The Threadbare Heart
by Jennie Nash
February 2011 Book Pick

Lily and Tom are living their lives in their empty home, still working and teaching at the University. Their children have grown and moved out and they are thinking it is time for a change. When the opportunity to own and run an Avocado farm presents itself, they decide to take the chance. They finish out their semesters, pack up their belongings and become farmers. They have a lot to learn about farming and about each other. Lily feels threatened about the amount of time Tom is spending with Nadine, a woman who is helping him with the farm. She is concerned that they made a move from their previous lives into a life that will pull them apart.

Lily is overwhelmed and suspicious about the relationship between Tom and his farm buddies. One night, she drinks too much and becomes quite ill. When Tom finds her, he tries to get her comfortable but a wildfire starts out in the fields. Tom knows that they have to leave to be away from the wildfires so with Lily finally out of the house, Tom attempts to rescue their dog that has run back inside. Unfortunately, Tom does not make it out and Lily is now faced with a life without Tom. What will she do? Will she ever survive this tragedy and the guilt that she feels?

Book Club Picks: The Threadbare Heart Discussion Questions

1. Would you embark on a new life adventure if you were given the opportunity? Do you think Tom and Lily were foolish in their decision?
2. Who can you relate to more, Lily or her mother Eleanor?
3. Lily turns to the one thing that has taken away a part of her life: fire. What do you turn to in times of stress?

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Jennie Nash, author of The Threadbare Heart

I love when Tom explains to his children that "The secret to a good marriage is breakfast...It's the small things, the daily things that make life a little easier because you are sharing it." Do you believe that? What are some examples of this that have impacted you?

I do believe that, absolutely. I think my whole marriage -- almost 22 years - is a testament to it. I have a friend who gets upset if her husband doesn't do something extravagant for birthdays and anniversaries, and I always think, Not me! I like being married to someone who asks me if I want tea after dinner and thanks me for the way I handled a crisis with our children. I think the small things are everything.

The Threadbare Heart interview with Jennie Nash

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Jennie Nash, author of The Threadbare Heart

You talk about ceramics and creating in this book. Is this one of your hobbies? If not, what do you turn to when you are stressed?

I love creative endeavors of all kinds, and have an enormous respect for the people who do them. I'm in awe of quilters, jewelers, knitters, ceramic artists, and often dabble in all these crafts. By dabble, I mean I might take a beading class or spend an afternoon in a friend's ceramic studio, or try to knit a sweater. I'm really not very good at any of it, but trying to create things from different mediums helps me become a better writer. Creativity is the same no matter what you're creating, and sometimes making a necklace or a little ceramic house helps me see something about the creative process I didn't see before. The funny thing is that all those activities - knitting, beading - totally stress me out! What I do to de-stress is walk with friends on the beach or in the hills, and yoga.

The Threadbare Heart interview with Jennie Nash

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Jennie Nash, author of The Threadbare Heart

I love the statement, "Creativity is not a linear process. Maybe you're solving a problem you're not even aware you are solving." Can you explain this in more detail?

There are just so many layers to creativity - layers you can't see and can't control. If I try to hammer out an outline for a novel, for example, I may get a general sense of the structure of the story, but it's impossible for me to know the whole story. The story only comes from moving through it, and sometimes that means throwing out 50 or 100 pages or throwing out an entire idea. But I've found that this isn't always a bad thing; it's often part of a process that ends in a good result. Things emerge from the journey that you could never have foreseen. That's what I mean about non-linear: there's no map, no path, no straight line. It's taken me a long time to understand this part of writing and to trust it.

The Threadbare Heart interview with Jennie Nash

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Jennie Nash, author of The Threadbare Heart

Lily's view of love and marriage is drastically different from Eleanor's view. Why was it important for you to make Eleanor such a significant part of this story?

At first I thought of The Threadbare Heart as a love story between Lily and Tom - where the point was that Lily basically fell back in love with Tom after it was too late. The deeper into it I got, the more of thought of it as a love story between the mother and daughter - the way they came to love each other. I began to imagine Lily and Eleanor as standing on opposing sides of the adage, " 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." It was particularly interesting to try to explore how one woman's belief caused the other to believe the opposite thing, and how, in the end, Lily convinced Eleanor that she was wrong.

The Threadbare Heart interview with Jennie Nash

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Jennie Nash, author of The Threadbare Heart

Tom saves Lily's grandmother's lace from the fire. What is the significance of the lace to this story? What does it symbolize?

The lace represents Lily's belief in loyalty - you hold onto people who mean something to you, and you hold onto bits of fabric, even if they don't immediately seem useful. It also came to represent the fact that sometimes you can hold on too tight. I had a really fun time designing that piece of lace and the dress Lily ends up making from it. I had fabric swatches on a bulletin board by my desk, and a magazine photo of a dress.

The Threadbare Heart interview with Jennie Nash

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Jennie Nash, author of The Threadbare Heart

Can you tell us what you are working on next?

Of course! I'm writing a novel set in the world of publishing in 1950s New York. My main character is a secretary to a book editor, and she becomes obsessed with telling the story of the creation of a famous red lipstick. I'm having fun imagining the pre-digital world of writing, and am learning frightening things about what happened to writers who were blackballed in the McCarthy era. I have 100 pages written, so I'm in the thick of it.

The Threadbare Heart interview with Jennie Nash

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