Mary Kay Andrews is on book tour for her latest novel, Road Trip. Gramercy Books Bexley brought her to town for a luncheon held at Giuseppe’s Ritrovo. When I was in Florida, the audience was considered the “ladies who lunch”, women who could be there for a two hour lunch program on a weekday. Sold out crowd, with one man who was there with his wife for their wedding anniversary luncheon.
After thirty-four books, Mary Kay Andrews knows what she’s doing. The last time I was there for a book program, the line after lunch was quite long for the book signing. Andrews went to the tables as women sat down, introduced herself, and offered to personalize the book. And, she made a second tour of the room before she sat down to eat. I had met her before, and reminded her that I hosted her for the Lee County Reading Festival when she was writing mysteries as Kathy Hogan Trocheck. She was kind enough to say she remembered me. She did spell my name correctly.
Linda Kass, owner of Gramercy Books, gave us a short teaser before the meal. Two estranged sisters embark on a trip to Ireland after their mother dies. They have a family painting, and their mother hoped they would work together to find the story of their family in Ireland.
When Mary Kay spoke, she said she had been in Cleveland the night before, and said “Midwest nice” is a real thing. She had a few comments about the importance of independent bookstores before she talked about her books. She said she gets ideas from all over the place, but some sparks come from her vivid dreams. Several nights in a row she dreamt about a young woman sitting in church in front of her. Finally, she asked the woman what she was doing there. She said she was there watching her ex-husband getting married. When Andrews asked, the woman replied she was okay with that because he was an a-hole. That dream became Spring Fever.
After thirty years with a book club in Atlanta, Andrews and her husband moved to Raleigh, where she couldn’t get an invitation to join a book club. She was asked to speak at them, but no one offered to include her. When one snooty group said they’d add her to their waiting list, she wanted to throw a hissy fit. She used Hissy Fit for the title of a novel about a woman who catches her fiance with hr best friend and maid of honor the night before her wedding. She threw a few things, including a hissy fit. (Oh, and when Andrews and her husband moved back to Atlanta, she rejoined her book club.)
How did Road Trip come about? If you follow Andrews on Instagram or Facebook, you know she loves old portraits of women with attitude. She went to an auction in Atlanta, and there was a portrait of a woman. It was a wedding gift from the woman’s father, along with an estate in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland. She had been part of the Guinness family. The painting had been missing for seventy-five years. The portrait sold for $400,000.
Andrews used some of her family background in the book. She’s Irish on her father’s side, Kathleen Hogan. Her grandparents came over from Ireland in the early 1900s, but wouldn’t talk about their lives in Ireland. They settled in Chicago. Her grandmother, Mary Ellen Sherlock was twenty when she and her sister Brigid came on the Cedric, a ship from the White Star Line, like the Titanic. They were steerage passengers who came through Ellis Island.
Road Trip features two estranged sisters, Maeve and Therese Dunigan. They’re from Savannah. There’s a huge Irish Catholic population there. After the Civil War, the Irish followed the railroads south, and worked for the railroads or as longshoremen at the ports. For years, you couldn’t get a job at the ports if you weren’t Irish.
Maeve, the younger daughter, was a professor who took leave to move in with her mother and take care of her when she was dying. Maeve is the rule follower in the family. Therese is a rolling stone, who has lived all over the country, and doesn’t even own her own car. She took over her mother’s car, a large car they call “LeBeast”. The sisters have nothing. They’re broke, but they’re counting on an inheritance. Their mother always told them she’d paid off the mortgage on the house, and they planned to fix it up a little and sell it. However, after the funeral, their uncle, the executor, tells them their mother, Mary Helen, had given all her money to a TV evangelist. The only thing left is money she had set aside in a coffee can for the two sisters. Her dying wish is that they heal their rift by making a trip to Ireland together.
Mary Helen Dunigan was inspired by Mary Kay Andrews’ own mother. Her mother told lots of stories, many not true. In the novel, there was a portrait of a woman in Mary Helen’s house. She always told her daughters they were kin to the woman, and that was their heritage. Therese happened to pick up a newspaper on her way to Savannah for the funeral, and there was an article about a portrait that sold at Sotheby’s for 1.4 million dollars. It looked just like the portrait in their house. While Maeve said their portrait must be a copy, Therese consulted a friend in the business who said the portrait seemed to have the right age, the same artist, but she couldn’t say it was authentic. They’d have to go to Ireland to look for answers as to whether the portrait was authentic, and how it ended up in their house in Savannah. Their first planned stop? Tarrymore House, a National Trust property, with part of the estate still owned by the family. And, the mystery, the adventure, and the romance begins.
In Eastern Ireland, there’s a local rumor that a valuable portrait is buried in the Wicklow Mountains.It’s based on the stories about Rose Dugdale, the daughter of a millionaire. She was a college graduate who turned radical, and supported the IRA. She was involved with one robbery, and maybe two. But, when they broke into Russborough House, they stole 19 paintings, all of which were later found at a house rented by Rose. This is some of the background Andrews used in the novel.
For her research, Mary Kay Andrews and a friend took a trip to Ireland. She wanted to research her Sherlock relatives, and worked with a man at the Museum of the Irish Immigrants in Cobh. They didn’t find much, but he suggested if she wanted to look for relatives, she should go to the nearest pub because they know the locals, or ask a postman.She did go to a pub in Birr, but the only thing she’s been able to find is the birth record for her great-aunt Brigid, but not for her grandmother, Mary Ellen Sherlock.
When Mary Kay took questions, the first one was about how she left her journalism career to write novels. She said she was a journalist in Atlanta, and had a bitchy woman boss. “There’s nothing worse.” She really wanted to be home when her kids got home from school. So, she thought maybe she’d write a novel, and could quit her job. She wrote nights and weekends. When authors came to Atlanta, she would ask as their writer’s escort, and ask them for advice.
Andrews said she has a complex writing process. She writes in longhand in black and white composition books. She has to write at least 500 words. 2000 is a good day. She writes her books in linear fashion, and seldom skips around. She’s released a book a year until two years ago when she turned seventy and decided to write one book a year.
Asked about her ideas, she said she has all kinds of them. Her brain is like a lint trap.
She doesn’t know the endings of her books ahead of time. Andrews said she wants the reader to feel joy when you close the book. She wants the protagonist to be in a better place, but doesn’t know ahead of time how she’ll get there.
Andrews did mention the webshow and podcast Friends & Fiction. That’s made up of four New York Times bestselling authors who came together during COVID in 2020 to promote their books using Facebook Live. They thought they’d talk about their books for six weeks, and then COVID would be over. When that didn’t happen, they decided to invite struggling authors to appear. They started with Kristin Hannah. By now, they have over 340,000 members.
Asked her favorite book growing up, she said she was a mystery fan. She’s the middle of three sisters. They were Nancy Drew fans, and they would act it out. Her youngest sister, for some reason, always claimed Nancy Drew. Beth was the plump one. Now, everyone would know the third one of the group, George, was obviously gay. She read Agatha Christie, but didn’t understand some of the books. She didn’t know what a parsonage was. Her grandfather would give her mother bags of paperback mysteries, such as Mickey Spillane and Earl Stanley Gardner, the author of Perry Mason books. But, she didn’t get Spillane at age 12. She didn’t know why his character, Mike Hammer, was always returning home to find a different blonde in his bed. Why didn’t he lock the door?
The final question was about imposter syndrome. Mary Kay Andrews said even though she’s written thirty-four books, she still doesn’t think she’s smart enough to write a novel when she compares herself to other authors. But, she has all her book jackets framed, and all her bestseller lists. So, she looks around, and says, I can do this. She said the only solution to imposter syndrome is to do it.
Mary Kay Andrews’ website is https://marykayandrews.com/
Gramercy Books’ website is https://gramercybooksbexley.com/
