This is Me
If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know I like big meaty stories, drama, angst. Even my romantic comedies tend to have dark backstories. Despite years of trying, I can’t seem to write “light,” so I’ve decided to lean into it and the Malones of Grand, Montana, is the result. Children, torn from their mother! A lover, gone! Life, changed forever! Heartache, despair… then: hope, redemption, growth… and love.
This Is Us
Recently, I had an evening to myself and I decided to catch up on the Netflix drama This Is Us. (My husband and I started it a few years ago but it had too many tears and not enough car chases, so it became a “me” show, not an “us” show.) I immediately picked it up where we left off and it felt as if I’d never left. This Is Us is my kind of story. And after I went to bed that night, I realized that I’d unknowingly written many of the same elements into my lost Malones of Grand, Montana series: Triplets. Loss of a beloved partner. Adoption. The search for identity.
Wow, no wonder I love the show! There’s the original love story of Jack and Rebecca that mirrors my Heather and JP. The challenges their grown triplets face have some similarities to those facing Heather’s triplets Brade, Leila and Lucas. Rebecca grieves the loss of her beloved Jack. Heather grieves the loss of JP and her children, but without any closure, and is eventually reunited with them. Unlike Rebecca, however, Heather (or Honey as she was known to JP or Hetty, as others called her) was burdened with shame for being single when she became pregnant.
This Is Misogyny
And this is where the inspiration for these books really took off. My series begins when Heather Hudson finds herself about to become a single mother, in a time and place where this was the worst thing that could happen to her. Did you know that in the USA, between the 1940s and the 1970s (to the end of the 1980s in Canada) illegitimacy was considered the result of psychological deficits on the part of the mother?
Single parents have always been part of society, but for the first time in history, unmarried pregnant white girls and women were shunned as “neurotic” and “immoral,” in need of rehabilitation. They were told, emphatically, that the best chance at a normal life for their babies, who were deemed “bastards,” was adoption by white married heterosexual couples. Relinquishment was the right thing to do—if they truly loved their babies.
In the USA during these decades, an estimated 4 million mothers surrendered their newborns, half of those during the ‘60s alone. Some women did this willingly but most were given no choice.
Interestingly, single Black mothers did not receive the same pressure to relinquish their infants, though they still bore immense social stigma. In all cases, the fathers of these children were barely considered. They bore no social cost, their lives were not changed and involvement or even acknowledgment of their children was entirely their choice.
This Is Truth
Today, the popularity and availability of DNA testing and genealogy research has resulted in a flood of real-life reunion stories. Women in their last few decades of life are finally telling long-hidden truths and finding closure and peace. This is what inspired me to write the Malones of Grand, Montana. Fiction is truth wrapped in story and I wanted to tell the truth of many real women by wrapping it in the story of one imaginary woman who overcame this traumatic start to motherhood, and who didn’t just survive, but thrived, and rose above it to build herself a life and yes, even a family. I wanted to tell the story of the adopted infants and their search for identity. I wanted to show all these different iterations of parents and children finding mature relationships build on honesty. And, of course, I wanted them all to find love.
I hope you love my lost Malones as much as I do. Thank you for reading!
About the Author.
USA TODAY Bestselling Author Roxanne Snopek writes contemporary romance and women’s fiction. She loves grand gestures, kindness, and people who leap far out of their comfort zones to do the right things. Her stories often touch on timely topics such as the human-animal bond, community responsibility and modern family dynamics. Her books have won numerous awards, enjoyed much time atop bestseller lists and been optioned for film.
Roxanne writes from her lakeside home in southern British Columbia, Canada, where she lives with her partner of 36 years and their prescient miniature poodle. She also bakes bread, battles weeds, enjoys Happy Hour with neighbors, and occasionally grabs the karaoke mic.
Her list of favorite authors is ever-changing and includes Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen King, Barbara O’Neal, Robyn Carr, Mary Doria Russell, Jane Porter, and on and on… you get the picture. She loves to connect with other booklovers, so please stop by her various social media pages. And be sure to click FOLLOW on this page, too, to receive updates about her new releases.
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