there was in The Shape of Mercy, as well as a third character, who, along with the two men in the nursing home, provide a similar multi-generational story thread.



What do you hope readers come away with after reading White Picket Fences?

The pivotal moment in the story for me is when Josef says to Chase: "[This] is what all survivors must decide. We have to decide how much we will choose to remember, how much courage we are willing to expend to do so." It takes courage to acknowledge and remember what drove you to your knees or nearly killed you. If you choose to forget - and that's assuming you actually can - then it seems to me you suffered for nothing. You are different but you don't spend any time contemplating - or celebrating - how. I'd be happy if there was a takeaway for someone out there who needs to consider that.

My bio:

Susan Meissner is the multi-published author of The Shape of Mercy, named one of the Best Books in 2008 by Publishers Weekly the ECPA's Fiction Book of the Year. She is also a speaker and writing workshop leader with a background in community journalism. A devotee of purposeful pre-writing, Susan encourages workshop audiences to maximize writing time by mapping the writing journey and beginning from a place of intimate knowledge. She is the leader/moderator of a local writer's group, a pastor's wife and the mother of four young adults. A native San Diegan, Susan attended Point Loma Nazarene University. When she's not writing, Susan directs the Small Groups and Connection Ministries program at The Church at Rancho Bernardo.

You can purchase White Picket Fences here:
http://www.amazon.com/White-Picket-Fences-Susan-Meissner/dp/1400074576/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

And read an excerpt here:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400074570&view=excerpt

II Interesting Interview - Susan Meissner

The Shape of Mercy

Susan Meissner's newest book, The Shape of Mercy, is a blend of contemporary and historical fiction, mystery and romance. Set in present day Santa Barbara and also in colonial America during the Salem Witch Trials, the book follows a young college student as she transcribes the diary of a young woman falsely accused of witchcraft in 1692.

Donita: What is this story about?

Susan: "The story in a nutshell is this: Lauren Durough is a West Coast English major at the proverbial age of discovery. Sheltered in her growing up years by family wealth, she is just beginning to grasp how people judge other people by what they want to believe about them, and particularly for her, how the poor view the wealthy. When she opts out of her family's financial support, she takes on a job as a literary assistant to Abigail Boyles, an 83-year-old reclusive East Coast transplant. Abigail tasks Lauren with transcribing the diary of her ancestor, Mercy Hayworth, hanged for witchcraft in 17th-century Massachusetts. The lives of these two very different women converge as they jointly piece together the life - and death - of a third woman, Mercy Hayworth, who lived three hundred years earlier, and who also struggled against undeserved cultural stigmatization, but lost."

Donita: I've heard the title is more complex than just a straight forward declaration.

Susan: "Yes, the title has dual meaning. Those who testified against the accused in Salem in 1692 often claimed their tormentors 'took shape' in their bedrooms and tortured them as they slept. My fictional character Mercy was also accused of taking shape and torturing another young girl of the Village. She was innocent of course, as all those accused were, but in her last act before death, she shows that love has a shape. And its shape is mercy."

Let's stop in mid interview and see one important, inciteful review:

Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review and offered these insights. "Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth-a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials-whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers-Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren "Lars" Durough, wealthy, earnest and young-become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars together face life's hardest struggles about where true meaning is found, which dreams are worth chasing and which only lead to emptiness, and why faith and hope are essential on life's difficult path. Meissner's prose is exquisite and she is a stunning storyteller."

Donita: The theme of this story is bigger than most Women's Fiction.

Susan: "The concept behind The Shape of Mercy stayed with me long after I finished it. I know I am often guilty of the same weakness my protagonist had to discover - and admit - about herself. She, like me, like so many, judge better than we love. And we let fear dictate how much love we will extend and to whom we will extend it. Not always, not in every circumstance. But it happens often enough to know I might have easily kept my quivering mouth shut had I lived in Salem in 1692. I might've said nothing when the Village marched to Gallows Hill to watch the accused hang. We tend to fear what we can't comprehend. And we tend to understand only what we want to."

Donita: That sounds pretty bleak.

Susan: "There is a shimmering ray of hope, however. And it actually permeated all of 1692 Salem, though it hasn't garnered the same spotlight as the delusions of frightened and empowered people. The innocents who were hanged as witches refused to confess an allegiance to the Devil. Refused to the point of death. I find that remarkable and magnificent. It fills me with hope to consider that while we have the capacity to judge when we should show mercy, we also have the capacity to embrace Truth for all we're worth - even if it means we give up everything for it. It wasn't all darkness and deception in 1692 Salem. There was light there, too. It flickered every time the noose was pulled tight on the throat of one who would not give up on God and everything holy and good."

You can learn more about Susan and her books at http://www.susanmeissner.com/. The book is available at bookstores everywhere and online.