![Kathleen McCleary](/image-library/port/1000/k/kathleen-2.jpg)
Kathleen McCleary
LEAVING HAVEN opens with a scene in which a woman cuddles her newborn baby, nurses him, then gets dressed and walks out of the hospital, leaving the baby behind. Over the course of the book you come to find out why she did such a radical thing, and even to understand and maybe relate to why she did it.
Please tell us about your two main characters Georgia and Alice.
Georgia is an extroverted, nurturing, somewhat disorganized woman who runs her own business making wedding cakes. She is very close to her two sisters, adores her teenage daughter, Liza, and has a passionate but occasionally difficult relationship with her husband, John, a chef who owns his own restaurant. Alice, in contrast, is very disciplined and careful and thorough, an economics professor married to a lawyer. Georgia
What made you want to explore the things that can make and break a friendship?
Really I wanted to explore a variety of themes in LEAVING HAVEN. To me, the key issue of the book was integrity, both in the traditional sense of being honest and in the original meaning of being whole. Georgia believes she needs a baby to feel whole. Alice needs passion to feel whole.
Why is this the ideal book club read?
LEAVING HAVEN explores everything from infidelity to friendship to what it means to be a mother. The story unfolds through two points of view, and both characters make some awful choices, and do things that hurt people they love. Yet they are both very human, and decent people at heart. The book is ripe for discussion about issues of what’s right and wrong, good and bad, justifiable or unforgivable. I’ve been stunned at the response I’ve had from readers so far. Some people love Georgia and are furious with Alice; others love Alice and don’t like Georgia. Yet others focus on the relationship between Georgia and her sisters as a favorite part of the book; some are fascinated with the marriages. And I’ve had some readers who loved the book because they so identified with Georgia’s fertility struggles and others who related to the bullying issues involving Georgia and Alice’s daughters. There’s a lot to mine there.
Where did your inspiration for the story come from?
The idea for LEAVING HAVEN began with my agent, Ann Rittenberg. We were having coffee and she said, “I always thought that if I wrote a novel, I’d open it with a woman giving birth, then walking out of the hospital and leaving her baby behind.” At that point I was beyond having babies and not particularly interested in writing about babies. But a few months later I was in the car with my husband and all at once the idea came to me. I said out loud, “Oh, my God. I know why she leaves her baby behind.” My husband had no idea what I was talking about. But once I had the idea, I had to write it.
Who are your favourite reads?
One of my favourite authors is Dora Jessie Saint, aka “Miss Read,” who wrote a wonderful series of books about village life in the Cotswolds. She is a brilliant writer. I love Willa Cather, P.G. Wodehouse, John Steinbeck, and (because I read living authors, too) Richard Russo, Alice Munro, Ann Patchett, and Per Petterson.
Your writing has appeared in many publications across America, so when did it all begin for you?
I began my career as an editorial assistant at a health and fitness magazine. I felt I’d really “made” it some 18 years later, when one of my articles appeared in The New York Times for the first time. And it wasn’t until several years after that that I switched from journalism to fiction. With fiction, it all began for me when I moved from Oregon to Virginia and had to give up a house I loved in Portland. I had so much emotion about the move that writing a story about a woman who had to give up a beloved house became a way for me to process it all. That’s why I believe you should write what you feel passionately about, even if it’s not what you “know.” Passion fuels good fiction.
Please tell us a bit about your previous publications House and Home and A Simple Thing.
All my books are about ordinary women who are driven to do extraordinary things. In HOUSE AND HOME the main character is so upset about selling a house she loves that she decides to burn it down so no one else can ever have it. In A SIMPLE THING, a protective mom moves to an island off the northwest coast of Washington state in a desperate effort to protect her kids from some of the noxious threats of modern life, like online bullying, casual sex, etc. And LEAVING HAVEN opens with a woman who gives birth then walks away. The challenge with each one is to make the reader feel about the characters the same way they would feel about a good friend, that sense of I don’t agree with what you’re doing, but I love you and I’ll go along for the ride.
What is next for you?
I’m at work on my fourth novel, and I’m very excited about it. It’s about displacement, about women who, for various reasons, feel out of place in their own lives. One is an older woman, recently widowed, who moves across country to live closer to her adult sons. She feels so lost she decides to hike the Appalachian Trail to try to find a sense of meaning and purpose. Another is a divorced woman in her 40s whose ex-husband dies suddenly as their twin daughters are leaving home for college, which throws her life into upheaval. She decides to hike the AT, too. And the third storyline in the book takes place in the 1930s and deals with a young woman whose family is displaced when the federal government seizes their property in order to create Shenandoah National Park. The three women and their stories intertwine and connect as the novel unfolds. It’s a theme that resonates for me personally, and I’m having fun with all the characters.