Susan Meissner: The Shape of Mercy
Book Club Favorites

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

This story was put together so amazingly well. The characters are developed beautifully. How difficult was it for you to create characters from different time periods and lifestyles and merge them together into one story?

I wrote Mercy's diary first; before I wrote anything else. After reading several different books on the Salem Witch Trials and penning dozens of note cards, I felt fairly ready to step into 1692. I interview my characters before I write their story, so I had already had several imaginary conversations with Mercy Hayworth before I began to write her diary. I knew how she was wired, what she was good at, what she feared, what she was willing to do for the people she loved. Knowing this up front made writing her diary a bit simpler, but just a bit.

When I began to write the rest of the book from Lauren's point of view, the diary was already there, just waiting to be discovered by Lauren; or actually, waiting to help her discover things about herself she had no idea were true. Abigail was also rather pre-existent in my head before I began to write. She personifies regret. Lauren needed the diary to see how she viewed the world and she needed Abigail to see what to make of the world she saw, especially before she made any decisions she would later wish she could undo.

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

I distinctly remember learning about the Salem Witch Trials in school. What made you want to write about a book that revolved around those events?

When I was in junior high, I was in play called To Burn a Witch. I played the role of an innocent young woman accused of witchcraft, along with several other young women from my village. It's a one-act play that takes place in a jail cell. When my character realizes she can save herself by pretending to be bewitched, she begins to scream that one of the other girls in her cell – a friend, actually – is tormenting her. My character is led away to freedom and the woman she accused falsely is led away to her execution.

I had forgotten being in that play until I read a newspaper article a couple years ago about a woman who was petitioning a Massachusetts court to exonerate her great-times-eight grandmother. This ancestor of hers was accused and convicted of witchcraft during the Salem trials, was released when the hysteria ended, but whose name was never cleared. I was reminded of how it felt, even just as an actress, to be accused of being something I was not - and the far worse feeling of accusing someone I knew was innocent. The people who were executed in 1692 Salem were all innocent. They all died refusing to confess they were in league with Satan and they held onto this truth to the point of death. That, to me, is incredibly inspiring. These three fictional women in my book– Mercy, Lauren and Abigail - have three very basic things in common. They are all daughters of influential men, all raised as an only child, and each one must decide who they are. Are they women who stand for the truth even if they stand alone or do they let fear propel them to do what the crowd says to do, even if the crowd is wrong?

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

At one point, Lauren tells her dad, "I'd rather shorten the distance than build a bridge, Dad." In what ways have you "shortened the distance?"

I probably haven't erased an inch of distance between the rich and the poor and how they see each other. But I can say that I saw myself often in Lauren as the story revealed how she truly didn't want to measure people using group-think but she did. She just did. A lot of us do. We see a homeless man begging on the streets and we make all kinds of assumptions about how he got there and what he would do if we handed him a five-dollar bill. We see a pregnant teenager or an obese child or a woman wearing diamonds and we assume the teenager has no morals, the child has no restraint and the woman is wealthy and therefore has no worries. We believe these things because the crowd often tells us it's so. Jumping to conclusions seems to permeate culture, regardless of the generation. Whatever the crowd says, we too easily believe, especially when we're afraid. If this novel serves to bring that into focus, I will feel like I've at least shortened the distance between what is true and what is perception. I think that when we encounter a person like Mercy – a virtue like mercy – we become witnesses of hope. People with hope are attracted to the good they see in other people. I think books that reinforce hope definitely keep us from throwing in the towel. Life can be hard. There has to be more than just this life. Hope assures us there is.

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

I believe that this story is about the many facets of love. What would you do for love?

Someone asked me a long time ago, before the book had released, if The Shape of Mercy was a romance novel, and I quickly said no, but then just as quickly added, "But it is a love story." Because you're right. It is a story about the depths of love, which includes but also transcends romance. It’s really a look into what we are willing to do for love, what we are willing to sacrifice. Simplistically speaking, love is something you do; it's a verb. You learn more about love's wonder when you give it away, not when you receive it. Interestingly enough, The Shape of Mercy has finished in the Romance Writers of America annual RITA awards for this year in the category of novel with strong romantic elements. That really surprised me. And encouraged me!

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

"Because 'tis easier to believe ill of someone than good." Do you believe this is true? Why?

Well, if I am being honest, yes it is easier to believe someone who the crowd says is bad and who looks bad IS bad, than it is to believe someone who the crowd says isn't good, and who doesn't look good, is actually good. Just like it's easier to grab a couple Twinkies for lunch than to make a salad. We have the capacity to step back and base our beliefs on conviction rather than convention, but remember, we're talking about ease. This doesn't mean I believe in taking the easy road. I don't. There's a great line in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, spoken by Albus Dumbledore: "Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy." They are often not the same thing.

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner

Can you tell us anything about your current writing projects or what you plan to do next?

In October 2009, Random House will release my next novel, White Picket Fences, which is a story about a family that seems to have the perfect iconic life. Perfect house, perfect jobs, perfect neighborhood, perfect everything. But they live on the same complicated planet as the rest of us and have the same flaws. To pretend all is well when all is not is to doom yourself to a life of pretense and disappointment and maybe even despair. We all have our weaknesses, and things we wish we could do over, or avoid altogether, but we also have our strengths – and these shine brightest when we are honest about who we are. I spend a small portion of the book revisiting the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. I like weaving in a historical thread into the weave of a contemporary setting. I am beginning work on a book for 2010 that will be based part in current day and partly during the lifetime of Lady Jane Grey, a young woman who reigned on England's throne for all of nine days.

Your readers might want to know that I've created a special character blog for The Shape of Mercy that will allow me to keep the characters alive and breathing, so to speak. I let Lauren, Abigail, Clarissa, Esperanza and even Mercy – in her own way – create the blog posts so that it seems like a continuation of their lives after the book. You can find it right here: The Shape of Mercy Blogspot.

Book Club Favorites: Interview with Susan Meissner