The Far End of Happy (27 page)

1. Do you relate to Ronnie’s determination to honor her marriage vows and stay with Jeff despite the challenges of their relationship? How did she cope? What makes a vow worth breaking?

2. How do Ronnie, Beverly, Janet, and Corporal McNichol differ in the way they respond to the stresses of the standoff?

3. In her voice mail on the day of the standoff, Ronnie’s therapist says, “Don’t worry about being strong for others. Be strong in yourself.” What do you think she meant by this?

4. In what way do you think Ronnie’s and Jeff’s characters are an outgrowth of their mothers’ issues, and how did they each differentiate themselves from their mothers?

5. Where do you see Ronnie, Janet, and Beverly five years beyond the end of the book? Who do you think will have the hardest time adjusting to Jeff’s loss, and why?

6. At one point, Janet makes a crack that she doesn’t believe in genetics. The genetics are bleak for Will and Andrew: on one side, their grandfather and great-grandmother received electroshock therapy for depression and their father committed suicide, and on the other, their grandfather committed suicide. Do you think these children might go on to lead emotionally and mentally healthy lives? What factors beyond genetics might influence their development?

7. Tension between the three women feeds on secrets kept and truths revealed. Even Ronnie, who thrives on the truth and who suffered from secrets kept, sits on some information. How do you feel about others withholding information to protect you? What might influence your decision to withhold information from others?

8. “If a horse went lame, [Jeff would] be the one with his arms around its neck, whispering in its ear, while Ronnie would be the one out by the hydrant, morning and night, cold hosing its leg and bandaging.” What do Ronnie’s and Jeff’s differing approaches to the care of animals say about the way they loved other people? How do you think each would define love?

9. Discuss the role that setting plays in this story. In what ways do Ronnie and Jeff’s house, New Hope Farms, and the firehouse social hall contribute to the story? How do these settings play a different role for Ronnie and Jeff?

10. Corporal McNichol says that fixing Jeff’s problems is not Ronnie’s responsibility. In what ways do you think this is or isn’t true? Did you find it relatable that Ronnie picked up Jeff’s slack as his drinking and depression worsened? At what point does “helping” start to hurt? At what point must you allow a loved one to face the consequences of their actions?

11. In his final suicide note, Jeff asks Ronnie to teach the boys that he loved them. If you were in this situation, would you be able to teach this message to your children? How would you go about it?

12. Beverly and Janet concocted a family story about Ronnie—dressed like Shirley Temple, she climbed on Jeff’s lap to command his attention—and have told it the same way for so long that they’ve changed the family’s collective memory. Ronnie uses a similar technique when she recounts the kitten story for her sons to replace the horror of the suicide. Has your family ever told a story in a way that bent it over time, while also capturing an essential truth?

13. Janet consciously decided not to tell Ronnie that Jeff had pulled a weapon on his first wife. If it was your son, and you saw how happy this new woman made him, would you give her this information before the wedding? Or would you, like Janet, think your son deserved the right to try to mature and be happy?

14. In what way does Ronnie’s story complicate the well-intentioned notion that we should be more compassionate toward people who are depressed and get them the help they need? In what ways did the system let Jeff and Ronnie down, and what can be done about it?

15. In response to her final attempt to get him help, Jeff wants to strike a bargain: he’ll try rehab if Ronnie is there for him as his wife when he gets out. Do you think she should have tried this additional measure? Why or why not?

16. By the end of the standoff, Ronnie wonders whether she had ever really known Jeff at all. Do you think we can ever really know another person? What did Ronnie’s marriage teach her about relationships—and about herself?

17. Several times in the book, a character signs a legal document authorizing an action that will have a significant impact on another character. Ronnie commits Jeff to a psych ward; Jerry signs for Janet to have fetus-threatening surgery; Ronnie authorizes the police to break her windows with canisters of Mace while Jeff is inside the building. Discuss these decisions. Would you have made the same ones? Have you ever had to authorize help for someone else, and how did it feel to take responsibility for that decision?

18. At several points, Beverly compares her relationship with Janet to a marriage. Do you have friendships that sometimes feel that way? What are the benefits and challenges of maintaining such a close relationship with a friend during life-changing events?

19. Ronnie and Jeff were deeply in debt. Although Jeff was in charge of the family finances, in what ways was Ronnie culpable for the state of their financial affairs? Did she deserve to pay this price for her mistakes?

20. Ronnie and Jeff, Beverly and Janet: both couples have a substantial age difference. In what ways do you think this feeds and/or challenges the relationships?

21.
The Far End of Happy
takes place over only twelve hours. In your opinion, which character exhibits the most significant growth arc, and why?

22. Throughout the day, the big challenge for the characters is to try to sustain some sort of hope. Do you think the story ends on a hopeful note, despite the obvious tragedy? Do you, like Beverly, think it’s possible to hold extreme pain and extreme joy in your heart at the same time?

This is a novel based on true events. Why did you decide to fictionalize? What is true, and what is made up?

Before writing this novel, I had spent several years drafting a memoir, mining the events that led up to my first husband’s suicide standoff for aspects of story. I did so to create a record for my sons and me. Even while writing memoir, though, which relies on “facts” and naturally occurring story arcs, I always realized my version of those “true” events would differ significantly from someone else’s. Both memoir and fiction, however, are ways of arriving at what is true for that writer. By freeing me from the constraints of fact, fiction ultimately gave me the leeway to tell an engaging story while still bringing my personal truth into full emotional bloom.

As for what is factual, other than an embellishment or two, most of the police action is as I remember it. As for what feels true, I’d answer the same way I would about my first, entirely fabricated novel: all of it.

Do any of the characters play themselves?

Yes, but they were all four-legged: Max, Daydream, and Horsey Patch. In memory of my therapist, who was struck down on the streets of Reading, Pennsylvania, by a hit-and-run driver after offering free counseling at Berks Women in Crisis, I named Ronnie’s therapist Anita.

This was sensitive material and must have been hard to revisit. Why did you decide to write a book about it? What did you hope to accomplish?

While sharing my story through the years, verbally and on paper, I learned that the events that led up to the standoff’s tragic outcome were relatable to many women. When our country’s economy crashed in 2008 and so many lost the hope and security that comes from a lifetime of saving and investment, I felt more strongly than ever that sharing my story might help provide hope to others who had to start over and rebuild.

Interaction with death almost always invites us to reassess how we are spending our lives, but what made my husband’s suicide so troubling were the persistent, unanswered questions. When did everything start falling apart? How did I miss it, in what ways was I compensating for it, and why did I ignore the signs? There are no clean lines in a story like ours, only endless shades of gray, and a lot of questions about relationships and life that are well worth asking. Without a doubt, that’s why I wrote this book.

But I also realized, even as we were experiencing it, that death did not have dominion over the day of my husband’s suicide, which contained within it the full range of life’s emotional content. Joy and pain, tragedy and victory, togetherness and aloneness, beauty and revulsion, faith and despair, the known and the unknown—it was all there. A tragedy is always unfolding somewhere, whether we know it or not—during the time it takes to read this interview, at least one more person in the United States will die at his or her own hand. Yet despite my family’s focus that day on a loved one determined to die, for those of us who chose life, it was a day worth living.

How did you decide to rename yourself for the novelized version of your story?

First, I want to be clear—while we are a lot alike, I am not Ronnie. As happens in many novels, each character carries some spark from the author’s personal fire.

My perspective is closest to Ronnie’s, though, and naming her wasn’t easy! I wanted a masculinized version of a female name to suggest, subtly, that she was functioning as both mother and father to her children. I began with Mick/Michelle, which I loved right up until the backstory referenced “Mick and Jeff,” which sounded so much like “Mutt and Jeff” that I had to abandon the choice. I switched to Bennie/Benicia until “Bennie and Jeff” became “Bennie and the Jeff.”

After that, further naming felt too random. My first husband’s name was Ronald, and his mother and coworkers called him Ronnie. A lightbulb went on—I could name her Ronnie/Veronica—and the entire project clicked into place for me. By naming her Ronnie, I could achieve that thing story does best: create meaning from chaos. Oddly, I latched right on to the notion and never grew confused during the writing. It was healing for me to write about the standoff in a way that allowed someone named Ronnie to experience the end of the marriage, the financial disaster, and the day’s events, yet still choose to embrace life.

How did you choose your point-of-view characters?

Even on the day of my first husband’s standoff, when all was fresh and uncertain, I knew that the events of that day affected many more people than just my sons and me. A single point of view seemed disingenuous; I wasn’t even the only mother involved. By creating points of view for the mother who lost her son and the mother with hidden secrets who had to share her daughter’s trauma, I was able to spread the pain across the broken shoulders of all who were left behind, as does suicide.

It made no sense to presume to know Jeff’s heart by giving him a point of view. His actions silenced his voice. If this character wanted his perspective known, he would have fought harder to stay in the story.

Telling the story in twelve hours is a technique more often used in suspense and thrillers than in women’s fiction. Why did you decide to tell the story this way? What specific challenges did this structure present?

To my way of thinking, the standoff symbolized the stalemate that resulted when all efforts were spent at the useful end of Ronnie and Jeff’s relationship. All marriages exhibit moments of miscommunication, lack of connection, and disappointment, but this high-stakes scenario electrifies Ronnie’s look back at what might have led to this moment in time with the undercurrent of imminent harm.

For all three women, the deep shame that comes when private matters are exposed publicly is blown sky-high when governmental resources are tapped to save the community from Jeff’s actions. Keeping the war at home within a tight frame seemed the best way to keep the reader focused on the fact that the way we lead our family lives can at any moment become a high-stakes game.

Yet a standoff, for the most part, is really a lot of high-tension waiting. My challenge was to include enough story events during those twelve hours so that the three women’s private thoughts about what might have brought them to this place in their lives didn’t outstrip the ongoing standoff action. To do so, I moved true events from elsewhere on our real timeline into the fictional frame of that day’s events.

What advice might you have for others considering a novel based on true events?

I’d say take a lot of notes and don’t be in a rush to publish.

Difficult life events require time to process. Do that work. I recall someone wise saying that the best literature about the 9/11 attacks would start to come out seven years after those events. Maybe that’s a random number, but it’s not a bad one to keep in mind. Although it is all about human emotion, literature is more than an outcry of grief or anger. Your reader has no interest in being dragged through the muck and mire of your existence unless they are going to gain new perspective about life. When you can offer that, you are ready to begin.

Thank you for reading
!

At Sourcebooks we are always working on something new and exciting, and we don’t want you to miss out.

So sign up now to receive exclusive offers, bonus content, and always be the first to get the scoop on what’s new!

SIGN UP NOW!

Read on for an excerpt from

The Art of Falling

by Kathryn Craft

Available now from
Sourcebooks Landmark

My muscles still won’t respond. It’s been hours since they promised a doctor, but no one has come. All I can do is lie on this bed, wishing for some small twinge to tell me exactly what is wrong. My body: a still life, with blankets.

I’d settle for inching my foot back beneath the covers. I command my foot to flex. To point. To burrow beside its mate. It ignores me, as do my hands when I tell them to tend to the situation.

Why has someone covered me so haphazardly? Or—could it be?—that in my dreams, I had somehow moved that foot? I will it to move again—now.

It stays put.

This standoff grows more frightening by the moment. If my focus weakens, I’ll fall prey to larger, hungrier questions. Only motion can soothe me; only sweat can wash away my fear.

From somewhere to my right, I hear an old woman’s crackling cough. My eyes look toward the sound, but I am denied even this small diversion; a flimsy curtain hides her.

I close my eyes against this new reality: the bed rails, a constant beeping over my shoulder, and the device clamped to my index finger. In my mind, I replace the flimsy curtain with a stretch of burgundy velour and relax into its weight. Sink. Deep. I replay each sweep, rise, and dramatic dip of Dmitri’s choreography. My muscles seek aspects of motion: that first impulse. The building momentum. Moments of suspension, then—ah, sweet release. When the curtain rises, I will be born anew.

• • •

“Is time.
Merde
.” The half-whisper I remember is intimate; Dmitri’s breath tickles my ear. With a wet finger, he grazes a tender spot on my neck, for luck, then disappears among the other bodies awaiting him. My skin tingles from his touch.

The work light cuts off, plunging me into darkness. On the other side of the curtain, eleven hundred people, many of them critics and producers, hush. We are about to premiere
Zephyr
, Dmitri’s first full-evening work.

I follow small bits of fluorescent tape across the floor to find my place. The curtain whispers as it rises. Audience expectation thickens the air.

Golden light splashes across the stage, and the music begins. Dmitri stalks onstage. I sense him and turn. Our eyes lock. We crouch—slow. Low. Wary. Mirror images, we raise our arms to the side, the downward arc from each shoulder creating powerful wings that hover on an imagined breeze. One: Our blood surges in rhythm. Two: A barely perceptible
plié
to prepare. Three: We soar.

Soon our limbs compress, then tug at the space between us. We never touch but are connected by intent, instinct, and strands of sound from violins. I feel the air he stirs against my skin.

Other dancers enter and exit, but I don’t yield; Dmitri designed their movements to augment the tension made by our bodies.

I become the movement. I fling my boundaries to the back of the house; I will be bigger than ever before. I’m a confluence of muscle and sinew and bone made beautiful through my command of the oldest known language. I long to move others through my dancing because then I, too, am moved.

Near the end of the piece, the other four dancers cut a diagonal slash between Dmitri and me. Our shared focus snaps. Dissonance grows as we perform dizzying turns.

The music slows and our arms unfold to reduce spin. Dmitri and I hit our marks and reach toward each other. We have danced beyond the end of the music. In silence, within a waiting pool of light, we stretch until we touch, fingertip to fingertip.

Light fades, but the dance continues; my energy moves through Dmitri, and his pierces me. The years, continents, and oceans that once held us apart could not keep us from this moment of pure connection.

Utter blackness surrounds us, and for one horrible moment I lose it all—Dmitri, the theater, myself.

But when the stage lights come up, Dmitri squeezes my hand. His damp curls glisten.

Applause crescendos and crashes over us. Dmitri winks before accepting the accolades he expects.

I can’t recover as quickly.

No matter how gently I ease toward the end of motion, it rips away from me. I feel raw. Euphoria drains from my fingertips, leaving behind this imperfect body.

I struggle to find myself as the others run on from the wings. We join hands in a line, they pull me with them to the lip of the stage—and with these simple movements I am returned to the joyful glow of performance. We raise our hands high and pause to look up to the balcony, an acknowledgment before bowing that feels like prayer. My heart and lungs strain and sweat pushes through my pores and I hope never to recover. I am gloriously alive, and living my dream.

The dance recedes and the applause fades, but I’m not ready. My muscles seek aspects of motion—where’s the motion?—I can feel no impulse. Momentum stalls. I am suspended and can find no release.

The curtain falls, the bed rails return, and I am powerless to stop them.