Two Lauren’s

Over the past year I’ve had the good fortune to meet two wonderful authors who also happened to be super-cool, nice people in person, whose books I inexplicably had not yet read. Two Lauren G.’s whose novels you might find shelved side by side in your favorite bookstore.

The first was three-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times–bestselling author LAUREN GROFF of Fates and Furies and The Vaster Wilds fame, one of five literary luminaries at the 35th Annual National Kidney Foundation Authors Luncheon in San Francisco last October.

I arrived early with my congenial table of California Writers Club friends and hit the book signing lines in the golden-hued ballroom ahead of the crush that would descend after the luncheon and interviews with emcee Michael Krasney.

Lauren Groff’s line was only two deep right then, and after she signed my brand-new copy of The Vaster Wilds we got to chat a bit. She was tall, animated, and friendly, and as a sister writer, I felt an instant connection. I admired The Vaster Wilds cover and she thanked me but made a face and said it was a compromise. I appraised her own colorful jacket—an exuberant toss of designs—and guessed she’d wanted her book jacket more on the wild side. “You’re right,” she confirmed.

I told her I had read excerpts from some of her books in my weekly writing craft class and had been wanting to read further. She inquired who my teacher was. When I said “Elizabeth Stark,” she became even more enthusiastic. “I LOVE her,” she gushed, and asked the name of my book so she could look for it when it was published. The Siren Dialogues, in case you, too, are interested.

When I told Elizabeth later that I had met her writer friend, she laughed. “She doesn’t actually know me,” she said. “She probably thought you said Elizabeth Strout.” But nevertheless, I appreciated the enthusiasm, and so enjoyed meeting this tall, funny, athletic writer in the wild jacket.

It was easy work to convince one of my book clubs to read Fates and Furies and the other to take on The Vaster Wilds. Bingo. I instantly became an ardent fan. Of her command of and beautiful way with language (She didn’t even begin The Vaster Wilds with complete sentences, and it didn’t matter! It worked!) And lucky me, I still have five published books of hers to go, plus her turn at the helm of The Best American Short Stories.

I discovered through my reading that we both harbored obsessions with non- Disney mermaids, Florida, and complicated relationships.

–I also took the opportunity to schmooze with Jack Reacher author Lee Child, with writer friends Cheryl Ray and Lucy Ann Murray.

Then, in May I was invited to be in conversation with New York Times bestselling author LAUREN GRODSTEIN about her Read with Jenna book club pick We Must Not Think of Ourselves at the Peninsula Jewish Community Center.

Lauren Grodstein, it turns out, loves the Bay Area. She had asked to come here, and brought her sister along for the ride. Years earlier, the two sisters had discovered the “Oneg Shabbat” project archives from the Warsaw Ghetto while visiting Poland, and after that little-known historical document percolated in her for a while, We Must Not Think of Ourselves became Lauren’s “pandemic novel.” It is not set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, as several authors had chosen to do in that same period (cue Ann Patchett, Michael Cunningham, Louise Erdrich, to name a few), but repurposes that feeling of isolation and fear to relate to a very different time and situation.

I was instantly drawn into this historical novel whose goal, like the real-life archive that inspired it, was to tell the stories of the people who lived for a time in the Warsaw Ghetto before they were reduced to mere victims, names on a list of the dead.

These are the archives that were collected in secret and later buried in milk kegs beneath the city before the whole place was leveled to the ground after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, a testament to the people who had lived there. And due to some magic connection with this place and time, Lauren Grodstein brings their proxies to life again.

It’s a wonderful and remarkable thing when any author, but especially a historical author, writes real living breathing people, not “representative” characters. You can feel the difference. Each person so unexpected and unique, so flawed and yet miraculous. Brave, scared, rash, whatever it takes to stay alive, even if only for enough time to learn the stories of their lives. We had a wonderful conversation followed by a lively Q&A.

Thank you to both Laurens for the moments of connection I got to share with you personally, as well as with your incredible characters and stories.