Spotlight &Giveaway: A MAP TO PARADISE by Susan Meissner

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Susan Meissner to HJ!

Hi Susan and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, A MAP TO PARADISE!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Set in Malibu in 1956, this is the story of a blacklisted actress, a Displaced Person from Eastern Europe, and a widow caring for her agoraphobic brother-in-law. They all live on the same cul-de-sac but their lives converge for bigger reasons that just being neighbors, revealing what makes all of us long for our own bit of Paradise—that one place where we feel safe and at home—and what we’re willing to do to get it back when it’s been taken from us.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

Here’s a line from about one third the way in, describing the paradise-like geographical setting:
“Malibu was a sleepy enclave on a twenty-mile stretch of coastline with seemingly nothing but glittering sea and sand on one side and hillsides and canyons of toast-colored chaparral on the other. In between land and ocean and canyons of wilderness were cozy sea-view houses of all shapes and sizes and not much else. A few inns and restaurants, beaches for walking, wave sets for surfing. And always the relentless pull and push of the tides, the rising and setting of the sun, and the call of seabirds. It was a place where you could forget—if you wanted to—that there were hours in a day and chores that needed doing and problems that needed solving.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

There were two topics that defined the decade after the end of WW2 that interested me and that I wanted to somehow marry into a novel because I didn’t want to have to chose one over the other. The first was the reality that there a million displaced people living in Displaced Persons camps in Europe after the Allies won the war. They lived in limbo like this for years afterward, with no home to return to, or no desire to return home if that meant now living in a Soviet state. The other was the witch hunt in Hollywood for communists and communist sympathizers. There were a few genuine communists working in Tinsel Town for sure but nowhere near the number of those writers, directors, and actors who were blacklisted by every major studio, some just because of the most casual of associations. No one would hire these people, even though the majority had only ever been tried in the court of public opinion. To be displaced from your home or from the only career you know and want is to experience a crippling loss of belonging—a pretty powerful desire that we all have. Who doesn’t want a map to guide you back to the paradise of a life you loved before it was taken from you?

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

One of my three main characters, June, is a widow who has been in love with her agoraphobic brother-in-law Elwood for years; perhaps even before that man’s brother—June’s late husband, Frank—died. June is the live-in housekeeper and caregiver to this guy who never leaves his house, and she tells herself that aside from the absence of any physical relationship, she and Elwood are like a comfortable, married couple. She soothes her aching heart with this mindset because she can’t get Elwood to admit he loves her, too. She sees in him a dependable soul, someone who thinks before he speaks, and doesn’t make impulsive, foolish decisions like his brother did. She will learn in time that Elwood sees in her someone who is always putting other people first, a truly selfless, and giving person who understands him better than anyone has or will but who also believes he does not deserve her.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

My very favorite scene that had me crying and laughing at the same time I can’t share because it’s a huge spoiler! But I can say that I cried when I wrote about the car accident that changed Elwood’s life and sent him home to Malibu never to emerge out of his house again. I think all of us have those moments—or we fear those moments—when someone you love has been in an accident of some kind and you don’t know the details or what the ramifications will be yet. You just know it’s not good. You want to turn the clock back and return to the hours just before when everything was fine and your world hadn’t just completely changed forever. You want a time machine to make the new reality a thing that never happened.

Readers should read this book….

Readers should read A MAP TO PARADISE because it’s a window onto the world that followed WW2. The 1950s are fondly remembered as a happy, vibrant time but those years were also a decade of great unease and fear. The Cold War was still very new and intimidating, everyone was afraid of the Bomb, and McCarthyism was rampant—especially in Hollywood of all places. All of this contributed to a sense that everything that made us feel secure was at risk. Our sense of Home hung in the balance. To be deprived of your sense of Home or to be facing its imminent loss describes well what it means to be displaced. Your sense of belonging is gone. Where you are now is not Home for you and returning to where you do belong seems impossible without immense risk or sacrifice. Or maybe not possible at all. What do you do then? How do you find your sense of belonging again? Books like this one let you ask yourself the hard questions and imagine the answers but without actually having to experience the dilemmas that make you ask.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I am about halfway through the first rough draft of what will be my 2027 release. It doesn’t have a title yet and the characters are still telling me who they are and what they want but I can tell you it’s set the late 1960s in San Diego, California. It’s a mother-daughter story, two times over, and one of the questions it poses is who gets to decide what makes you happy?
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One finished copy of A MAP TO PARADISE by Susan Meissner

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Book Info:

1956, Malibu, California: Something is not right on Paradise Circle.

With her name on the Hollywood blacklist and her life on hold, starlet Melanie Cole has little choice in company. There is her next-door neighbor, Elwood, but the screenwriter’s agoraphobia allows for just short chats through open windows. He’s her sole confidante, though, as she and her housekeeper, Eva, an immigrant from war-torn Europe, rarely make conversation.

Then one early morning Melanie and Eva spot Elwood’s sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his beloved rose garden. After that they don’t see Elwood at all anymore. Where could a man who never leaves the house possibly have gone?

As they try to find out if something has happened to him, unexpected secrets are revealed among all three women, leading to an alliance that seems the only way for any of them to hold on to what they can still call their own. But it’s a fragile pact and one little spark could send it all up in smoke…
 
 

Meet the Author:

Susan Meissner is a former managing editor of a weekly newspaper and an award-winning columnist. She is the award-winning author of The Nature of Fragile Things, The Last Year of the War, As Bright as Heaven, A Bridge Across the Ocean, Secrets of a Charmed Life, A Fall of Marigolds, and Stars over Sunset Boulevard, among other novels.