About the book
The Story Behind The Invisibles
WHILE I WOULDN’T CHANGE the odd, frightening circumstances of my childhood (born and raised for the first fifteen years of my life inside a religious commune), there are a few details I wish had worked out differently. It would have been nice, for example, if someone from law enforcement had shown up one day to inquire why children were forbidden to live with their parents, or why extended, brutal punishments were an acceptable form of discipline. Since most of my novels begin with the question “what if?” I found myself imagining the answers to these questions when I sat down to write my first novel, The Patron Saint of Butterflies. It wasn’t an accident that Agnes Little, the shy, fourteen-year-old protagonist in the novel, was born and raised in a commune similar to the one I had lived in, but her resulting escape and the agonizing decisions she made afterward (which led to a police intervention) were completely fictitious. While I was on tour for the novel, a woman asked me if I wished the end of the story had happened in my real life. Well, yes, actually. That was exactly why I wrote it. Without getting too psychological here, it was a way of reclaiming my past. Doing things my way this time, instead of being forced to follow the litanies of a madman. Or, as the great writing teacher Natalie Goldberg once said, “writing to live twice.”
I found myself in a similar situation when I first began to think about The Invisibles. The bonds between the children of the commune were some of the most powerful human links I’ve ever experienced—both then and now. Having to leave the only home I’d ever known and start over again in a new world was difficult, to say the least. But being physically separated from this child-tribe of mine was like losing an arm—two arms, actually, since most of the time we were holding one another. As I began to write, I found myself drawn to the main characters in the book, each of them inspired by a girl from my past with whom I had been raised and, because of drugs, death, and other irrevocable circumstances, I have since lost contact. It was a deep, deep loss, one that reverberated through my early adulthood, and one that still aches when I think about it now.
I started with that ache, imagining the group of us meeting up again. There was the pale, thin one I fashioned Monica after, who twirled her hair when she was nervous and was so painfully sweet that it brought tears to my eyes. Would she still clutch for my hand the way she’d always done back then, rubbing a thumb along the edge of mine until I shook it loose again? And what of the girl who inspired Ozzie—loud, obnoxious, standing up in the face of authority, even to her detriment? Would she be different? Or had time softened some of her edges, granted her a different outlook on the world? Grace was the girl I remembered as drawing all the time, once creating an entire scene of birds out of bits of tightly rolled paper, and Nora (although not all of her) was based on me. What would bring us together? What would we say? Was I the only one who still had nightmares about the commune? Had any of them found a way to put those demons to rest, to rise above the nightmare of our childhood and not just survive, but thrive?
I knew I didn’t want to set another novel inside a commune, and so I began to think of other circumstances in which similar shared relationships might blossom. The girls’ home came to mind immediately. Not only was the parental void there, but the girls would have the opportunity to bond in much the same way my friends and I had inside the commune. The rest of the story is fiction, dreamed in the fluid way that is sometimes granted when you start with vivid characters. It unfolded piece by piece as I was writing, sometimes taking me in one direction and sometimes in another. Often, I found myself completely off course, and I would have to go back and start again, to try to retrace the steps these characters might have taken if they were in such a place and time.
Secretly, I hope that each of these women from my past will recognize pieces of themselves in my story. If they do, I hope they remember a time when they were mine, when as little girls, we created a whole world unto ourselves inside another, darker one. It’s why I write, after all. To connect with the things I’ve lost. To find a way back.
A way home. 
1. The book opens with Nora’s birthday, which she had forgotten. What is the significance of Nora forgetting her own birthday?
2. One of the first lines that Nora quotes is “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.” Do you think Nora has turned into “the wrong person”? How does she let this feeling of leading a misguided life affect her?
3. “Leave it in the past, Ozzie had said, where it would get smaller and smaller until one day it would just disappear altogether.” How has this pact changed Nora’s life, given what we know? What do you think Ozzie was referring to when she said this?
4. Why do you think Nora is so hesitant to welcome the old friends she’s missed back into her life? Why does she continue to resist opening up to them about her past and her life?
5. As an adult, Nora still clings to her love of the moon and first lines of books. What does this signify about her development into adulthood? Why do you think she still looks to the moon for guidance?
6. The girls decided on the name “The Invisibles” for their group. In what ways do you think each of them felt invisible in their lives as teenagers? What about now as adults?
7. The novel moves between the past and present. What does this structure reveal about the characters? How does it affect your interpretations of them both then and now?
8. Nora reveals that she broke off both of the longest relationships she had as an adult and afterward turned down most offers to go on dates. She also has few friends. Why do you think she’s so hesitant to let new people into her life?
9. What do you think happened to change Ozzie from the fierce girl she had been in high school to the woman she is now? How do you think reuniting with her old friends will affect her?
10. We find out that Nora’s mother had tried to contact her after Daddy Ray died. Why do you think Nora never wanted to confront her mother?
11. In what ways is Ozzie’s determination to find the rabbit’s mother significant? How about Nora’s refusal to give up the baby rabbit, despite numerous demands from Ozzie to do so? What might the baby rabbit represent to her?
12. Why do you think Nora shows such resistance to going back to Turning Winds? What makes her different from the other women, who are eager to go back?
13. In what ways are the women still the same people they were as teenagers? In what ways are they different? Do you think they’ve changed for the better?