Death is all over my writing.
My fiction writing, that is. My work writing rarely deals with heavier themes. Nevertheless, I recently read my imprint sibling’s novel “The Unexpected Afterlife of Salon Rose,” and it left a mark on me. So much so that I thought it was such a great jumping-off point to discuss the power of novels to process grief.
I wrote this story for work (click here to read), but much of that wonderful interview was left on the cutting room floor.
Don’t worry, I won’t include the entire thing, but here’s a shortened version of that conversation.
Josh Rivera: Your novel grows out of unimaginable personal loss. What did fiction allow you to explore that nonfiction couldn’t?
Amy B. Scher: With nonfiction, I’m always teaching my perspective and using my wisdom because that’s what readers expect. But with fiction, I felt like I could let the reader have their own experience.
I’ve gotten comments from early readers saying, “This was better than therapy,” or that they lost someone years ago and the book helped them move forward. I think people take their own experience and, just by seeing an experience like theirs, they’re able to process their emotions.
The book answers some questions about grief: how long it lingers, why it’s so hard to get over and why it ebbs and flows. It really comes in waves. I wanted people to feel seen and to normalize grief.
Rivera: Grief isn’t linear, but novels still need momentum. How did you balance those things?
Scher: Even though grief and healing aren’t linear, our acceptance of grief changes. That’s what propels the story forward.
The grief is still there, but it shifts. We understand it better. I’ve come to understand that we move forward with grief. We don’t clean everything up, tie a bow on it and leave it behind. We carry it differently.
I still get waves of grief about my dad and my cousin, especially with this book coming out. But now I know it’s another wave and I’ll be OK. In the beginning, it feels insurmountable.
Rivera: You work in the healing space. Did your instincts as a healer ever conflict with your instincts as a novelist?
Scher: Absolutely. I like to fix everything. I like everything to be peaceful and to help everybody get through whatever they need to get through.
But on the page, I had to let everybody fall apart. I had to let characters have conflict and say mean things. I had to let them have their grief so they could figure out what they needed to take from it.
It wouldn’t have been a very good novel if I helped everybody feel better right away.
Rivera: What emotional truth about grief do you hope readers take from the novel?
Scher: Grief is the great equalizer. None of us escape it, and it’s OK. We can be OK.
I especially wanted younger readers to understand they aren’t the only ones experiencing these feelings. Grief can take you completely out of your life. It affects you physically, affects relationships and makes you question things you’ve never questioned before.
I want the book to bring some levity to those feelings, too. Grief can be tender and humorous. Sometimes I think, this is so ridiculous that this happened in my life. Knowing that all of it is welcome — that I’ll survive it — has really helped me heal.
Rivera: Your cousin Pam was murdered five days after your father died. How did writing the novel change your relationship with those unanswered questions?
Scher: For years, I wanted answers. Pam had left me a message the night before she died saying she wanted to talk, and I never found out what she wanted to tell me.
As I wrote this story, I realized the details don’t fix anything. The sustained connection to her mattered more.
I think so much of life is a mystery, and death is the same way. The more we can reconcile ourselves with that, the deeper the healing goes.
By the final drafts, I realized I had stopped trying to stick exactly to the facts. The story became my interpretation of how she might have explored what she left behind.
And in the process, it changed a lot for me.
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