by Nancy Star
Ginger held on tight to Callie. And when she closed her eyes, she heard the joy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, a huge thank-you to the people who generously shared their expertise on a number of subjects: Linsey Lee, oral history curator at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, and Dana Costanza Street, assistant librarian at the museum, for helping me better understand life on the Island in the seventies (Linsey Lee’s fine Vineyard Voices: Words, Faces and Voices of Island People, gave me a wonderful view into the Vineyard of the past); Seth Wakeman and Kent Healy, for telling captivating stories about the origin and engineering of the opening of the Cut; Tom Kilroy and Lauren Carlton, for teaching me what it means to be a law guardian; Dr. Sylvia Olarte, for deepening my understanding of “as ifs” and “imposters,” as well as for countless other brilliant insights; Dr. Alexander Mauskop, for sharing knowledge of brain injuries, PTSD, and all things headache; Sheryl Horowitz; Rich Finkelstein; and the late Stan Hugill, for his important collection, Shanties from the Seven Seas.
My heartfelt thanks go to an esteemed group of early and perceptive readers: Marlene Adelstein, Valerie Block, Susan Dalsimer, Alice Elliott Dark, Lisa Gornick, Jill Smolowe—as well as early champions: Cindy Handler, Christina Baker Kline, Jillian Medoff, Jayne Pliner, Dale Russakoff, Pam Satran, and Laura Schenone. To the very wise women of the Montclair Writers Group: I am lucky to have your unending support and kinship. To Margot Sage-El, the lovely and indefatigable owner of Watchung Booksellers: thank you for being such a great friend to all the writers in our town.
Gratitude forever goes to: Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein, my insightful, delightful, and supersmart agent, and the wonderful Amelia Appel; Jodi Warshaw, whose careful reading, wise suggestions, deep support, and keen commitment make her this writer’s dream of an editor; Marianna Baer, whose sharp eye and fierce determination to make everything better actually did make everything better; and the supergreat powerhouse team of Dennelle Catlett, Kathleen Zrelak, and Jeff Umbro.
Not to be forgotten is my dear Fremily and all the friends—too many to mention by name—who have been stalwart champions and nurturers of soul during this long and solitary enterprise.
Above all, there is family. Thanks go to: my dear sister, Jane, who always remembers things I forgot; my wise and bighearted children—Izzy, Lizzy, and Peter—I love you all beyond words; and my cherished husband, Larry, who never stopped cheering me on, never doubted the result, never refused to read another draft, and sweetly fed me, body and soul, on all the long days when I disappeared into my work. You make everyone and everything around you better.
SISTERS ONE, TWO, THREE
BOOK CLUB READING GUIDE
In the prologue, we learn that Ginger has kept a big secret from her daughter. Later, Ginger learns others have kept secrets from her. Do you think these characters are keeping secrets to protect someone else or are they keeping secrets to protect themselves? Does it make a difference? Are secrets ever okay to keep?
Glory Tangle makes some questionable decisions. Given the circumstances, do you think her decisions are understandable or unforgivable? Were they made out of love, desperation, or something else? Do you think her parenting style was typical for the time? Did your opinion about Glory change by the end of the book?
Being a worrier affects every part of Ginger’s life, from her choice of profession to her ability to mother. Do you think she was like this before the family tragedy? How much did the tragedy change her? If Ginger had grown up in a family with Glory and Solly as parents but without that terrible day at the beach, how might she have been different?
Mimi thinks Ginger was Glory’s favorite. Ginger thinks Callie was Glory’s favorite. Do you think Glory had a favorite? If so, who was it? Among the three sisters—Ginger, Mimi, and Callie—did you have a favorite? By the end of the book, had your opinion about any of them changed? How?
The story moves back and forth, in time and place. How did this affect your reading experience? How do you think the experience would have been different if the story had been told in two parts, the past first and then the present-day?
Ginger and Julia have a difficult relationship. If you had been in Ginger’s position, what would you have done about Julia and Nick? What parallels do you see between the conflict Ginger faces with Julia and the conflicts Glory faced with her daughters? Which do you think is more damaging: holding on too tightly or letting go too soon?
When Charlie shows off his ant farm to Thomas, Thomas asks him, “How can that many ants share one measly drop of water?” Think about this as a metaphor for the Tangle children. Did you find Glory and Solly to be stingy with their love? What adaptations do you think the four Tangle children had to make to thrive in their childhood home?
At the end of the book, Ginger wonders whether Casper Diggans was really a threat or whether, as a young teenager, she’d perceived things that weren’t really there. What do you think? What made her mistrust him? Does Casper have any responsibility for what happened to Ginger’s family? Evelyn says people think she has responsibility. Do you?
Discuss the character of Callie. What turned out right for her? What turned out wrong?
Let’s look into the future: Do you think Callie will move back to be close to her sisters? What kind of relationship do you think the Tangle sisters will have? How long do you think Julia will be away? How do you think her relationship with Ginger will change when she returns?
A CONVERSATION WITH NANCY STAR
1) Where did the idea for this book come from?
Like many writers, I find the process of how stories come to life to be somewhat mysterious. Often the things I write about have been on my mind, in one way or another, for some time. For this book, family secrets was one of several themes that drew me in. As it turns out, there was a specific moment when it first struck me that this would be an intriguing subject to explore in a novel. It occurred at a dinner party in the home of someone I barely knew. The host was telling a story about something that happened in her first marriage. At the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, she suddenly dropped her story and in a hushed voice warned us not to say a word about it. “My daughter,” she explained, “doesn’t know I was married before.” Her daughter was a teenager. I was practically a stranger. This made me so curious. Why had this mother’s benign story, casually told while I ate my salad of mixed greens, been withheld from her teenage daughter? Since then, I’ve heard many similar and much more dramatic stories of family secrets. What interests me is not only why secrets are kept but also the struggle people face as they try to figure out if and when to reveal them. What seems clear is that waiting to tell can make it harder. This made me wonder: Is there a moment beyond which it’s too late? The Tangle family is the result of these musings.
2) Why did you choose to tell this story in two time periods?
I’ve always been drawn to exploring characters before and after something big happens. It really boils down to the age-old question of how we become who we are. I loved the prospect of meeting Ginger when she’s at the cusp of adulthood, of seeing that early snapshot of her as she is coming into herself but not yet fully formed. Later, when we meet her as an adult in the present-day story, we get to observe how the events of her life, particularly her family’s calamity, have changed her. The same is true for the other characters. Some are more profoundly changed than others. But no one gets by without the events of their lives changing them to some degree.
3) Martha’s Vineyard is like a character in your book, and the Vineyard in the seventies seems like a magical place. Were you there?
That would have been fun! But no, I wasn’t. I had to research my way back in time. Which was also fun! I am a seasonal resident of the island, but I do not lay any claim to knowing the Vineyard as a native or year-rounder. The island we meet in the book is very much one seen through the eyes of an outsider. Like any real place, life on the Vineyard is a mix of wonderful and hard and complicated—but with an extra-l
arge serving of great physical beauty. To me the island seems to accept “otherness” more than most places I’ve been. Maybe this has to do with being an island. No matter how much time you spend alone on beautiful walking trails or at the shore, at the end of the day you’re going to see everyone you know in the supermarket, so maybe people try a little harder to get along. All I know for sure is I love the place and the people I’ve met there. It’s possible that comes through in the book!
4) There are many unique and original characters in this book. Who did you find easiest to write? Who was hardest?
My feelings about the characters changed in the writing in the same way they change for a reader in the reading. In this book there were characters I knew well immediately. Others were harder to fully understand. And it doesn’t always relate to “page time.” Solly and Casper, for example, have little time on the page, but I knew them right away. Glory wrote herself. She’s still here if you’d like to talk to her. Callie was probably hardest. Just as she’s hard for her sisters to know, she was hard for me to know in the beginning. But I am a mother with no favorites! Once I understand the characters and why they do the things they do, I love them all.
5) This book made me cry. But there’s also much that’s funny. Are you someone who sees humor in tragedy? Is your first inclination to cry or laugh?
Ask my family! If I cry, it barely gets noticed because, unlike Ginger and her sisters, I’m an easy weeper. But yes, I also love to laugh. I guess you could say that I see the world through a split lens—the funny and the tragic often come to me in the same moment. I will add, though, that even when I see the funny, I take this writing thing very seriously. Whether tragic or humorous, my mission is to work as hard as I can to find the truth in my characters and in how they view their own lives.
6) Memories play a big part in this book. Different characters remember different things. Some memories are false. Some are only partly true. When you hear someone share a memory, what’s your first impulse? Take it as it’s offered, or with some measure of disbelief?
I would never judge someone else’s memories! If you tell me something happened to you, I will totally believe you! On the other hand, I don’t completely trust my own memories. I won’t go into the science here, but I think it’s pretty well documented that memories are slippery; they change over time, and it can be hard to know what’s a real truth and what’s a “felt” truth. Have you ever experienced this in your family? Different members remembering different versions of the same event? My guess is it happens in most families. This is why bringing up a discussion of a past event over Thanksgiving dinner can be so thrilling! If you haven’t yet, give it a try!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2016 Nina Subin
Nancy Star is the author of four previous novels: Carpool Diem, Up Next, Now This, and Buried Lives. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, Family Circle, Diversion magazine, and on the web. Before embarking on her writing career, Nancy worked for more than a decade as a movie executive in the film business, dividing her time between New York and London. She has two grown daughters and a son-in-law and now lives in New Jersey with her husband.