Photograph courtesy Jessica Strawser
A quick internet search for “midlife women quitting things” brings up dozens of articles with headlines ranging from quitting work and marriages to quitting drinking, people-pleasing, and other societal expectations. It appears that a lot of women in their 40s and 50s are simply fed up with the way things are and are striving for a life for the way things should be.
It was this idea that prompted novelist Jessica Strawser’s eighth book, The Quitters Club (Lake Union Publishing), which follows the journey of four women who met at Ohio University and then form a pact at a beach reunion 20 years later to each “quit” something in their lives that is no longer serving them.
“I always look for trends in real-life articles that catch my eye, and in recent years there’s been a wave of reporting on statistical increases in women making big changes in midlife. But the messaging is so mixed.” Strawser says.
Image courtesy Jessica Strawser
“[For example] I was looking through my early files the other day and found a Psychology Today piece where the headline was ‘It’s Never Too Late: Changing Careers at Midlife,’ which sounds encouraging, but the subhead was ‘Pursuing dreams after 40 can be frightening,’ which takes the wind out of your sails before you even read the piece,” she explains. “That got me thinking how little guidance there is on how to recognize when to change course—while meanwhile, we’ve been told from an early age that quitters never win. I thought it would be interesting and relatable to tell a story with an ensemble cast of characters, where each wrestles with that in her own way.”
Initially, The Quitters Club followed a similar mystery/suspense throughline like the majority of Strawser’s other novels. But as she wrote, she and her agent found that part of the storyline “was taking away from the main heartbeat of the story, which was the friendship between these four women who are determined to regroup and rebuild after their best-laid plans have gone awry,” Strawser says. “As soon as I stopped trying to make the story something it wasn’t, things fell into place much more naturally…for the characters and for me, too.”
Another natural path for the novel to take was in choosing Ohio University and Athens as the setting. Strawser graduated from OU and met some of her best friends there and, while she’s referenced Athens in other novels, none have featured it as the core backdrop.
Strawser says she enjoys how readers draw different conclusions about core themes or concepts. As a frequent book club guest, Strawser often finds herself learning more about the themes in her novels and her characters than she set out to write in the first place, with attendees often easily relating to a character or characters.
Photograph by Corrie Schaffeld
“When I mentioned the concept of The Quitters Club to a book club I was visiting last year, they immediately started talking about a young woman in their circle who had been so worried about being judged for quitting med school, [and] even though she hated it, she kept pretending to go even after she withdrew,” she says. “We can never guess exactly how our stories might relate to other people’s lives, and I think that’s part of the magic.”
Early buzz for the novel is already in, as it was featured as an Amazon’s First Reads pick for May. Strawser says this kind of early publicity is quite an honor because it provides a lot of exposure to readers in the United States, Canada, the UK, and Australia.
“The impact was surreal,” she says. “At one point, The Quitters Club had climbed their bestseller charts to No. 4! I’m incredibly grateful that readers embraced the book the way they did so quickly.”
In addition to being a novelist, Strawser is also editor-at-large at Writer’s Digest, a contributing editor for Career Authors, an aspiring writers’ coach and teacher, and a frequent speaker at conferences and book clubs.
The Quitters Club is set to release on June 1. Strawser will discuss and sign her new book at Magnolia Rose in Mariemont on July 23. Find additional events at jessicastrawser.com/events.
Facebook Comments