The Books That Made Me Want to be a Writer
Guest writer Brooke Lea Foster spent her childhood reading and dreaming, and found that no dream is too big to dream
Hi readers,
Hardly a day goes by I don’t discover another talented and creative writer on Substack that I want to learn more about. And what makes it even more fun is when that creator is also a published author of the genre of books I enjoy reading the most, historical fiction.
Today’s guest writer authors one of my favorite Substack newsletters, Dear Fiction. In it, she takes you behind the scenes of her reading and writing life, provides you with a front-row seat on her travels, and her family also makes appearances that help the reader get to know her just a little bit better. Her newsletter always brings a smile to my face when I read it, and she has some of the most interesting posts of any newsletters I read (be sure to read all the previous “5 Fabulous Minutes With…”) and I read a lot of newsletters. I could continue gushing about her, but instead, I’ll let her tell you in her own words about what reading means to her and how she achieved her dreams of being a writer. Welcome to SoNovelicious, Brooke!
Hello SoNovelicious friends! Thank you for having me! My name is Brooke Lea Foster, and I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. Years spent writing in diaries as a towhead little girl growing up on the beach on eastern Long Island grew into a love of reading all summer long, leading to a career in journalism while living in Manhattan, Washington D.C., and Boston.
As a journalist, I’ve interviewed U.S. Senators and basketball stars, a nine-year-old kid genius, and the hearing coach of a deaf college football team. You may have read my work in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and People magazine, among others. Still, while I spent hours in bookstores in my twenties and thirties, even pushing my kids in strollers through local indie bookshops, what I really wanted was to write fiction. For a book of my own to be on one of those tables promoting fresh fiction. Writing imaginary worlds was scary to me, a muscle I’d never flexed, and I wasn’t sure if I could even do it.
Then…
I was on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard with my infant daughter (my second child) when I had an idea for a book—A nanny arrives on the island in 1962 thinking that she’s working for a Kennedy-like family, but her summer unravels as she learns that money may buy prestige, but it rarely buys happiness. It was a painstaking amount of work to sit and write Summer Darlings, especially with a baby, but after four years, the book was published – and People magazine named it one of the best books of May 2020.
I’ve gone on to write another novel, On Gin Lane. This historical fiction set in the Hamptons surrounds a hotel fire and a woman finding her voice, and it was a must-read of summer by Town & Country. My third book, All the Summers in Between, comes out next May, and there’s a bit of Patricia Highsmith suspense in it. It’s about a friendship between two young women beginning in 1967, the tragic circumstances that cleave them apart, and picks up ten years later as they attempt to make amends while facing their complicated past.
The Books That Made Me Want to Write
It’s winter. I’m curled up on the green floral sofa in our living room on a Saturday afternoon, the watery sun already beginning to set. I could be playing with neighborhood kids in the snow, but I need to – I absolutely must – finish Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. One of the coonhounds in the story has gotten hurt, and with my heart beating at a gallop, tears rolled down my 11-year-old cheeks.
Even then, I remember being in awe that a book had moved me. How had these printed sentences on a simple white page made me cry? Plenty of movies had made me tear up, but those were characters on a screen, and you watched the action unfold before you. But stirring emotion in a stranger while you were reading their book, where readers are forced to imagine every scene in their mind’s eye; how on earth did a writer do it?
If you ask an author what books contributed to their longing to write, you’ll get myriad answers. Sometimes the response leans on classic fiction, say, a book with a powerful female protagonist, like Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Other times authors may reach back to their teenage years. Remember how we all used to whiz through a good Mary Higgins Clark novel? Or something classic like Judy Blume’s Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret?
Nancy Drew Mysteries by Carolyn Keene invited me into a world I never imagined existed – a young woman solving crimes and the pulse-quickening gothic horror novel Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews floored me. How far could an author’s imagination stretch? Then came The Color Purple by Alice Walker, written in the epistolary form, the story making me wonder: Could I ever write something this powerful?
I read Joan Didion and Amy Tan, Ernest Hemingway, and Malcolm Gladwell, and soon after graduating and getting my own apartment in D.C., I moved on to commercial fiction. That brought me to blockbuster books like The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Atonement by Ian McEwan, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, and The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisburger, among many others.
But it was Barbara Kingsolver’s writings that made me want to write fiction. One day I was walking home from my job at Washingtonian Magazine when I stopped at Kramers Books in Dupont Circle and bought a copy of Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees. As I was sucked into Taylor’s life as she leaves her home in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky and headed west to Arizona, I was struck by how lucid the writing was. When I put that book down, I thought to myself: Someday, I will do what she did. I will write a book that makes someone feel that anything is possible.
It was in New York City that I discovered the book that made me believe I could do it, A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams. The novel alternates between 1931, when socialite Lily Dane and Nick Greenwald fall in love and get engaged, but Dane’s parents don’t accept him because he’s Jewish, and 1938, when Lily must deal with confronting her best friend and former fiance, who are now married. It was historical fiction but also set at the beach rather than in wartime. It made you reconsider women’s lives in a different time, and yet the themes were universal.
After adoring The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis, set at the Barbizon Hotel For Women in Manhattan in the 1950s, I finally had an idea of my own. We were on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, and when the idea for the young nanny in 1962 came to me, I held on to it tight. I wrote the story down. Summer Darlings was published, and I’ve been writing novels since. A long road, yes, but a road where reading all sorts of books brought me closer to finding my own voice as a writer.
I still curl up on my couch to read on winter days. And I’m still in awe when a book makes me cry. The difference now is that I know how to make a reader cry too. Because now, I write fiction.
Besides being an avid reader and published author, Brooke is married to a dentist, and her family loves to travel. They just went to London and visited Harry Potter World to relive their love of the novels. She’s a proud mom of an almost tween who will be a fantastic bookstagrammer someday (scroll halfway down) and a teen with incredible artistic skills. She loves to dance around her kitchen while cooking, “much to her children’s horror,” and loves throwing sticks for her golden-doodle Luna to fetch.
She can be found at the following places: Website | Newsletter | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok. She is very active on her Instagram, with lots of bookish posts and other fun peeks into her life, so go check it out!
Thank you so much for being here, Brooke! Learning about your journey from a lifelong reader to a journalist and, finally, a published author was fun. No dreams are too big to dream, and you proved that. Your website is chock full of links to articles you’ve written for various magazines over the years. There’s also more information about each of your published books. I’m anxiously awaiting your third book, All The Summers in Between, in 2024, and I’m excited that you also have a fourth book in the works. This must be such an exciting time for you!
Brooke’s newsletter is so interesting and worth reading for all kinds of bookish goodness. Head over to her newsletter and subscribe; I promise you won’t regret it. Feel free to ask Brooke questions about her books or any other bookish topic in the comments below.
I’m counting down to retirement and moving day, and needless to say, my life is pretty hectic right now. I still make time to read at the end of every day, and I usually fall asleep with my Kindle in my hand. Summer is almost over, and school is starting around here in the next couple of weeks. As they say, time marches on. Have a great reading week. Happy reading!
Some of the links in this newsletter may be affiliate links. That means that if you click through and purchase anything, I may earn a small commission. This costs you nothing and helps me feed my voracious reading habit, and for that, I thank you.
I came into writing a roundabout way. I fell in love with story-telling in movies and video games. Having no ability or access to those mediums, I asked Grandma for a notebook and pen. But I didn't enjoy reading until much later, when an inspirational teacher taught me books can be fun. I think Gulliver's Travels inspired me most with it's biting satire. By the way, some original fiction by yours truly will be posted tomorrow for anyone interested.
Thanks for featuring this talented author. I already subscribe to Brooke’s Substack and need to read her books, they sound wonderful!