What Douglas Stuart hopes readers takeaway from his latest novel

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Do you as the the creator of this this beautiful story, do you have a feeling about what you want it to do and say in the world?

[00:00:11]>> Yes. And in fact, I wrote the ending of the novel many times. I kept pulling the novel back to the halfway point and a character would do something different and then I would get the final thing.

[00:00:21]But I knew by the end of the book that I was trying to show that it's often the arrogance of youth if we are the youngest generation in a family that we think we're the only ones with secrets and hidden lives and you know that we're disappointed in how things turned out and we don't often afford enough empathy to our parents and our grandparents to also wonder are you living the life you wanted to live? Are you the person you wanted to be? And so by the end of the novel that was the question I wanted to answer. You know, it's not just centered on us as the children, but it is about the generations that go before us. And can we really heal? Can we move on? Can we have a happy life ourselves if our parents and grandparents are not having that for themselves?

[00:01:02]>> Got it.