a conversation with
P H O E B E F OX Tell us about A Little Bit of Grace. What compelled you to write this story? The original incarnation of this story was literally the first manuscript-length fiction I ever attempted, years ago. It was an entirely different story then—a Cocoon-meetsHitch type of plot that centered around the Merry Widows, a group of elderly singles who weren’t ready to hang up the towel on dating. Then I put it in a drawer for about a decade because it was bad, as first manuscripts tend to be. Fast-forward to about six other manuscripts and four published novels, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Millie. I reimagined the story from another angle and rewrote it. Still not so great. And so I did that again—and possibly one more time after that. Thirteen years later, the final version shares two things with the original one: Millie’s name/general character (though she didn’t come fully to life until I realized her backstory, with this version) and a single scene, when she and the Merry Widows meet Grace off the plane. Aunt Millie is a vibrant, larger-than-life character who set out to change her own life for the better. Was she inspired by a real person? What was your favorite part about writing her as a character? Millie was inspired by my great-aunt Mil-
lie, my mom’s aunt, who she was close to and wound up caring for in her final years. Feisty, full of light, and frequently hilarious, Aunt Millie never married and was a model of living her life as she chose, social mores be damned: flirting outrageously with the men in her assisted-living complex, drinking her “evening toddy” of rum right until the end, smoking until her eightieth birthday (when she abruptly quit and never looked back). The real Millie dressed like Jackie O until almost the day she died, and there was no enormous family secret or estrangement in her past. But she and the fictional Millie share lovely translucent blue eyes, a similar joie de vivre, and an unapologetic, be-yourself approach to life. I loved writing fictional Millie—not only to give the real Millie a bit of a happier ending than she got in reality (my Aunt Millie never wound up with the great love of her life), but because I love the idea of getting to the late years of your life and looking back with few regrets because you actually did all the things you dreamed of doing. I think so many of us get waylaid from really living according to our deepest truths, for one reason or another: the expectations of others or ourselves, personal hang-ups, commitments and responsibilities. I love the idea of living with so much joy and freedom, but not in a hedonis-
tic or self-centered way. Fictional Millie just finds the magic in every day, and her relish of life spreads to those around her. I’d love to be more like her, and it was fun getting to live inside her skin for a while. Grace, the protagonist of the novel, is faced with one difficult circumstance after the next. In the midst of her grief, she sets off on an adventure. Tell us about what it was like to write this character. Grace was a challenge for me to write because she accepts a lot of things out of a sense of duty. It was interesting to explore what it would be like to walk a life path that was already set out for you, and how a person might find fulfillment in that even though they didn’t actively choose it. I think Grace would have lived out her life in her small hometown working her family-legacy job pretty contentedly if her marriage hadn’t blown up or she’d had more family to hold her there, but when all the strings tethering Grace to her accepted path loosen enough for her to get a glimpse of what else might be out in the world for her, I don’t think she was able to go back. She also loved one man from the time she was a child, and that was foreign to me—I didn’t meet my husband until my late thirties. But he felt essential to my life very early in, and I drew on the idea of losing that—the partner we choose, who becomes our most intimate family, in whose hands a big chunk of our happiness and dreams for the future rest. That kind of loss is a fairly horrifying thought for me.
Is Cypress Key a real place? Or purely a town in your imagination? Why did you choose to set the story here? Both, actually—it’s loosely based on Pine Island in Florida, a marvelously odd hippie/artist/old-Florida community, but Cypress Key is really an amalgam of everything I loved best about the southwest Florida area when I lived in Fort Myers. I moved there from Manhattan in the middle of winter, and I marveled every day at waking up to crystalline blue skies, warm breezes, and palm trees chittering outside my window when it was frigid ev-
I wanted to try to capture that feeling for Grace— going from freezing mono-color winter to the warm riot of color and sensory riches that is southwest Florida. erywhere else. It opened up something hard and tight in my soul at the time, and I wanted to try to capture that feeling for Grace—going from freezing mono-color winter to the warm riot of color and sensory riches that is southwest Florida, echoing her emotional journey in the story too as she goes from tightly held and duty-driven to loose and free and self-directed.
WE’RE HERE to LIVE. What inspires you to write? I often start stories not so much with a specific plot idea or characters as with a theme: a problem I want to solve, a knot I want to unravel. Writing is where I analyze things I’m wrangling in life from every angle and try to find an answer, a path forward. This story arose from two nuts I was trying to crack in my personal life: (a) how to forgive things you feel aren’t forgivable, and (b) what to do with rage, an unfamiliar emotion to me that was vexing me at the time as a result of (a). Once I have the theme I want to examine, ideas start to come, and pretty soon characters come onstage and I start to get a sense of who they are, why they’re there, what journey they need to go on, and then I figure out how to take them forward. But having that central question at the core of it is what makes me want to write that story. Is there a message that you want readers to take away from this story? Be who you are—and rejoice in others being who they are too. I’ve been obsessed lately with a list of five “top regrets of the dying”
that longtime palliative caregiver Bronnie Ware published some time ago, culled from what she’d heard over and over from patients in the last days of their lives about what they wished they had done differently. Number one on this gorgeous, inspirational list is this: “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” When I sit and think about the purpose of life, why we’re all here (as one does of an idle evening), that’s what I always come back to: I think life is maybe a process of trying to learn to untie all the strictures we allow to be put on us all our lives, internally and externally, that keep us from doing that. If that’s what readers take away from A Little Bit of Grace, I imagine both Millies would be pretty damn happy about that.
PHOEBE FOX is the author of the Breakup Doctor series (The Breakup Doctor, Bedside Manners, Heart Conditions, Out of Practice), and has been a contributor and regular columnist for a number of national, regional, and local publications, including the Huffington Post, Elite Daily, and She Knows. A former actor on stage and screen, Phoebe has been dangled from wires as a mall fairy; was accidentally concussed by a blank gun; and hosted a short-lived game show. She has been a relationship columnist; a movie, theater, and book reviewer; and a radio personality, and currently lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two excellent dogs.
Discussion Questions 1. Do you believe in “the one” or do you think you can find love with more than one person throughout your life?
2. In what ways did Grace transform during her time in Florida?
3. What do you think would’ve happened if Grace’s mom had sent the other letter to Millie?
4. Everyone struggles to be true to themselves through all stages of life. Can you think of a particular time in your life when you struggled? How did you work through it?
5. Do you think there are things that are truly unforgivable, even when it comes to family and loved ones? If so, what are some examples?
6. How do you deal with anger? Can rage ever be a force for good? How?
7. Do you think Millie’s life would have been different if Grace’s mom had fully accepted her and they’d stayed close? How?
8. Were Grace and Brian “right” for each other, or do you think he married her as a rebound,
or a “safe” choice after heartbreak? What does either answer imply about their marriage as well as their divorce?
9. Do you agree with Grace that a friendship you may have had with an ex needs a period of dormancy after a breakup? Can you ever truly recapture the same level of friendship with someone you had a relationship with after the romance is over?
10. Grace’s father would criticize Grace offhandedly when she was growing up. Did anyone
ever say something thoughtless or critical to you that stayed with you and had a deep effect on your behavior or actions? Were you ever able to recognize and let go of the misbelief that created in you?