Our Last Vineyard Summer
An Interview with Brooke Lea Foster
In this week’s Q&A, Brooke Lea Foster explores the nugget of inspiration for her new historical novel, Our Last Vineyard Summer: What if Gloria Steinhem had been your mother? We also dive into the sisters and secrets at the heart of this story.
"A quiet powerhouse of a novel—deeply atmospheric, emotionally resonant and steeped in the history and heartbreak of generational womanhood." —Woman's World
How do you like to introduce Our Last Vineyard Summer to readers?
Our Last Vineyard Summer is a story about sisters. It’s been said that having a sister is like looking into a mirror – you adore what you see at the same moment that you’re repelled. This novel is about secrets and families and the narratives we tell ourselves about who our family is and how we fit into it. It’s about memory and how looking back we may see the same childhood memory differently than our siblings, depending on our place in the family. Lastly, it’s a story about healing. I think all of us carry some level of baggage when it comes to our families. In this novel, the sisters have struggled but they also learn to accept one another, flaws and all.
This book is full of relatable sister drama. I read that like Betsy, you are also one of three sisters. What parts of these (beautiful, complicated, infuriating!) relationships were you most interested in exploring?
Thank you! Whenever my sisters and I sit down and talk together, I’m often blown away by how differently we see our parents. Recently, we were talking about when our parents’ marriage began to crumble. For me, it was when I was older; I feel like I had them at their best in the first ten years of their relationship. Generally, I remember my parents happy together. My youngest sister cocked an eyebrow and said something like, “Mom and dad were never happy.” It’s this perspective that really fascinates me – how do siblings grow up in the same family but effectively feel as though we’ve grown up in entirely different ones?
There is a strong feminist throughline to this novel and I was so intrigued by the mother, who becomes a well-known leader in the women's movement. Was she based on anyone in particular and how do you think her character speaks to our current political moment?
This novel began with a hook: What if Gloria Steinem had been your mother? I began thinking about this now that I have my own children and I’m often pointing out gender discrimination in the bro-sphere to my 15-year-old son and trying to empower my 10-year-old daughter. I started to wonder: What if this backfires on me? Will they develop in opposition to me or in tandem with my beliefs? And yet it’s so important to me that they grow up with context for some of the sexist videos they see on YouTube and on social media. It made me think about other tough moments in our political history—the 1960s and 1970s—and what it would have been like to be the three daughters of someone like Steinem. I think it makes the grown daughters in Our Last Vineyard Summer so complicated; the oldest believes in everything her mother ever told her but the youngest is misunderstanding the messaging and it backfires in their relationship.
In our interview for All the Summers in Between you shared that certain songs and artists helped pull you deeper into scenes as you were drafting. What was on your writing playlist for Our Last Vineyard Summer?
I love this question! I kept listening to Benson Boone’s Ghost Town on repeat. I know that may seem strange because he’s a contemporary artist and this is a novel set in the 60s and 70s but there’s this line I love. Something like…Before I turn your heart into a ghost town, Show me everything we built so I can tear it all down. It’s what I felt like when writing this story; I was creating a close, intertwined family with memories, a beach house, grief and love. But then as a writer, I had to tear it all down. I struggled with that. I really wanted them to be happy the same way I just want my own family to be happy.
What books do you wish you could tuck into everyone's beach bag this summer?
There are so many! I have so many on my list. I’m excited for Amy Poeppel’s Far & Away. I can’t wait for the latest Beatriz Williams! She never disappoints. I loved Meg Mitchell Moore’s latest Mansion Beach. I’m dying to read Typewriter Beach by Meg Waite Clayton too!
Brooke Lea Foster is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post Magazine. Her novels, Summer Darlings, On Gin Lane, and All the Summers in Between have been named top summer reads in magazines like People, Entertainment Weekly, First and PARADE. She writes the popular Dear Fiction newsletter and she's the author of three nonfiction books. Our Last Vineyard Summer is her fourth novel.
I love this! Thank you so much for featuring my work! Xoxo happy end of summer reading!!