Liese O'Halloran Schwarz: The ER and the Writing Life

INGRID THOFT

It's such a treat to have Liese O'Halloran Schwarz as my guest today.  I first learned about Liese's novel from her talented writer sister, Carla Buckley.  Talk about a gifted literary gene pool!  I was immediately sucked in to Liese's novel, "The Possible World," and my admiration grew when I learned that she is also an emergency medicine doctor.  I'm sure you'll find Liese and her book just as fascinating as I do!

INGRID THOFT: "The Possible World” features three main characters—an ER doc at a crossroads in her life, a young boy who is connected to a horrific crime, and an elderly woman coming to terms with the life she’s led.  Their lives intersect in unexpected ways, but at the heart of the story is the idea that there is the life you live and the life that was possible.  What prompted you to write this particular story?

LIESE O'HALLORAN SCHWARZ: First — thank you so much, Ingrid, for having me as a guest on your wonderful blog! 

I think the main thing that pushed me to write the "The Possible World" was a need to tell a story that affirmed the presence of good in the world, even when it is hidden. Especially when it is hidden. My years in medicine showed me a lot of terribly sad things, and a belief in the essential goodness of existence can be hard to hold on to sometimes! I also wanted to pay tribute to the power of non-blood relationships, such as friendship and non-mother care taking roles. I think those types of relationships are hugely important in the lives of most people.

IPT:  I agree, and I think readers appreciate seeing those types of relationships reflected in the books they read.

In addition to being a published writer, you’re also an emergency room doctor.  Did you always want to write?  How do you find the time to do both?  Do they complement one another?

LOS:  Yes, I always wanted to write—I wrote my first book at three-years-old! (I still have it, and let’s just say the narrative could use some work.) I went into medicine for a lot of reasons, chief among them the need to contribute in a meaningful, helpful way to the world while I figured out how and what I wanted to write. Please note: I did use to write and practice medicine at the same time, but I don’t practice medicine now. Writing was on hiatus for most of my training—that was an absorptive and not a creative time—and then I remember a joyful stretch of time after finishing training, as a young attending physician in Manhattan, writing in the morning before an 11 a.m - 9 p.m. ER shift, then going out with friends after, sleeping a little bit and getting up to do it all again.

That wasn’t the rule, though; it was the exception. For one thing, the ER shift schedule varied (the night shifts, as I note in "The Possible World," smash one's entire life to hell), so I couldn’t fall into a groove. For another thing, I couldn’t allow myself to burn the candle at both ends too much, for fear of compromising the level of care I provided in the ER. I had to cheat writing in favor of medicine, of course, because (not to be dramatic about it) lives were at stake. I think for the period of time that I was doing both at once, they did occasionally complement one another, as writing is very interior and quiet, and emergency medicine is rather hectic and outward-directed. However, sometimes (often), a day or night in the ER would be too draining to allow anything but recovery afterward, and then when I’d get a day or two off, I would be far too depleted to do anything more intellectual than vacuuming and laundry (and feel lucky if I accomplished that!). So it was very up and down. Quitting medicine to focus on writing wasn’t an abrupt career change for me as much as a natural evolution—although I loved many things about the practice of medicine, I always hoped I would get to this place. 

IPT:  Which of the three characters was your favorite to write?

LOS:  I enjoyed writing them all, once I had a handle on them and the characters were “speaking” to me. I liked the challenge of writing 6-year-old Ben; he has post-traumatic amnesia, and as some memories begin to come back they are alarming to him and inexplicable to others around him. It was important to show his personality along with his odd circumstances—he's a smart, anxious kid who needs peace and safety in order to bloom. Writing Lucy the, ER doctor, was fun; I enjoyed trying to show a little about medicine to the reader. The challenging part of writing Lucy was knowing what not to write, trying to capture the essence of her character and show just enough of her world without overwhelming the reader. The characters of Ben and Lucy both feel very flesh and blood to me.

But Clare! She’s a 99-year-old woman; at first she may seem irrelevant to the others. But like the other characters — and like the whole plot of the book—she is more than she may appear to be. Clare is probably closest to my heart. Her voice needed to have a patina of nostalgia, but also convey fresh emotion raked up by the process of sharing. Things happened to Clare, as they happen to all of us, and she was imprisoned, in the ways that society imprisons women—and through terrible events that she would not have chosen, she broke free and became the agent of her own life. I hope I did justice to all three main characters …but the character I truly adored writing was a fourth, Gloria, who has an important role in the book—she’s a major catalyst, and I love how unfettered and joyous she is. Our lives are improved by the Glorias of the world.

IPT:  What has surprised you most about being a published author?

LOS:  The shocking lack of parades. Where is the confetti? The river of champagne? LOL! Actually, the part that is most surprising to me is how alive the book has become after publication. After the final revision, I thought the book was “done," that once it was in press it would be a static thing that maybe (I hoped) people would read, and maybe (I hoped) they would like. I really didn’t expect the book to enter this new dynamic state of being read. Readers who have contacted me on Facebook or via my website have been amazingly passionate and engaged—they noticed details I honestly didn’t expect anyone to notice; some have also picked up on nuances that I wasn’t aware of while I was writing, but that I can see are definitely there, now that they’ve been pointed out to me! The book is different in the hands of each different reader.

If writing and publishing a book can be compared in some ways to gestation and childbirth, then the state of being read is the book’s whole life. Having a book “in the drawer” is an accomplishment (finishing a manuscript is a milestone to be celebrated!) but a book going out into the world, among readers who will engage with it and make it their own and give it a totally new life, is a spectacular experience. It’s impossible to express how grateful I am to every reader, for reading the book. Also: I’ve been surprised by the sheer variety of public places audio book listeners have told me they happened to be when the book made them cry.

IPT:  Is there a wannabe book lurking in the back of your brain, something you would write if you didn’t have to consider agents, editors, and fans?  A romance?  Non-fiction?  Cookbook?

LOS:  I’d write them all if I could! Honestly, I think every book I will write will be a kind of wannabe—it’ll be the book I feel I must write, and I just have to hope that agents/editors/readers will like it. I wish I could write nonfiction (I enjoy reading it so much!), but I so enjoy making stuff up. 

Liese will be joining us today to answer your questions and is giving away a copy of "The Possible World" to one lucky reader.  Just comment to enter!

The Possible World
An astonishing, deeply moving novel about the converging lives of a young boy who witnesses a brutal crime, the doctor who tends to him, and a woman guarding her long-buried past. 

It seems like just another night shift for Lucy, an overworked ER physician in Providence, Rhode Island, until six-year-old Ben is brought in as the sole survivor from a horrifying crime scene. It’s not clear what he saw, or what he remembers.

Lucy, who’s grappling with a personal upheaval of her own, feels a profound, unexpected connection to the little boy. She wants to help him, but will recovering his memory heal him, or damage him further?

Across town, Clare will soon be turning one hundred years old. She has long believed that the lifetime of secrets she’s been keeping don’t matter to anyone anymore, but a surprising encounter makes her realize that the time has come to tell her story.

As Ben, Lucy, and Clare struggle to confront the events that shattered their lives, something stronger than fate is working to bring them together.

An expertly stitched story that spans nearly a century—from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War era and into the present—The Possible World is a captivating novel about the complicated ways our pasts shape our identities, the power of maternal love, the loneliness born out of loss, and how timeless bonds can help us triumph over grief.

Liese O'Halloran Schwarz grew up in Washington, DC after an early childhood overseas. She attended Harvard University and then medical school at University of Virginia. While in medical school, she won the Henfield/Transatlantic Review Prize and also published her first novel, Near Canaan.

She specialized in emergency medicine and like most doctors, she can thoroughly ruin dinner parties with tales of medical believe-it-or-not. But she won't do that, because she knows how hard you worked to make a nice meal.

The Possible World, coming from Scribner (US) and Hutchinson (Random House UK/Cornerstone) in June 2018, is her second novel.

She currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is at work on the next book.