Recently I had the privilege of going to an area library, where Lisa Montanaro, who used to live locally but moved to California in 2012, was promoting her novel with a book talk and signing. She was in conversation with Christine Adler, a local lady and former president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.
Ms. Montanaro’s book, Everything We Thought Was True, is a family drama, and a highly fictionalized version of her life. It is a dual timeline, being told in 2015 by Lena, the adult daughter of a gay father, and narrated by her parents Teresa and Frank in the 1970s and 80s.
Ms. Montanaro told us that, being first a nonfiction writer, she initially intended for this story to be a memoir, yet as she was interviewing her formerly closeted gay father, she wanted to change many parts of his story. She quickly realized that this project had to be a novel.
Through reading this book, she wants readers—especially young people—to “understand the history of the hard-won rights of the LGBTQ+ community, and anyone who has a secret and is healing from a trauma to realize that embracing the truth will set you free.”
Ms. Montanaro told us that Lena was the most difficult character to write as she is the most different from herself, and that Teresa is the heart of the novel. Frank was the easiest because she identified the most with him. She said that “Lena is still grappling with loyalty issues and that she’s still living in the closet that Frank came out of.”
Ms. Montanaro’s father is very proud of her book, and he’s very much like Frank because he’s Italian-American, marries a heterosexual woman. She said it took her 6 years to write the book from start to finish.
The three biggest challenges of writing the book were:
- Trying to do justice to the true story but not being defined by it.
- Converting the raw data of her personal essays into a novel.
- Learning that you have to write the entire book before you send it to a publisher, in the fiction world, which is not so in the nonfiction world, as she’d written in the past.
Ms. Montanaro was asked if she had planned to write both such a historic and timely novel. She said she absolutely did not plan it that way at all.
The audiobook version of Everything We Thought Was True is set to release on May 13 through Tantor Media, and it’s being read by Annalee Scott. Lisa Montanaro is planning on starting her next book in a few months, and I can’t wait to see what it will be all about!
I’ve already finished reading Everything We Thought Was True, and you can read my full thoughts here. Happy reading, all!
Michelle’s Bookish Life 