Both Luc and Clare in Clare Loving are fascinating, complicated characters, and your portrayal of their troubled love affair strikes exactly the right note in The Beautiful Ships, the middle novella in which the two struggle over her pregnancy. How did you conceive of the book’s three-part structure in terms of these two characters and their evolution through time?
—Marianne Herrmann, St. Louis Park, Minnesota
Marianne, I want to explore this question fully because it really interests me, but I think I should give a spoiler alert for readers who haven’t yet read the book. Read more…