Anna Nordberg: When She Was Ours
“There was never one big moment of closure with my mom’s death, never one big moment of epiphany. It’s ongoing. But that doesn’t necessarily make the best structure for a book.”
Debut novelist Anna Nordberg joins me to talk about escalating stakes in scene-setting, being pigeon-holed into a genre, and how to transmogrify your own personal grief into a work of art.
Thea Erickson, a renowned surgeon, is filled with both joy and grief as her family gathers at their home on a summer night in 1995. Her elder daughter Phoebe is getting married, but even the happiness of the day feels bittersweet, as Thea grapples with a terminal cancer diagnosis. She worries she won't be around to support her younger daughter Astra, who's still in college, but even Thea cannot foresee what is to come--a terrible accident the night of the wedding that changes Astra's life forever.