AUTHOR Q & A WITH KRISTY KIERNAN ON MATTERS  OF FAITH

Q—You weave several social/domestic issues into this new novel. Where did this storyline come from?

A— Religion has been a fascination of mine since I was a child. I spent most of the year with my mother and we didn’t go to church, then my summers were spent in Tennessee with my father’s parents, who took me to a Baptist church, and my mother’s mother, who took me to an Episcopal church. When we moved to Chicago my best friend was Jewish, and they allowed me to come to their home for holidays, which I found so interesting, and then I married a Catholic man. Interspersed with these main religions, were various friends with their own beliefs, or the beliefs of their parents, and I always asked questions and had a very clear vision of the world as filled with religious options.

The food allergy storyline came from the story several years ago in which a teenage girl was reported as having died when her boyfriend kissed her. He had eaten peanut butter earlier in the day, and I was utterly horrified that something as innocent as a kiss could kill a child. How does a parent allow a child to live normally in a world where that could happen? The story was later reported to be incorrect, she died of something else, but the seed was planted.

And marriage, the third major storyline, is something happening within my own life that I find incredibly interesting and complex. My husband and I have been together for 18 years and we’ve watched others in long-term relationships and seen the stages they’ve gone through, too. I never knew how rewarding and intricate and constantly evolving a long-term relationship could be, and I wanted to explore that.

Q—What did you draw off of to develop the plots and characters?

A— My own life, friend’s and acquaintance’s relationships (if you’re a friend or acquaintance, don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s other friends and acquaintances, really!)

News stories always stick in my head, often for years, and I tend to internalize them, like “How would I handle that? How would I feel if that were my child? What specific actions would I take?”

Q—With all the intricacies in this book, did it make it tougher to write than your debut, Catching Genius?

A— I don’t know that it was tougher, but it was definitely different. For one, the research was more emotionally involving. With Catching Genius I researched math, music, and the nature of genius. For Matters of Faith, I researched food allergies, religion, and coma, all emotionally charged topics that often made me cry or rethink my own positions on life, what it means and how I want to live it.

Also, with it being my second novel, I now had a deadline to meet. I’ve always been good with deadlines, but this wasn’t a column, or an article or blog post. This was a full novel, and looking at a deadline date with that sort of chunk of work ahead of you is intimidating!

Q—Will this book appeal to a broader audience than Catching Genius?

A— I’d like to think that Catching Genius appealed to a broad audience with its family relationships, but I do think Matters of Faith likely has a larger audience. For one, people are sometimes put off by novels that involve math and prodigies, even though it was handled in a light, readable way.

But Matters of Faith has some themes that are very current in the news and in people’s lives, while Catching Genius had more classic relationship themes. I didn’t set out to write an “issue” book, I finally just got around to writing a book I’d wanted to write for ten years, and it coincidentally happened during a time that these topics are in the public eye more often than they have been in the past.

Q—You are developing a reputation as a novelist who writes about family and social issues. ..good book club discussion topics. Do you categorize them as every-day-life occurrences?

A— Aren’t they? I don’t categorize them as such, they simply are. Many men have read my books and have told me how much they loved them, but I acknowledge that most of my readers are women, and I imagine that’s because I’m a woman myself, and our lives, right or wrong (or, in my opinion, neither!) tend to center around relationships and family.

I don’t know a single family that doesn’t have problems, a single mother who doesn’t feel nervous and guilty and concerned about their children, siblings who don’t feel resentments, or spouses who don’t make each other crazy sometimes.

The situations I put my characters in might not happen every day to every family, but they happen every day to some family, and that fascinates me to no end.

Q—Which character, if any, do you relate the most to and why?

A— In Matters of Faith I relate to every character. There are bits of me and my philosophy of life or my mistakes or my concerns in each of them, but the largest percentage of me is probably in Chloe’s husband, Cal.

I try, very hard, very consciously to maintain an even keel, to see all sides of an argument, to be flexible and accepting of all philosophies and personalities, but when I am pushed beyond my limit, I can turn inflexible in an instant. I can be pushed, and pushed, and pushed and rarely get upset, but then there’s that last little bit, and that’s just it. I rarely return from it.

Q—How long did it take to write the manuscript?

A—Not counting the years of thinking, I’d say it took eight months for a first draft to be completed, and then months of rewrites and edits, so about a year, give or take a month.