Shayla Dugan has a new women’s fiction book about mothering and its many stages. In the interview below, she shares what inspired her recently released book.
T: Where did you first get the idea for your new book?
S: The idea for Learning to Swim came to me one day when I was discussing with friends the difficulty of caring for aging parents and children at the same time. Though I am incredibly close with my own mother and daughter, I couldn’t help but reflect on the hospice families I had worked with over the years and how complicated family dynamics can be. Often, adult children and their parents would seek my help in solving life-long family issues during the last few months on earth together. That professional experience of helping families reconcile their differences was incredibly meaningful. I felt like writing this story was a way of honoring family relationships as well as honoring the complexities of the various stages of womanhood.
T: What are your favorite quotes from the book?
S: I think one of the most relatable, poignant moments of Learning to Swim is when Juniper is reflecting on how she knew her parents’ marriage was falling apart. “Thirteen-year-old Juniper was smarter than her parents in their thirties. She knew what they had yet to figure out: when you truly love someone, there are no ‘buts,’ you just love them.” Most children have this whimsical notion that parental love should be unconditional but in reality, all parents are human and imperfect and this moment sheds light on that. Throughout the book, Juniper is able to see how this is one of her family’s inherited characteristics and witness the evolution of it.
T: Who will like this book?
S: Learning to Swim is the story of three generations of women, navigating through the relationships between a mother, daughter, and grandmother while also dealing with the complexities of the various stages of womanhood. Told from multiple character viewpoints, this book is wrought with humor and heart similar to Bunmi Laditan’s Confessions of a Domestic Failure, Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, and Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. Because of the multiple life stages portrayed, this novel will appeal to women of all ages.
I hope you enjoyed this interview with author Shayla Dugan and a behind-the-scenes look at her new book Learning to Swim. As a small publisher and working with a debut author, thank you for reading this newsletter!
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