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July 2003
 In this interview Caroline Slate talks about the central themes of her latest novel, A FRACTURED TRUTH, as well as the actions and motivations of her lead character who, after serving seven years in prison for the murder of her husband, must find a way to live in the present while coming to terms with her dark and mysterious past.
Q: Though A FRACTURED TRUTH is a very different kind of novel from last year's THE HOUSE ON SPRUCEWOOD LANE, both deal with bonds and betrayals inside families. What attracts you to the family as a playing field?
CS: Nowhere is psychological suspense more prevalent than inside a family. Every passion is heightened, ramped up between parents, children and siblings. Family relationships embody the best and worst that human nature has to offer. Like it or hate it, it's where we all come from, and in crucial ways, a family is a society closed to all but its members. THE HOUSE ON SPRUCEWOOD LANE is about mothers and children --- though the yearning for a father is a strong element. A FRACTURED TRUTH doesn't have a compelling mother character. It says a lot about fathers and, present or absent, the immutable hold they maintain on their children.
Q: Grace Leshansky, your lead character in A FRACTURED TRUTH, kills her husband, not in self defense and knowing full well what she's doing. Yet the story is told in Grace's voice and the reader identifies with her --- roots for her. Isn't there something just a bit immoral going on here?
CS: Sure there is. I don't think it was okay for Grace to kill Paul. Hey, Grace doesn't think it was okay. The guilt will live in her until her last breath --- and so will her anger at him. Paul was the subtlest of con men, an artist whose medium was collage of truth and lie. Could Grace have just walked away from him? Some other women could have. I like to think I'd be one of them. But, full-hearted true believer that she is, Grace couldn't. One of the things I found fascinating in writing her was finding her snap point. I mean, the difference between pulling the trigger or not is a fraction of an inch, a split second.
Q: The book actually begins just as Grace is getting out of prison after serving seven years for manslaughter. Would you characterize it as a story about violence, uncontrollable impulses?
CS: No, not mainly. I'd say it is, at its core, a story about the power of love --- and that includes the love we call friendship. Grace's struggle to find a way to live in the present and with the past wouldn't have a shot at succeeding but for Sheilah, a friend dating back to childhood, who gives her a job and sticks by her through some bad stuff. Craig, a new friend, is also irreplaceably important, as is Michael, an old love who comes back into her life. Of course, Grace's father, George, whose remembered presence is with her always, is at the heart of her journey.
Q: But these characters you just mentioned are, without exception, very imperfect people: Sheilah's possessive and demanding, Craig's a compulsive scammer, Michael is, to say the least, unreliable and has some pretty dicey connections and George was hardly father of the year in anyone's book.
CS: Perfect people aren't very interesting --- aside from the fact that I don't recall having met any. It's the way people's imperfections interlock and play off each other that gives relationships dimension, passion and strength. In A FRACTURED TRUTH, for example, the bond between Grace and her father is unbreakable. True, George was a gambler who exposed his daughter to the risky life he led, but the two of them also took a great deal of joy in each other. Their love and mutual dependence formed Grace's character (for better and worse) and sustained her and George through some very tough times.
© Copyright 2003, Caroline Slate. All rights reserved.
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