MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The new novel "Buckeye" opens with an unplanned kiss. It's also a forbidden kiss between a man and a woman who are married - not to each other. What follows from that kiss will shape the rest of their lives and their families for generations. The author is Patrick Ryan, and he is with me now. Hi.
PATRICK RYAN: Hi. Thank you for having me.
KELLY: Yeah, we're so delighted to have you with us. I want to start by letting you sketch out the backdrop for that kiss. Where does it happen, and what is happening in the world that day?
RYAN: What is happening in the world the day of the kiss is that the news of the Allied victory in Europe during World War II has just made it onto the radio, and two strangers meet. And the way I got there was because I found out several years ago that my grandmother had a secret that absolutely shocked me. And she had grown up in a small town in Ohio and lived there her entire life. And the secret was that she had maintained an affair for decades with somebody in this town. And it was completely out of line with the way I - my entire grasp of her as a person. And it got me thinking about what it would take to maintain a major secret for a long time and what such a secret would do to the two families that it affected. And then I spent about eight years writing the book and getting to know the characters pretty well.
KELLY: Yeah.
RYAN: What I started to do, I think, was get a little obsessed with the idea of what goes into a secret and how a secret itself is pretty simple. You know, it can just be a mistake. And we all make mistakes. But the power in the secret comes from the lies that go into maintaining it and some of those lies that we have to tell to ourselves over and over again. And...
KELLY: That's so fascinating. And you saw that unfolding, it sounds like, in your own family - the original inspiration for this - where your grandmother had a whopper of a secret and kept it a long time.
Before we move on from the fictional kiss that you open this novel with, I love the idea that you started it on this pivotal day in history where the whole world was realigning, the world was changing, and the door that opens to something unexpected happening in one person's life - or two, as this - as the case may be here.
RYAN: Yes. And then just - when I started to, with the one character - and I had no interest in writing about my grandmother, I should say. But I was very interested in writing about this situation as a starting point. And the character who is the woman who walks into this hardware store where this kiss takes place in this small town is a beautiful, young woman who comes from nothing and has stepped into something of an ideal life that she has a very hard time being satisfied with and ends up in a kind of a love triangle with one man who is available and right in front of her and one man who is off at war.
And so it made me - it led me to the idea of forgiveness, which is a really important theme for me because I find forgiveness to be so important to any relationships that grownups have, and so difficult, such an uphill road. And in the way that a lie becomes a whole lot of secrets, I think forgiveness is not just a single act, but it's a whole lot of decisions. And it can be a million decisions a day that have to be remade over and over.
KELLY: There are a lot of big secrets that your characters keep from each other over years and years and years. And you show us how the lies told to protect the secrets end up doing more damage than the original sins. I wrote down and underlined a line where you posed the question - when is the best time, exactly, to correct a lie told for 15 years...
RYAN: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...And to reveal the truth that's been buried for 23? Patrick Ryan...
RYAN: Yeah.
KELLY: ...When is the best time? Did you find an answer to that question?
RYAN: Well, one of the answers that I got was that buried secrets don't want to stay buried forever. And time seems to water them, and they sprout through the surface. And this is where I started to dive in and pick apart forgiveness because I...
KELLY: Yeah.
RYAN: ...Realized, well, if you let time go by, then what are you asking for forgiveness for? You're asking for forgiveness of the act and then forgiveness of the cover-up. And I think that one of the greatest challenges of that is that if we can't forgive somebody for making a mistake and then taking a while to get around to owning up to it, then we are sort of operating on a falsehood that people are only defined by their good deeds in life. And I really believe that people are also very much defined by what they do with their mistakes.
KELLY: It's interesting because you are writing - whether it's that kiss and everything that flowed from it or other things - you're writing about people doing things they absolutely know they should not be doing, things that they may well regret, and you do still manage to find goodness in them. Do I have that right?
RYAN: Yes. Yes, that's important to me. I believe as a writer that there - the best way to write a villain is to realize that villains don't think of themselves as villains. And so to just back that up a bit or soften it a bit, the best way to write people doing unfortunate or unpleasant things or things that would just make a reader cringe is to incorporate into the act of doing it their reason for doing it because everyone has a reason for doing whatever they're doing in the moment they're doing it, even if it's ridiculous or illogical. And it was really important to me to - by the time the action occurs, that the reader has come with that character, so that they have a chance to understand why this is happening from the perspective of the person doing it.
KELLY: Yeah. I found myself switching allegiances in terms of who I was rooting for as the book unfolded.
RYAN: Oh, me too (laughter).
KELLY: Yeah. Really (laughter)?
RYAN: A little bit, yeah.
KELLY: (Laughter) That's fascinating. You have written fiction before, along the way, but this is your first adult novel, and you're publishing it at the age of 60. So first of all, wow. Congratulations.
RYAN: (Laughter) Thank you.
KELLY: Is there a lesson here, beyond the obvious - just keep plugging, never give up?
RYAN: Gosh, that was going to be my lesson answer.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: That's great (ph).
RYAN: Because I do feel like stick-to-itiveness is the only reason that I'm here. And I think the lesson is, if you're writing, to remind yourself that you're writing - No. 1, you're writing because you enjoy it and because you want to see what happens as you write. I have on a little piece of paper taped to the wall next to my desk - a little piece of paper that says, no one asked you to write. And it's in my handwriting. And it's just me talking to me, as a little reminder that the reason I'm doing this is because I'm electing to do it.
KELLY: Well, I'm so glad you did. Thank you for sharing...
RYAN: Oh, thank you.
KELLY: ...It with us.
RYAN: Thank you. Thank you for reading and for all of these great questions.
KELLY: Patrick Ryan, talking about his novel "Buckeye."
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