The Threadbare Heart

1. The Threadbare Heart explores the intersection of marriage and love, and the same question seems to lurk in each of the character’s minds: What makes marriage work? Which character has the answer you most agree with?

2. Throughout The Threadbare Heart, Lily and Tom alternate between cherishing their knowledge of each other and wondering if they are capable of knowing each other at all. What does it mean to truly know someone?

3. Eleanor and Lily both see the avocado farm as the answer to their familial problems, but for different reasons. Eleanor has money to burn and wants her loved ones near, whereas Lily sees the opportunity as a fresh start that could reinvigorate her marriage. Are their expectations met?

4. Lily is emotionally attached to the fabric she has collected throughout her life. She observes that Eleanor never holds on to things—or people—because holding on leaves a person vulnerable to pain. Lily says that for Eleanor “fabric is just a means to an end.” What does she mean?

6. Lily’s friend Marilyn and her mother seem to share the belief that you should put yourself first in marriage and in life. Lily feels differently; she credits her willingness to compromise as one of the keys to her long marriage. Whose beliefs serve them better?

7. The theme of love in marriage is at the core of The Threadbare Heart. According to Eleanor, love is an illusion and you’re better off keeping it at a safe distance. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Gordon, who believes that love is a choice. Where does Lily fall on the spectrum? What effect does losing Tom have on her perception of love?

8. Ryan constantly compares his marriage with Olivia to that of his parents, and constantly comes up short. Can Ryan and Olivia’s marriage be saved? Where do you think they might be five years from now?

9. At one point Eleanor refers to her first husband’s sudden death as an “elegant solution” to the dilemma of her unhappy marriage. Is her brutal honesty refreshing, cold, or somewhere in between?

11. Discuss the physical relationship between Jack and Lily. What do you think of Jack? Is he an opportunist taking advantage of a vulnerable person, or is there legitimacy to this informal sort of therapy known as sexual healing?

13. Grandma Hattie’s lace becomes a significant metaphor for untapped potential. As Lily puts it, “The life of the lace had been one of longing, of waiting, of stories not told.” How do you think Lily would describe the story she ultimately tells with the lace?

BEHIND-THE-SCENES MOMENT #1 THE GREAT DATE

This story was inspired, in part, by a real-life romance. My parents met on a blind date on their first weekend of college in 1956—and just like the characters in this story, they drove off in an old Studebaker, the girls sitting on the boys’ laps. My mom had just started at Wellesley College and my dad at Harvard. There were four other couples on that same date, and two of the couples were married right after their college graduations—including my mom and dad. That was June 1960. Although my parents are both great individuals, they didn’t have a great marriage—or at least not a long-lasting one. They were divorced when I was thirteen years old.

One of the other men on the original date was my dad’s roommate, Doug. He married a lovely woman named Lesley and stayed happily married to her for thirty-eight years until her death from lung cancer. Six years ago, in 2003—which was forty-seven years after the weekend they met—Doug and my mother were married at a church by the sea in Santa Barbara. They make a wonderful couple, and I’m very happy that Doug is now part of our family.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES MOMENT #2 SANTA BARBARA’S WILDFIRE SEASON

I grew up in Santa Barbara, and have carried an image of the terrible beauty of wildfires in my head my whole life. I vividly remember standing outside our house in the dark, looking at the angry flames, the burning hills, the billowing smoke, and I remember hearing the adults talk about plans for escape, and plans for what to save. No one talked about moving away from the tinder-dry hills; it was considered well worth the risk to live in that beautiful red-roofed town.

When I was in the middle of writing this book, and after I had written the fire scenes, Santa Barbara was struck by two devastating wildfires. I live two hours to the south of the city, so I watched on TV, filled with the special horror of knowing that the devastation I made up on the page was actually happening to real people in real time. There was something very strange about that reality—as if my writing—my act of imagination—had somehow contributed to the fact of the fire in the real world. It’s hard to explain what I mean, but it was a disturbing few days, where I questioned whether or not I should keep the fire in my book. I could choose whether or not my house stood or my character lived, whereas there were hundreds of people who could not.

And then my mother called to tell me that she had half an hour to evacuate from her home in Santa Barbara, and that she was packing her car and would be at my house by dinner. Suddenly, the lists I had made up of things my character remembered from her destroyed home were instructive. “Don’t just take what you need,” I told my mom. “Take some things you want, too.” Along with clothes and some paperwork, she took the seal coat she’s had since she was eighteen years old.

Her house was fine, in the end—at least this time. And I was left with the awesome knowledge of exactly how life mirrors story, and story informs life.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS PLUS TWO BEHIND-THE-SCENES MOMENTS FROM THE AUTHOR

BEHIND-THE-SCENES MOMENT #1 THE GREAT DATE

BEHIND-THE-SCENES MOMENT #2 SANTA BARBARA’S WILDFIRE SEASON