In THE NIGHT WOODS, which debuts this week, my heroine Mercy is very, very pregnant with her first child. It’s been a long time—okay, some thirty years—since I last gave birth, and even longer since I bore my first child. When I sat down to write the story, I worried that I’d have trouble calling up my memories of that (pregnant) time. But to my surprise, I remembered every grand and gory detail—from the initial, interminable nausea—I threw up everything I ate around the clock for the first five months—to the moment I heard those three most glorious words from my doctor, “It’s a girl!”
Of course, I wasn’t chasing murderers through the Vermont woods like my character Mercy, or being chased in turn by wild boar in that same woods. I could only imagine what that might be like. That’s what we writers do. We make stuff up. The trick is to ground the unreal in the real—and the real came rushing back to me as if my water was breaking all over again.
When it came to describing the sinking feeling that I was somehow stuck on a bobbing boat on choppy seas for nine months or the tender thrill that accompanied every baby’s sharp kick or even the realization during labor that I was no longer in control of my own body and that there was nothing to do but hang on and hope that the little alien passed quickly through that absurdly narrow portal to the world beyond my vagina—I didn’t need to use my imagination. I still have muscle memory on my side.
It turns out that motherhood is like riding a bike. You never forget. When I held my first grandchild in my arms for the first time, I knew what to do. Little Elektra was a crier, and only I could coax the baby girl to sleep. My daughter, who’d rolled her eyes at practically everything I said from the age of fourteen onward, was impressed. I went from well-intentioned idiot to Best Babysitter Ever overnight.
Now Elektra is sixteen, and she’s rolling her eyes at her mother. But not at her grandmother. I am “Grandmama Paula”—and as such, I am beyond reproach. Because as nice as being a mother is, being a grandmother is way better. It’s all the fun and none of the responsibility. You can spoil your grandkids silly and if they turn out to be serial killers, it’s not on you. And your grandchildren love you unreservedly; they’re never embarrassed by anything you say or do. No “Okay Boomers” from them.
I love being a grandmother so much that I wrote mothers and grandmothers into my Mercy Carr novels, too. Grace is Mercy’s mother, and like my own (lovely) mother, she’s a paragon of chic, setting a standard for style her daughter can never meet. Mercy, who lives in cargo pants and Henley T-shirts, has come to terms with her mother’s disapproval, but under duress will don one of the designer outfits her mother buys her for special occasions.
I’m not as cool or as self-possessed as my heroine; I really am still trying to please my mother. She’s 89 and lives with us, so there’s no escape. She expects me to “do my toilette” and dress elegantly and appropriately for the day, no matter that my day here in what my children call “Nowhere, New Hampshire” is spent at a computer in a house in the woods.
Apart from the wildlife, the only creatures who see me are the dogs, the cat, my husband, and my mother. The dogs don’t judge me, my husband doesn’t judge me, but the cat and my mother totally judge me. To appease Ursula The Cat and Marilyn the Mom, I feed the cat first (feline before canine, every time) and put on makeup and “casual chic” clothes. I know when I get it right, because she tells me. (If I don’t, I am greeted with a disdainful silence.) There is an upside to this: I’m always ready for an impromptu Zoom meeting. Still, in my next life, I’m going to wear cargo pants and Henley T-shirts. Just like Mercy.
Patience is Mercy Carr’s grandmother, the one character all readers seem to like. Patience is a veterinarian, and most everyone in the village loves her, too—even the most persnickety of cats. She’s the one Mercy turns to when she needs advice—and her grandmother never disappoints. She sweetens her unvarnished guidance with good eats—from Yankee pot roast to doberge cake—just like my own grandmother used to do.
Grandma Emma was a wise and practical woman from Indiana farm country. She married very young and had my dad when she was only sixteen. She worked at the local GE plant for thirty years, got divorced long before it was socially acceptable, and raised two kids on her own. (Years before the rest of the family acknowledged my miserable first marriage, she took me aside and told me to leave my husband.) Grandma Emma married three times and left a string of bereft beaus when she died in her early sixties. She could bake a fine pie, make her own dandelion wine, can and preserve all manner of fruits and vegetables. Every year on my birthday she sent me a card with a $100 bill inside. The woman was strong and resourceful and indefatigable—and I miss her every day. But she lives on in Patience.
Writing Mercy and Grace and Patience allows me to celebrate the relationships between mothers and daughters, grandmothers and granddaughters. In so doing, I salute the women who’ve loved and nurtured and supported me all my life—and I redouble my efforts to do the same for those who come after me. It’s my way of honoring the knowledge and wisdom one generation of women imparts to the next, and passing it on.
Maiden, mother, crone—and I’m living them all. And writing them all. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
How about it Readers? Do you enjoy multigenerational tales? Why or why not?
PAULA MUNIER is the USA TODAY bestselling and award-winning author of the Mercy Carr mysteries and Senior Literary Agent at Talcott Notch Literary. She’s also written three popular books on writing, including the bestselling Plot Perfect. Along with her love of nature, Paula credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue animals, and her volunteer work as a Natural Resources Steward as her series’ major influences. She lives in New England with her family, four dogs, and a cat who does not think much of the dogs.
