“Dear Diana, If you’ve found this letter, I’m gone.”
That is how the trouble begins in What Remains of You, by Kimberly Hensle Lowrance, out July 1 from Lake Union Publishing. Eighteen months after her husband Tom dies, Diana Morgan finds a letter she expects to be a last goodbye. Instead, it is a confession to something terrible he did, with a warning for what it may mean for her. Diana is parenting two kids and trying to move through ordinary days while the man she married rearranges in her memory, page by riveting page.
I’ve known Kimberly for years, and it’s so wonderful to see this fantastic book hitting the shelves (I had an early read and it’s GOOD). I asked her about the letter that sets everything in motion and what her years of interviewing other writers on A Mighty Blaze taught her when it came time to write her own book.
The novel opens with a letter that begins, “Dear Diana, If you’ve found this letter, I’m gone.” Was that confession the seed of the whole book, or did it arrive after you already had Diana on the page?
The writing of this book started with Diana. The letter – and the specifics of Tom’s secret – came later, though I knew at the beginning that there was a secret and that Diana would need to figure out her husband’s past and what it would mean for her future. Revision was where I got to the heart of the story. I felt, at times, that Diana and I were on parallel journeys: she was trying to uncover her husband’s past and I was trying to narrow down the story to the engine that would drive the book forward.
A book built on a hidden crime could sprint toward the reveal. Several early readers noticed you do the opposite and stay inside the daily texture of Diana’s grief and parenting. Was that a deliberate choice, and what did you have to resist to hold it?
In What Remains of You, my aim was to weave two questions into the storytelling: What happens to a marriage if a secret is kept – and then revealed – by one of the spouses? And, how are we changed by grief? The exploration of Diana’s (her family’s, too) grief is, in my mind, equally important to her efforts to figure out Tom’s truth. I wanted readers to understand who she was so that, when his secret is revealed, it would be clear how it would change her life.
One reader described Diana as someone who isn’t always likable and sometimes does questionable things. How much of that was on the page by design, and where did you draw the line on how far she could go before a reader might lose her?
I see Diana as someone who is trying her best to hold her life together, and, like real people, she makes mistakes and sometimes gets things wrong. She’s both loving and present, and selfish and disconnected (which has consequences for her). My #1 goal was to make Diana real. I hope readers connect with her, root for her, or try to understand her – even if, at times, they may not like her.
At its core the book asks whether you’d want to know a terrible truth about someone you love, even if knowing might end your love for them. After living with Diana for a whole novel, where did you land on that question yourself?
Diana’s love for Tom doesn’t end when she discovers his truth. It absolutely changes, and perhaps is tempered with anger or regret, but she still cares for him. Or at least that’s how I see the end of the book!
As for me… the answer to this question would entirely depend on the motivation behind the revelation. Would it be to protect me or a loved one? To clear up a lingering question that’s plagued me? Or to manipulate or scare me? Ultimately, though, I’d want to know the truth, even knowing might be painful.
Caroline Leavitt’s blurb says the book argues that “knowledge isn’t always power.” Do you agree with that reading of your own book, and is there a choice of Diana’s you’d have made differently in her place?
Caroline – and the other writers who blurbed What Remains of You – were so generous with their time and praise; I am very grateful to them! Her reading of the book speaks to the shock of Tom’s secret and how it upends Diana’s life. I expect there might be readers who think it would have been better had she never learned about his secret and never tried to uncover the truth. I understand that; what Diana goes through is hard and destabilizing. Everything she knows, or believes she knows, changes in a moment, and losing that understanding of the person you love? It’s a kind of grief.
Would I do anything differently from Diana if I’d been in her shoes? To address this question fully, I’d have to reveal spoilers, so I’ll keep this answer to myself!
Tom’s warning, “Don’t let them in,” turns a private grief into something with an outside threat. When did those other characters enter your drafting, and did they change what kind of book you thought you were writing?
The other characters you’re referring to – the basis for Tom’s warning – appeared in the first draft of the novel, though how much of a threat they were to Diana evolved during the revision process. Each time I revised this novel, I “turned up the dial” to make what Diana experienced more challenging and more emotional, thereby raising the stakes and adding more suspense to the story.
This is your debut, but you’ve spent years on the other side of the microphone, interviewing authors like Judy Blume and Ann Patchett for A Mighty Blaze. What did all that listening teach you that you only understood once you’d written a book of your own?
I’ve learned so much from interviewing authors, including strategies for plot and character development, the challenges of living a writer’s life, the determination that’s needed to navigate publishing in the 21st century, and more. I loved those conversations and know each one made me a better writer and literary citizen.
What I didn’t fully understand until I’d written my own book was how it would feel to face rejection on a novel I’d worked so hard on (difficult at first, easier with time). I couldn’t grasp the emotional side of getting a book published until I lived that phase of the process. I describe it as a bit like surfing a wave in the ocean (though, to be clear, I’ve never surfed, though I’ve read about it!): there are moments of bliss and other times you’re pushing through the dark for the light.
Diana is a widow “outside Boston,” and your launch is rooted in the Massachusetts bookstore world. How much does the specific geography matter to the story? Were you writing a recognizable place or a deliberately blurred one?
I deliberately set the story in a fictional suburb of Boston, chiefly because I wanted to create the town as I saw it – the Tudor-style library, the pond, the café where everyone gets their coffee – and I didn’t want to use a real town and change details. As a reader, I am frustrated when books are based, for example, in Boston and take license with street names or neighborhood locations; it always throws me out of the story. I figured an imagined town would be better for readers like me! That being said, Alcott does draw inspiration from New England small towns, and I hope that grounds readers in the setting so they are immersed in the story.
The title can be read in more than one way: what remains of Tom, and what remains of Diana’s idea of him. What does it mean to you, and did you have it before or after the book was finished?
To me, the title What Remains of You speaks to both Tom’s legacy and Diana’s view of him. Both change during the novel as the truth comes out.
The title came in a brainstorming session with a friend during the last round of revision right before I secured an agent. The book had two other titles before What Remains of You, one of which I loved quite a bit, but there was something about changing the title that gave new life to the novel. When I sold the book, I fully expected my publisher to change it, but my editor said they loved it!
What are you working on next?
I am working on my second novel and hope to have news soon to share about it.
You can follow Kimberly at her website, her Instagram, Facebook, or Threads.
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My album purity test score is an 8. I rather like music, you see. I think there were only 3-4 I didn’t check.
Love that Elle Cordova took on Rome.
A duet for two cats.
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