Award-winning journalist Brooke Lea Foster returns to the podcast, this time to discuss ALL THE SUMMERS IN BETWEEN, a breathtaking dual-timeline novel that is at once a mesmerizing portrait of a complex friendship, a delicious glimpse into a bygone Hamptons, and a powerful coming-of-age for two young women who don’t speak for a decade after a devastating night. Brooke delves into her female protagonists, touching on self-esteem, self-identity, and the tension between family and personal ambitions. She and Zibby also talk about writing historical fiction and all the nostalgic details in the story (remember record stores?).

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Brooke. Thank you so much for coming back on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss All the Summers in Between.

Congratulations. 

Brooke: Thank you. I'm so excited to be back. I always love talking to you. 

Zibby: You too. I forgot at first that this was the book that you were writing a while ago and you asked my step dad for background on the Hamptons, right? Or am I making this up? 

Brooke: No, that was actually for Anjan Lane, Time Flies!

But what's interesting is that so much of those interviews that I did for that book, the same information was relevant for this book, so I did end up using a lot of that same research. 

Zibby: Oh, good. Okay, good. 

Brooke: Yeah. Yeah. 

Zibby: Because I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot that I even put them in touch. So that was.

Brooke: Yes. No, I actually even thank your, thank him in the acknowledgments in my last book. And you. 

Zibby: You did? Oh my gosh. 

Brooke: You have to, like, go back and show him. 

Zibby: Yes. Oh, I will go back and show him. Well, sorry I missed that whole thing. Well, this is where my mind is these days. Anyway, well, at least I thanked you now.

Well, thank you for the, the trip down memory road of, of East Hampton. I feel like, I know the yearbook takes place at, at Sunshine Records, but I feel like I grew up at East Hampton Reco what, no. Long Island Sound, the record store in East Hampton. So this sort of like took me back. 

Brooke: Well, it's funny though, because in the 60s, there was no record store in East Hampton.

There actually wasn't. I had to find one. So the one you're talking about opened later. They would buy records at the pharmacy or they would drive west to go get them. But just like how books all came out on Tuesdays, everyone would gather at the record stores on Tuesdays for all the new releases, which I just thought was so cool.

And I think that's so cool. The idea that like a Beatles album was coming out or a Rolling Stones album and they would all like flock to the record store to get their copy. You know, I thought that was so neat. 

Zibby: That is so cool. Now the only times aside from books it's like when some store has a collab or something.

You know like my daughter wanting to run to like a store. Bird of Roller Rabbit, Love Shack, Fancy. You know what I mean? Like, there aren't that, there aren't that many times where we get to be that excited about something new. 

Brooke: I know. I know. We don't even have Blockbuster anymore. 

Zibby: I know. Very sad. Very sad.

Wow. I always just assumed Long Island Sound had been there forever. Because when I was a kid, it was there. You know, in that way that we think that everything that's there precedes you. 

Brooke: Yes. No. I was looking and I couldn't find any record store in East Hampton, any, any in South Hampton, Bridge Hampton.

It's shocking. And I was even asking my mom because my mom was out there, my dad in the 60s out in Montauk and they, he, they were like, no, believe it or not, like it was actually hard to find records out there. Yeah. 

Zibby: Well, that was definitely the meeting place. I mean, you went to the movies, and then you went to the record store, and that was, like, what you did at night.

Brooke: Yeah. It's so funny. Like, there's even this part of All the Summers in Between where her love interest, Thea, my main character's love interest, Felix, who ends up becoming her husband, and, you know, they get married. But he leaves her a little note in one of the records, and it was just, like, so much fun to imagine that time where, like, you would, he was, like, go to the, I'm gonna, Riff here, because I don't remember exactly, but it's like, go to the W's or something, and it's like, she's going through and she pulls out the album and pulls it out, and there's a note inside.

And I, like, I would have loved that, right? I would have loved that, you know, the ability to use an album as, like, a secret pocket for a love note. It was such a, like, fun thing to write. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh, and the packaging of the records. You know, now music isn't really, it's not about, The cover, the cover's like, you know, the size of a dime when you look at it on your phone.

Brooke: Yes. Yes. And actually, I feel like my kids, I don't know about your kids, but like what they watch are the videos that come up on Spotify when the song is on. You know, it's like Taylor Swift walking through a field or something. Like that's their idea almost of a record cover. But I remember, I know we're like similarly aged, so you must remember this too, but do you remember getting like, Like a Virgin, Madonna's album, where she's like in the lace negligee?

Zibby: Oh yeah. 

Brooke: Yeah. Like, oh my gosh, like, I had that album displayed, that cover displayed on my bookshelf in my room. It was just that, right? 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. It's 

Brooke: crazy. But then soon after it moved to, like I had Prince's Raspberry Beret, and then soon after it moved to CDs, right? Like, well, cassettes. No, cassettes!

Zibby: Cassettes! I feel like I had records for so long. I don't know. I just, I feel like. 

Brooke: You held onto it. Well, you know what? You grew up in the city, so you probably had more record stores around. 

Zibby: Yeah, that's true. 

Brooke: I don't know. I don't remember having, like, we had Sam Goody and it was far from my house. I don't know.

I remember going to Mixtapes, like, very soon in teenage years. 

Zibby: Yeah. No, that was like ten, I feel like that was at least five years ago. Well, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I spent some time as a kid. But I was a huge record fan and flipping them over and, like, putting the little thing for thirty three and forty fives.

Brooke: Yeah! 

Zibby: And I'm really dating myself here, but I never thought, you know, that that would seem dated. But anyway, um, this is not even hugely central to the plot, but it is the setting. So, um, anyway, just reminded me of all that. Wait, there was one passage that I wanted to read. Is that okay? 

Brooke: Yes. 

Zibby: I just love this line so much.

Well, I won't give it away, so I'll skip a line in the middle of this paragraph, but it says, Thea's body had failed her lately. She'd started to think of her physical body as a house with crooked windows. Shutters and missing shingles the inside lacking working appliances the plumbing frozen from the cold inside her heart I just love that.

I mean what a way to describe how you're you know, this complicated relationship we have with our bodies and you know, when they're not doing what we want or they're disappointing us. 

Brooke: Yes. Yes. And in this story, so she at that point is 30, it's 1977, and she's happily married and she has a beautiful little girl who she loves, but she's getting a lot of pressure from her husband to have another baby.

And she's ambivalent about it and she's not sure. And she sort of secretly starts taking her birth control pills again and her husband finds out. And she's so afraid after a miscarriage to kind of go for it again because her body had failed her so many times. And there's this point later in the book where, It's not, I'm not giving anything away because it's not too much farther, but where they're on a boat and there's like an accident, right?

And they're swimming in the water and it's very terrifying because there's like fish going by her legs and whatnot, but her body doesn't fail her. She kind of feels the strength, but she's getting the strength, not from being a mother delivering a child. She's getting her strength from being a strong woman and being Swim and feeling like mentally and physically she can do it and I feel like that's really the theme in the book, right?

It's like you can do, you know, you don't have to only be a mom, right? Like you can want more, you can long for more, you can go for more and, and not feel guilty about it. I, I was talking with someone the other day about what, people you know, actually. It was Jackie Freeland and Sam Woodward. They're author friends of mine.

And we were talking about the themes that kind of reoccur in our books. You know, it's kind of an endless fascination. And Zibi, I know you're working on your second novel, so soon we're going to see what emerges from each of your novels. But I think in my novel, when we were talking, I was like, I kind of spit out this line.

And now I'm like, Oh my God, this is actually really what my books are about. Sam was like, that's actually deep. And I'm like, Oh my gosh. So it was like, women finding the courage to go to the people they love and ask for what they need. And I feel like that's really good. My books, right? That's actually, I couldn't distill it until the other night.

And I was like, Oh my gosh, that's actually it. And so in this book, she's you know, somebody who wanted to be an artist when she was 20 and she had these ideas. She's kind of riding the wave of feminism and, you know, there's marching on Washington and the Equal Rights Amendment. They're talking about adding a sex discrimination clause, which actually doesn't happen until 1971, but it doesn't matter because the music is, they're singing about this and women are feeling as though things are going to be entirely different.

But by the time they get to the late 70s and she's a young mom, She realizes that actually she's put everything aside still for her husband's career. She hasn't gone after anything she wants and like the joke in the book is like she doesn't even know what kind of ice cream flavor she likes because she's so busy running after the ice cream flavors for her child and, you know, for her husband.

Yeah. And so she has to find the courage to A, figure out what it is she wants, right? Because that's one of our, our challenges in life. Like what is going to fulfill us? And it's not always a job. It doesn't have to be a career. What is that gonna look like? And then how can I ask it? And when she has to ask her husband for per permission in a way, because you need to take time away from the family and you know, whatever your other duties are emotionally.

And also just chores in the house. You know, it's really hard for her. And I, writing that struggle was so fascinating to me. And I think that's because that's me, right? Like that's all of us. That's what we talk about at mom pickup, at, you know, at school and at lunches with friends. Like we're all talking about in many different iterations.

how challenging it is to ask the people we love for what we need, you know? And so that, that was very powerful for me to kind of work that out in this novel, I think. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, there's also, yours, your books are set in the past. So it's almost like you're like set, you're laying the foundation for what we, Have an easier time doing now, you know, like it was revolutionary.

Well, maybe not easier. I mean, I, you know, but at a time when it wasn't as accepted, right. So there's, I feel like there's a little bit more of a, what's the word when you're the first one to do something, you know, trailblazer, trailblazer. I know I kept wanting to say fire thrower and I was like, I know that's not it.

Trailblazer. Right. So there's some sort of some trailblazing, but the, the, the ways in which you write about it, the way you can blaze your own trails, so to speak, in your own world and your own family, it doesn't have to be on a major political stage. Do you know what I mean? Like these little, you know, life decisions that the women make are, are huge and feel just as revolutionary as, as setting the whole world on fire.

Brooke: And I think it's that. That's a universal truth and feeling among women, and the way it manifests in the different time period is very different, right? So like you're saying, we have come a very long way as women. We are, you know, we can have careers, we can have family, we can go crazy trying to do it, all of these things.

But the very basic idea of figuring out how to ask for it and how to, you know, Figure out where to insert yourself in family life after you've been a mom for so long. And figuring out how to reinvent yourself after you've let go of so many pieces of who you are. You don't even, you're lost kind of in chopping fruit, right, and getting the kids to bed and breaking up fights and all these things we do all the time.

So figuring out what that looks like, I don't know, I feel like for me, I remember doing this when I wanted to write fiction. So I had been a journalist for 20 years, a paid journalist, I'd been out working. And managing the kids just fine. But then, you know, going after a creative pursuit felt very flighty.

I wasn't going to make a salary anyway, you know, like to ask for that. I had this desire to do it. It was a dream. And my, my baby was one years old at that point. She's now nine, but it was like, that was really hard for me to go to my husband and be like, you know, I kind of want to go for this. because it felt a little irresponsible.

I'm not gonna lie. It was like, I'm just, I'm like not, you know, I'm not gonna write for the times anymore. What? Like you worked your whole life to try to write for the times. But it's like I wanted to flex a new muscle. And that conversation, you know, in 1967 and 1977 just looked a little different, right?

Right. Yes. So, so that's kind of how I can take these historical moments when things were so different for women, but extract a universal truth. That's kind of, you can, you can distill it into something so basic. 

Zibby: Huh. Is there anything else you had a hard time asking for, for what you needed? 

Brooke: Oh gosh. I feel like I have trouble every day.

I mean, honestly going on this book tour, I don't know, maybe it's just me here, but I feel as though, like, Going on, you know, leaving my family for the week, I don't have full time help at all. You know, getting, cobbling together babysitters and carpools. My husband, I kid you not, he is, I adore him. I love him.

He's a great man. He's, we have an, you know, it's close to an egalitarian relationship, I don't even know if I said that word right. As you can have. He was taking pictures of the kids breakfast. And he opened up my daughter's lunchbox and snapping pictures so that he could just know exactly how to get it right.

Like, he was so afraid that, like, he wasn't gonna know what to do. Like, writing checklists, like, feed the dog, like, all these chores we just kind of split in the morning and in the evening, however it goes. Like, he kind of, like, doesn't know what I do really, right? Like, we do all this invisible work, and so he found himself you know, scrambling to do this.

So, you know, even just like, you know, his band has a show on Saturday night and he was like, oh my gosh, like, how do I figure that out? I'm like, this is my career. It's like my book tour. It's like your hobby band, you know? So, like, that's a renegotiation that's happening all the time, in marriage, I feel like it happens with my sisters, with my mother.

We're always constantly trying to figure out, like, can I get away with this? Like, can I, this, is this okay? Do I have mom guilt? I always have mom guilt, right? I know you always have mom guilt. There's so much mom guilt. Right? And it's like, I was talking to Allison Pataki, the author, the other day, and she's just like, no, like, it's okay.

You can go. You know? Like, they'll figure it out. And I'm like, you're right. You know, I have to just be okay with the fact that this is my moment. Right? Like, and it doesn't happen all the time. And I'm not demanding, you know, something crazy, like I'm moving to Paris alone. Like, this is just like, it's, you know, I'm going on book tour.

But you know, it's hard. It's a, it's a negotiation. 

Zibby: No, I'm glad you bring that up because, you know, a man, not to talk about gender stereotypes, but like a man going on his book tour, like whatever, or a man going on a business trip or a consulting trip or, you know, all the things, you wouldn't even think twice about it.

That's just part of your business. You know, and I remember having to say to my kids, like, I'm so sorry. Well, I, I actually am going on a business trip. That's what this is. It's a business trip. I'm not like going to see, I am seeing friends everywhere I go, which makes it seem so fun. Like it can't actually be work, but it actually is work.

You make a product. You try to sell the product. Like you got to do it. 

Brooke: And it turns out like standing up in front of people and talking about your book is exhausting.

Zibby: The travel. I mean, it's hard. It's a lot of work and a lot of effort, but it's fun. But like, of course they should, I, I, I finally like finished my tour and I was talking about my next book and, and my daughter was like.

You're going to do this again?

I was like, I know, it's hard to believe. I was like, maybe not quite the same way. But, but, yeah. 

Brooke: Write it in and learn. Like, you'll do it smarter next time. 

Zibby: Yeah, I'll do it smarter next time. 

Brooke: That's so funny. No, we were in the hotel. So I'm on this tour with my two besties. I have totally, like, brought friends along for the ride.

Because my husband was like, I want to go. I'm like, oh, no, no. You're, like, holding down the fort. Like, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Um, so it's been so fun just to have them around because you know, obviously it's like a lot of driving, you're lonely, like you're sitting in a hotel room when you're not doing events.

I hate it. I hate traveling alone. So my friends are here. So anyway, we go down for breakfast yesterday in like some Marriott in Durham and we like walk into the like, you know, like little like special breakfast place that you get with like a certain number of points, right? And we walk in and we're like on the phone with our kids and they're like on their way to school and we're like telling them certain things and we're talking really loud and we turn the corner and it's like, All dads in business suits and they all look up at us, look up and it's like, thank God I don't have to do that, right?

No one's on the phone with a kid. No one is like, you know, I love you. Have a great day. It's like fascinating. Every, their world business travel is look so different than ours, right? It's like, it was so interesting. 

Zibby: I know. Well, yeah, it's, it's totally crazy. Well, I'm glad you're out having fun and making a trip of it.

I mean, it's hard to get sanctioned time away, right? It's like, you write a book to take a girl's trip. 

Brooke: Yeah, exactly. I'll do this every year. And next time I'll set it in Paris, just so I can get to Paris. 

Zibby: Exactly. Or research, you know, did you go to the Hamptons to do research? You know, 

Brooke: Totally. I mean, I'm out there all summer long daydreaming, sitting on the beach, you know, so no, but yeah, I love going out there once my books come out and then there's just so much excitement, you know, everyone's so supportive.

And just like, I remember with On Gin Lane, it was so fun to go to the corner where the street sign is Gin Lane and like be like, Oh, honey, am I back? You know, it was so fun. 

Zibby: Well, you had lots of landmarks here too. 

Brooke: Yeah. I was actually going to say some of those Easter eggs, like, you know, the old pizza place in Amagansett.

That's been there forever. You know, they, the Thea and her boyfriend at the time, who becomes her husband, like they go on their first date there and they have a slice of pizza and a Dylan song comes on and I just love that, you know? And then Andy Warhol's in the book because I grew up on stories of, you know, Andy Warhol's epic party is at Montauk and my dad's band playing at one, which is like supposedly true.

And I'm like, really? You know, so it's fun to think about that. 

Zibby: You have the, there was one circular table in the cheery children's room at the East Hampton Library. And as Thea settled her little sister into it, she noticed Kara's hands ringing in her lap. Relax. You're going to do great today. I was like, I grew up at that table.

Brooke: That's so cute. I love that. I know. So fun. And then like, yeah, there's so many little. You know, it's also too, just from being out there so long, there's like the sensibility of what it feels like, how the light bounces off the water, you know, just the, the way the, you know, it feels to click clack down the brick sidewalks.

It's just certain things when you've lived in a place and know a place so well, you don't even have to do the research because you just know it, you know, it's a part of who you are. So I love that. And like, you know, you know with all my books, I love to get in the haves and, you know, the tension between the haves and the have nots.

And in this book, I do it with the two best friends. So like, one is a wealthy city girl who's coming out in summer and one is the local hardscrabble girl. And it doesn't matter that they come from opposite sides of the economic spectrum. They become very close friends. One of the things I love about the Hamptons, you know, like I, I've been saying like, because I thought of this as an example, it's just like you could be at a sailing school where the two, you know, you have a rich kid counselor and you have like a local kid counselor and they become really good friends.

And it's, you know, that's the interesting part to me in the Hamptons, it's just the way we all support each other. The way there's a lot of misunderstandings, there can be judgment, but then there can also be surprises where, you know, you get close with someone you didn't, you never expected to. And really learn from each other.

Zibby: So true. So true. So what are your events in the Hamptons this summer? What are you going to do? 

Brooke: Oh, exciting. Okay. So I'll be at Book Hampton on June 22nd, and then I'm going to be at the Bridge Hampton Barnes and Noble. And then I'm going to be on the North Fork a little bit. So there's this great store in the North Fork called the North Fork Apothecary, if you haven't been there.

Have you been there? 

Zibby: I haven't been. No. 

Brooke: Okay, you have to go. First of all, she is just one of those very stylish people, Stephanie, who stocks her store with beautiful things. Like she's beautiful and her things are beautiful. You know that kind of person? 

Zibby: Yes. Yes. 

Brooke: Walking in there, you just, you know. And she's giving me a really fun event there, which I think is going to be great.

There's other, there's another little bookstore in Riverhead I'll be at. I'll be on Shelter Island. And then of course, like, I'll leave the Hamptons and go to New England. So I'll be on Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard. I tell you, like, Zibby, you got to start setting your books in a beach town, because then you get to go to all beach towns all summer long for your tour.

You know, like, I don't go to like Milwaukee, Chicago. I get to go to all these little lovely beach towns, which is super fun for me because I'm such a beach girl. 

Zibby: Hmm, I am writing this next book, but so far it's It's back in L. A. 

Brooke: Yeah, where is it set? Oh, L. A. 

Zibby: L. A. because that's like where I want to go when I'm here.

Brooke: Oh, isn't that funny? So are you becoming more of a L. A. woman than an, you know, an NYC? 

Zibby: No, I, I spend much more time in New York, but I just always sort of want to be there because I'm so much more relaxed. Like the pace is different. I get to sit in my bookstore all day. Like, it's like my dream life. I think if, maybe if I were there all the time, it wouldn't be a dream life anymore.

Like somebody was like, but if you brought your actual life there, wouldn't be stressful again. I'm like, maybe. 

Brooke: Oh my god. Totally. You know, it's funny. So I actually, I'm one of those people that love Los Angeles. You know, some people like complain about Los Angeles. I'm not one of them. I actually tried to give it to my husband and move there because to me it feels like so creative and artistic and I love the beach.

But it's funny because since I've been, working on these books the last couple years, what I've noticed is that in summer, I do a lot of daydreaming and playing and I'm like, and when I say daydreaming, like, let's be real, like, I'm still chasing my kids at the beach. But it's like, I'm not sitting there just staring off for a lot of years.

But then all winter long, I like hole up and write. And I don't, I wonder, like, you have to answer this question for me in a couple years once you've been there. But like, I wonder if the weather was nice all year. Like, I don't know if I could focus as well. Like, I would want to play every day. Like, I feel like I would want to go to Santa Monica and, like, ride my bike and, like, hang out at the beach.

It would be very challenging. I don't know. What do you find when you're out there? Do you just want to? 

Zibby: Yeah. Well, I lived, I did live there for a couple years after college. Yeah. And I, after I got over the whole, like, you don't even have to go anywhere on the weekends. Do I mean? Like, you just wake up and that it's the week too.

Brooke: Yeah. I know. I can't even imagine that. 

Zibby: And swimming. 

Brooke: Yeah, I know. 

Zibby: But then after a while, like I was ready to leave, to not be on vacation anymore, you know, like, but it took two, it took two years.

Brooke: It took two years. Yeah. But also I 

Zibby: missed my family. Now my life is so different, you know, I'm in a different stage, but then I was in my twenties, but anyway.

Brooke: Yeah. Yeah. But I have time to appreciate that though. Like, you know, as much as I hate winter, I can kind of burrow in. 

Zibby: I don't know. I would be fine not having Winner. I hate Winner. But anyway, what is your next book going to be about? You must know. 

Brooke: Okay, so my next book comes out next summer. Believe it or not, I'm like, I've managed to pull off a second book so fast.

But it's about a family in Martha's Vineyard, and the father is, was a long time United States Senator, and the mom was a Gloria Steinem like feminist icon. And it's about three grown sisters who are called back to the Beach House a year after their Senator father dies. And the mother, their mother announces that they have to sell the house.

So that's kind of the trope and the sisters are forced to kind of confront the, their relationships. You know, sisters have such complicated relationships, but also all of these family secrets emerge and it's also dual timeline. I wrote another dual timeline historical novel, but this time the 1965 timeline is told from the mother's point of view and it sort of gets at how she, um, The moment like leads up to this moment where she becomes this Gloria Steinem like feminist iconic figure in United States history Which I just like loved writing and then but but as a mom, right?

And then the second one is the youngest sister in the family in 1978 and her kind of grappling with Problems kind of in her own life, you know, she's a graduate student smart But trying, you know, having some personal issues at the same time, coming back to her family who treat her like the baby and, you know, trying to get taken seriously within your family as the world is, your world is falling apart, you know, all along.

So yeah, I actually came up with that idea on vacation in Edgar Town on the vineyard one summer. I just, we stayed in this house. It just felt like this family would have lived. It was a rental house and there was this big, huge map in this one living room. So it had a family room and a living room and it had this huge map on the wall of Martha's Vineyard and it had the name Charles Whiting Cartographer.

And I, Having this vision of this family a little bit. And then all of a sudden I was like, Oh my God, it's Charlie Whiting. And he was a senator. And I was like, you know, it's so crazy with novel writing because when you're open and you're looking for ideas and you're ready for the next idea, they're all around you, right?

Like you just start pulling. And when I looked up and saw that name, I remember turning to my husband and being like, he's Charles Whiting. No, he's Charlie Whiting. And my husband's like, what are you talking about? You're like, you sound crazy. Right? Right? But like, but really that is who they are. So they're the Whiting family and of Edgar town and in the summer.

And so that's what it's coming out next. 

Zibby: That's amazing. Wow. I'm so impressed at your speed. That's just really, really impressive. 

Brooke: Yeah, I'm slowing down after this. Wait, what do you mean you're impressed by my speed? You write your books in like three days. 

Zibby: No, I don't. No. 

Brooke: No, I'm kidding. But you write fast.

You do write fast. 

Zibby: I, I spend a lot of time not writing though. I spend,

like, every time I open my document. I leave it shorter. This is not going well. I'm like, I started, I finally got to 15, 000 words. Now I'm back to eight, but it's much better. I've like rewritten it 10 times. Oh my gosh. Anyway. Well, Brooke, congratulations. All the summers in between. So fun. I will be seeing this, I'm sure, in all the Hamptons bookstores all summer and yeah, just so fun.

I can't wait for the next one. 

Brooke: Yes. Thank you. And I can't wait for your next book, too. 

Zibby: Thank you. Thank you. All right. 

Bye. Enjoy the tour. Enjoy it. 

Brooke: Yes. Thank you so much. 

Have a great day. 

Zibby: No guilt. Okay. 

Brooke: No guilt. 

Zibby: Bye.