The Deep End of the Ocean
by Jacquelyn Mitchard
List Price: $7.99
Pages: 447
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0451197747
Publisher: Signet
Jacquelyn Mitchard's venture into fiction with her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, marks the latest evolution in her diverse and distinguished career as a writer. A native of Chicago, Mitchard graduated from the University of Illinois and Rockford College and became a newspaper reporter. From 1984 to 1988 she was metro reporter for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Her weekly column, "The Rest of Us," has appeared in the Journal for over a decade and will be nationally syndicated starting in September 1996.
From 1989 to 1993, Mitchard was the speechwriter for now U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, while Shalala was Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin. Mitchard has also been a contributing editor for Parenting magazine since 1990; she is a regular columnist for TV Guide and has been a regular contributor to such national magazines as Money, Self, and Woman's Day. She is the author of two nonfiction books, Mother Less Child: The Love Story of a Family and a biography of Jane Addams for teenagers. She has also written two screenplays with her writing partner, Amy Paulsen: A Serpent's Egg for cable television and Typhoid Mary for feature development. Her essay on adoption was anthologized in the Adoption Reader.
The mother of five children, Mitchard lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is at work on a second novel entitled The Most Wanted.
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Q: How did you come to write The Deep End of the Ocean?
JM: I dreamed the story about three years ago. For a year after that I didn't do anything with it beyond the notes I made about the dream. I'd never written a novel before, but the dream was clear and astonishing. And I'm not much of a dreamer in the ordinary sense.
Q: After your long career writing nonfiction, did you find the transition to writing fiction difficult?
JM: It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do professionally, to make that transition. It's the difference between accompanying yourself on the guitar and conducting an orchestra. It was tremendously taxing for me. The only training I had for writing fiction was reading fiction.
Q: You've written journalistic pieces on adoption and the nature of identity, which continue to be topics in the news. Did your research, and the custody cases in the media, influence your writing of the novel?
JM: Of course. And I'm sure that more than that, it influenced my subconscious to the degree that I had that particular dream. The questions about nature and nurture are vexing to all parents, whether they've given birth or adopted children.
Q: Did you draw on your own experiences while writing this book?
JM: I drew on my experiences growing up in an Italian and Irish neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. And the people, the loves, the jealousies, and the friendships of my youth drift in and out of the book.
Q: Throughout the novel you alternate narrators from Beth to Vincent. What was your reason for doing so?
JM: I'm also doing that in the novel I'm working on now. Some books just happen that way; they are like blind men describing an elephant. The truth depends on who's telling it, and that was certainly true in this story. Beth and Vincent, combatants in the novel, are poles apart in their ways of seeing the same basic facts.
Q: Which character in the novel do you most identify with?
JM: Vincent. If there's anybody who I might say is like I am, it would be him; I remember that caged, stubborn anger of adolescence.
Q: As a mother, was it difficult for you to write about the kidnapping of a child?
JM: It was truly painful. The most painful part was also the most necessary, and that was talking with and listening to people who had had a child kidnapped.
Q: Have the reactions to the book been strong?
JM: Absolutely. Especially from people who have not yet read the book. People believed at first that this book was a crime thriller and that the unraveling of the kidnapping case was what this book was about, instead of being about family bonds and what constitutes them. Much of that sort of reaction, that wincing, that shuddering at the book, is much more pronounced from people who have not read it.
Q: Was there a piece of advice that was inspirational to you in pursuing The Deep End of the Ocean?
JM: Jane Hamilton said to me, "This story belongs to you, so don't be afraid of it. Just go ahead and tell it."
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring novelists?
JM: Two pieces of advice, and they're in order of importance. One, read a lot more than you think you have time for. And two, never let anyone talk you out of your dreams.
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Excerpted from The Deep End of the Ocean © Copyright 2008 by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Reprinted with permission by Signet. All rights reserved.
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