Angel Falls (36 page)

Jennifer Morgan Gray is a writer and editor
who lives in Washington, D.C
.

Jennifer Morgan Gray:
Did you begin
Angel Falls
with a particular image, character, or situation in mind? Did you choose the title of the book in the initial stages of the creative process, or did it come later?

Kristin Hannah:
As with most of my work,
Angel Falls
evolved from a collection of ideas in between books. I tend to gather ideas that interest me; then I wait for several of them to coalesce into a story. This time, I’d been waiting to do a “coma” book for a long time. Somewhere along the way in my personal reading, I had discovered that people who fall into lengthy comas often wake up “different.” Once I knew that, I was hooked. Then came the writer’s greatest tool:
What if?
What if you’d been hiding a great love, nursing its memory throughout your life—and then you had a chance to touch it again? What if your memories had turned that love into more than it had
been? And if you’re always looking backwards, regretting, can you ever really look forward and appreciate what’s around you?

Another key component in the initial creation of this novel was celebrity. I wanted to look at the personal cost of celebrity—not just the lack of privacy, but the things we often overlook, like the cost to your psyche, your relationships, and your family. I wondered what kind of person was drawn to a larger-than-life career, what they’re willing to give up to succeed in the rarefied world of Hollywood, and what happens when they get everything they want? Who pays the price? My husband is in the movie business, so I’ve been on the perimeter of the Hollywood world for a while. I am captivated by the dark side of celebrity. Nothing can mess with a person’s mind like success.

Finally, I wanted to delve into the mind of a supposedly ordinary man and show how easy it is to be extraordinary in life, especially in the context of parenthood, and how the sacrifices we make for love change us.

The title came to me at the final stages of writing the novel.

JMG:
This novel contains a great deal of medical information. Before writing, did you conduct research into comas and comatose patients? What interested you the most about this state of suspended animation; a sort of bad dream between life and death?

KH:
My friends and family often tease me that I was a doctor in another life. I absolutely adore doing medical research. Over the course of my career, I’ve written about a lot of medical crises—heart transplant, cancer, coma, aphasia, stroke, infertility, etc. For this book, I began reading memoirs of former coma patients. The most fascinating angle was the uncertainty. Obviously, the human brain is a remarkable organ. Each injury is different and each outcome unpredictable. The mind can quite simply play tricks on us, and a brain injury can alter the fundamental tenets of a person’s personality. How fascinating is that? You can live your whole life as person A, with a collection of morals and memories and ideologies, and wake up after a long sleep to find that you don’t remember that person at all. Now you’re person B, with a different moral code, a different sense of humor, a changed sensibility. That’s catnip to a writer. Do you still love the same people, even if you can’t remember falling in love?

JMG:
You begin
Angel Falls
with an epigraph by T. S. Eliot that reads, in part, “Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door that never opened …” Why did you choose these words to set the tone of the book? In what ways is this novel an exploration of lives that might have been?

KH:
First of all, I love T. S. Eliot. I could find a quote from his work to begin every book I write. Specifically,
in this book, I am exploring the road not taken, the door not opened. Because Mikaela has spent a lifetime idealizing her first love/first marriage, she never really appreciated the man she married next, Liam. And Liam, knowing he never had his wife’s fullest love, allowed himself to be content with that. He let it be okay that she held back a part of her heart; thus, he stayed firmly on the wrong side of the door—a man unwilling to reach for what he’s afraid he can’t attain. Finally, there’s superstar Julian True. Of all the characters, Julian is the one who has lost the most in his life, and he doesn’t know it. There’s a whole world that he knows nothing about—love, family, commitment; he’s turned his back on all the true things in life and chosen to skate on the surface instead, to take bright lights instead of warmth. His journey in this novel is to finally see the life he could have chosen—perhaps can still choose—and how changed he could have been by love.

JMG:
How does the character of Mikaela compare with that of Kayla? How are the two names emblematic of two very different individuals? At the end of the novel, what elements of Kayla’s personality do you think Mikaela might reclaim after she emerges from the coma? How is the woman at the end of the novel a fusion of her past, present, and future?

KH:
Kayla is the younger, freer, more optimistic version of the woman Mikaela becomes. In a way, Kayla is the young woman we all were once—full of fire
and passion. When Kayla divorces Julian True and moves to Washington State to start over, it is symbolic that she changes her name. Kayla will always be Julian’s adoring young wife; Mikaela is a woman who will sacrifice anything—including her own happiness—to make certain that her daughter is happy. While Michaela’s journey in this novel is to discover her truest self (ironically, while she’s sleeping), I would not say that she reclaims the part of her that was Kayla. I think, rather, that Mikaela grows up enough to realize that Kayla was wrong, that in her naïveté, she mistook passion for love. More important, the newly awakened Mikaela discovers that even if she could, she would no longer trade places with her younger self. How often have we all thought, If only I had another chance to do that again, to be my younger self again, and to make a different choice? Mikaela gets that chance in a very real way, and in choosing the present over the past, she finally finds herself.

JMG:
In what ways is Liam powerful at the beginning of the novel? In what ways is he passive? How does the revelation of Mikaela’s past life with Julian affect him, for good and for bad? Why does he invite Julian into his life?

KH:
In my opinion, Liam is the strongest, most powerful character in the novel, from beginning to end. The only person who doesn’t know that is Liam himself. Because he is quiet and caring and self-sacrificing,
it’s easy to see him as weak. Easy for both the reader and the characters in the novel, but I never saw him that way. I never saw him as passive, either, except in regards to the marriage he’s settled for. He has let Mikaela love him halfway; because of his troubled childhood, he felt he was lucky to get even that. Liam’s journey in this novel is to seize hold of his self-worth and accept his own value, to see himself as the hero he is. Even though he is terrified of losing Mikaela, he isn’t guided by that fear. It would have been easy to turn away from the facts about Julian, to pretend it was all in the past, but Liam is far too innately heroic for that. Once he understands that Mikaela might be awakened because of another man’s love, Liam is bold enough to go to that man for help.

JMG:
“I have slept through my life,” Mikaela’s mother, Rosa, says. How is Rosa in some ways a cautionary tale for her daughter, and how is she a role model? In which ways does the accident awaken the entire family?

KH:
Rosa is entirely a cautionary tale for her daughter. A woman who loved the wrong man and stayed bound to that obsessive love for most of her life, Rosa highlights the dark places love can take us, and how ruined we can be by the purest emotions. She allowed herself to be used and humiliated in the name of love. She also put her daughter second in some ways. Even though Rosa’s “bad love” paid the bills, it taught Mikaela all the wrong lessons. It was no wonder that
she ran out of town the first chance she got. Her own father wouldn’t have anything to do with her, and her mother seemed impossibly weak in the face of so-called love. In the end, however, we see Rosa as bent but not broken by her bad love. She is redeemed and she, in turn, helps to redeem her daughter. She reminds Mikaela of the difference between good and bad love; the difference between Julian’s passion and Liam’s purity. It is precisely Rosa’s dark past that allows her to see the light of her daughter’s future.

Yes, the accident definitely wakes up the adults in the family. Liam realizes how little he’s settled for and determines to change. Mikaela, too, realizes that she’s really been asleep for most of her life. The coma gives her another chance to become the woman she wants to be. And Rosa, who taught her daughter all the wrong lessons about life and love, gets the opportunity to see her daughter not follow in her footsteps.

JMG
: “The measure of a man comes down to moments,” you write. What are the most pivotal moments for Liam during both the course of his life and the course of the novel? Do you think that Julian shares similar turning points? If so, what are they? How is Julian’s name significant—and ironic?

KH:
I think it’s inevitably true in life that we are the sum of our choices. Who we are is defined and sculpted by what we say and do. What we think tells us who we want to be; what we do is the measure of who we truly are. Liam’s whole world is crushed by
the accident. When Mikaela goes into the coma, Liam becomes the solitary heart of his family. It falls on him to hold his grieving, frightened children together, to keep their family intact. Additionally, he comes to the discovery of Mikaela’s first husband—and the magnitude of her love for Julian True. This is truly the darkest hour for Liam, and he knows it. He must choose: Do I risk losing Mikaela’s love in order to save her? Or do I hold on to her, keep her as mine, and ignore the other man who might be able to awaken her? Like all of us when placed in crucial situations, his character will be defined by the generosity or selfishness of the choice he makes.

As to Julian’s name, it is entirely significant. After all, he gave it to himself, chose it. When he was a young man with big dreams, he needed a name to match those dreams. The last name—True—represents the man he wanted to become in his youth, the idealized version of himself. Ironically, he could not have fallen further afield of his own dreams. He has grown into an untruthful, unloving, self-obsessed man. He is the most pathetic character in the piece; by the end of the novel, he knows and understands his shortcomings, and what those shortcomings have cost him, but he can’t change. He can’t give up the bright lights of fame; not even for love. And certainly not for truth.

JMG
: You set many of your novels in Washington State and highlight its idyllic nature with that of bigcity life (in this case, Hollywood). What about Washington
speaks to you? How does the city of Last Bend play an important role in the novel? What draws Liam and Mikaela toward it—and away from it?

KH:
I was born in southern California and raised in Washington State, so these are two places I know well. I often choose them as settings because I can breathe life into these regions, show readers an intimate glimpse of how the locals live. In all of my novels, and none more so than
Angel Falls
, the setting is virtually another character. Last Bend is very much an idealized version of the small, mountain town I lived in during high school. It’s significant because it became a safe place for young Mikaela and her baby daughter, and at a time in her life when she longed for safety. Following her poor, semi-itinerant youth, the stability and friendliness of Last Bend really taught her the meaning of “home.”

Like all of us, Mikaela is drawn to the seductive lure of safety that a small town offers, even as she feels trapped by it. It is a fundamental human truth that sometimes we long for what we can’t have. Those in the big city long for quiet tree-lined streets and friendly neighbors. Small-town girls itch to test their mettle in high-rises and on big stages. For Mikaela and Liam, the point is acceptance. Both have to realize that they’ve made choices, turned away from opportunities and settled for a quiet, loving life in Last Bend. And that, if given the opportunity again—which Mikaela is—they’d make the same choices.

JMG:
Liam constantly refers to himself as an “ordinary” man. How accurate is this assessment? In which ways is he extraordinary? What is it about Mikaela that is so compelling to him?

KH:
Liam believes he is ordinary, perhaps even slightly less than that. The truth is, of course, that he’s extraordinary; heroic, even. He is a selfless individual who feels love keenly and is willing to make any personal sacrifice necessary to protect his loved ones. To my mind, all he needs is a cape and tights and he could have his own comic book. To him, Mikaela is the impossible dream, the woman who he’d always imagined as beyond his reach. The head cheerleader as seen by the president of the computer club. Liam sees himself as unworthy of her. That’s why he accepts her less-than love—he never thought a woman like her could love a man like him. By the end of the novel, however, he has come to understand his worth, and he makes some changes. He is no longer willing to accept less than all of Mikaela. In demanding all or nothing, Liam is risking the woman he loves in order to become the very man she can believe in.

JMG:
What made you decide to interweave science and faith throughout the narrative of
Angel Falls
? What about faith guides the characters to the story’s resolution? Do you think divine intervention helps Mikaela recover her memories? How do Rosa, a representation of faith, and Liam, a disciple of science, relate to each other through the course of the novel?