Joyce Maynard Writes Sequel ‘How the Light Gets In’ After Fan Letters

Joyce Maynard never imagined she would write a sequel to her 2021 novel “Count The Ways.”

“It ends in the year 2009 at the wedding of one of her three children,” Maynard says from her Northern California home. “And she encounters her ex-husband, her children’s father, for the first time in years. He’s divorced, she’s on her own.

“If I were writing a rom-com or a fairy tale, this might be the moment that they put their palm on their forehead and say, ‘What were we thinking?’ and fall into each other’s arms,” she explains. “But they don’t.”

In “Count The Ways,” readers follow Eleanor’s life over three decades. She falls in love and marries Cam, has three children with him, and then divorces him after he has an affair. Despite everything, a deep bond endures, especially through their children, Al, Toby, and Ursula.

At the wedding, Cam tells Eleanor he’s dying of cancer. “And she says this extraordinary thing: ‘I will take care of you,’” Maynard recounts. “So that’s where it ended.”

Or so she thought.

“I got buckets of letters from readers,” Maynard says, laughing. “Some were very angry. I probably got 10 letters from women who said, ‘I threw that book on the floor partway through; I was so angry.’ But they kept reading, and that was what matters.

“They were upset with Eleanor for having sacrificed herself for her husband or children — for everything but herself,” she notes. “Everybody else’s needs came first. To which I would say, you know, it’s not my job as a novelist to present life as we wish it was. It’s how life is, and women do that.

“Some were very angry that Eleanor, after all the ways her husband had hurt her, would offer to take care of him,” Maynard continues. “So I felt that I couldn’t leave readers there. Basically, they told me I couldn’t.

“They told me in no uncertain terms: ‘We need to know what happens next.’”

“How the Light Gets In” picks up the story where “Count The Ways” left off.

The new novel follows Eleanor after Cam’s death as she works to build a life on her New Hampshire farm. She remains the mother of three very different adult children: Al, a tech entrepreneur in Seattle; Toby, who never fully recovered from a childhood brain injury; and Ursula, mostly estranged from her mother.

In an interview, Maynard discussed how Eleanor’s life parallels her own, why she likes to incorporate real-life events into her fiction, and the role music plays in her writing.

According to Maynard, Eleanor’s story dates back to when she was 23 years old. While Eleanor is a fictional character, she happens to be the same age as Maynard at each stage in her life.

Maynard understands Eleanor’s world intimately, informed by hundreds of women she’s met over 30 years of teaching memoir workshops.

In the new book, Eleanor struggles with how to be a mother to her adult children and often feels she’s failed someone somehow.

Throughout the two books, she wrestles with questions core to Maynard as well. What is a good parent? What is a good mother? Maynard even performed a chapter on Facebook called “The definition of a good mother” for Mother’s Day. The conclusion was there is no such thing, and no mother is good enough.

Maynard acknowledges that she’s been telling a similar story at different stages of her life, transformed each time. Marriage, parenthood, family, love, relationships between parents and children, between men and women—these themes are constants in her books.

After her marriage ended, Maynard later remarried in her late 50s. Her new husband had also been divorced and had three children. However, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer one year into their marriage, and he passed away almost eight years ago.

It was really after his death that Maynard revisited the themes of love and loss at a different stage of life, adding a layer of forgiveness.

Maynard spent a year contemplating what should happen next in Eleanor’s life. She didn’t want the answer to be a perfect man rescuing her; Eleanor needed to make her own way forward.

Current events have always been part of Maynard’s work. She believes our lives are political and can’t imagine Eleanor’s life without addressing events like the 2016 election, COVID, or the January 6 insurrection.

“My job is to locate compassion for every character,” she says. “The function of memoir and fiction is, in part, to help us understand more of the world.”

Maynard has always incorporated music into her books. For “Where Love Goes,” she created a soundtrack with artists like Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, and Aimee Mann. Though she lost money on the project, it brought her joy.

For her latest book, John Prine’s music features prominently. When Prine died in April 2020, Maynard felt the loss keenly and made Eleanor’s reaction mirror her own—she’d lost a friend.

If Maynard had her choice, she might have been a singer-songwriter. But as an author, she aims for her books to evoke the same emotional response as a song.

“I use more words, but I want to make you cry,” she says with a laugh.

Source: [source names]