Sometimes the separation between fiction and autobiography is as thin as gossamer.
In 1983, after I met Charley Walters, I rented a house for a month on Nantucket. I was madly in love with him, and I wanted my children to get to know him and the island. My poor children had been moved around so often. . .would we move here?
Probably the moment I drove off the car ferry, I knew I wanted to write a novel about a woman named Nell who was divorced and living on Nantucket for the summer with her two small children.
And who meets an attractive, charming, attentive man.
This was in 1983. More than half my good friends were either divorced or getting divorced. We were all wondering: What’s going to happen next? Would we ever find true love? Would our children be okay? If we met a man, was he the real thing, the man we could live with into our old age, a man who could love our children, a man who would be faithful to us?
So I wrote Nell. I won’t tell you what happens in Nell. I will tell you that the scene with Nell and the rats is almost word for word from real life. The things we do to keep our family together. . .
Reviewers were generous. They said Nell was triumphant in spite of her problems, and that was high praise indeed. Nell was published in many different countries—because women everywhere were experiencing the same challenges.
Nell was my first novel set on Nantucket. And the beginning of many more. . .