Zibby interviews #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicola Kraus about THE BEST WE COULD HOPE FOR, a sweeping novel spanning from 1943 to 2014 about a broken family and the women who knit together the remains. Nicola explains how her book traces the ripple effects of choices, trauma, privilege, and parenting through several generations of one family, and then touches on themes of race, motherhood, sibling bonds, healing, and even the transformative power of EMDR therapy. Finally, she shares her writing journey, her memories of growing up on the Upper East Side, and how her personal experiences shaped this book’s emotional core.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Nicola. Thank you so much for coming on Totally booked with Zibby to talk about The Best We Could Hope For a novel. Congrats.

Nicola: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. 

Zibby: Oh, so great to be with you.

Okay, great book. Tell everybody what The Best We Could Hope For is about, please. 

Nicola: It is a multi-generational story that goes from 1943 to 2014, because I wanted to look at the way the choices that baby boomers made as parents impacted Gen X, and then the way that they live, heal, and parent. So in order to encapsulate all of that, I really needed to cover a large span of time, which is why the book took me nine years to write.

Zibby: So when you first started it nine years ago, what was the nugget that you were like this, and then what kept you going? Like which part of it there was? 'cause there's a lot in the book. 

Nicola: I think there was a narrative when the Nanny Diaries came out that my writing partner and I had sort of gotten off the bus and this was our first exposure to the Upper East Side.

But I actually grew up here. So from the time that I was very small. I was sort of like the Pixar lamp. I just was swiveling back and forth, fascinated by the people that I was surrounded by because the confluence of incredible privilege with so much neglect. 

Zibby: Mm, 

Nicola: and so much dysfunction. When you think, gosh, with all this money, everyone must be so happy.

And seeing repeatedly from a very young age that that wasn't the case. So in a way, this novel's been brewing in my brain for decades, and it wasn't until Emma and I separated in our forties just professionally. We still talk every day that I had the time and the space to start exploring what this story would look like and how I would tell the way that this parenting milia that I think you grew up in as well, like how it sort of impacted the way that our generation is trying to be more conscious 

Zibby: mm-hmm. 

Nicola: Around parenting than I think any generation ever had the privilege of doing before. 

Zibby: Interesting. Well, now I understand sort of the Upper East side ness of it, which of course my, you know, my brain lights up given that that's where I'm from as well.

But, you know, you know, first Jane is looking at apartments. He's newly. You know, getting married and starting her life with Roger. And then later on she's there. And he referenced some brands that I knew right away, which now of course I'm blanking on, but I was like, oh yeah, of course. Like 

Nicola: PS I love you.

Zibby: Ballet Academy East you talked about. And um, I'm trying to remember where else. But anyway, I was like, and she finally like gets to be on the east side, which she like always wanted the elevators and all the stuff. 

Nicola: Yes. 

Yes, the elegance, the order, all of that appeals to Jane's brain tremendously. She is not an upper west side, or sadly. 

Zibby: I, I love the broker who's like, are you sure you wanna live on the east side? Like there's a whole community of. Grad students and everything like, sure. You don't wanna be a part of that. 

Nicola: Yes. 

Zibby: She was like, fine. 

Nicola: My mother was the head librarian for the, uh, research library up at Columbia. 

Zibby: Oh.

Interesting. 

Nicola: So we had a strong community growing up of people who were in Morningside Heights, and the, there, there was a very different mil is a different set of values, a different way of moving through the city. So on one hand it might seem like a very homogenous environment, but actually you need. You move 10 blocks and you're an entirely different community with an entirely different way of parenting and an entirely sys different system of raising a family.

Zibby: Wow. So this takes us through generations. 

Nicola: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: It's also about sisterhood. It's also about. Trauma. 

Nicola: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: And the effect on relationships. There's some really dark things that happen, like very, very dark. Talk to me about that. Like, and I don't know if it's a spoiler, if we can talk about, I. I mean, I feel like it's sort of halfway through where we learn some of the stuff and then like maybe three quarters where we learn more.

And you know, 

Nicola: I think that we are the first generation to actively talk about trauma, although we are certainly not the first generation to experience it. But having a vernacular around the idea that the things that we experience when we're growing up are going to form the way our brain takes in the world as adults.

That's really new language that we have now and. I grew up around so many, uh, dinner parties where I would hear these couples talking about their children, and I would see the choices that they made when their children were teenagers and then fast forward 10 years, and they would say, well, why is my child totally failing to thrive?

And I would think because you broke them, they are broken because you broke them. Remember that? Remember that time you left the country? When your child was in high school and just left them with a credit card and then a housekeeper who came occasionally, yeah, they're in rehab now. Like that's how that plays out.

So I wanted to look at a story that would show what the impact is of the, the choices that we make, the secrets that we keep. The, the consequences also of the shame around secret keeping. Um, I, I was listening to your interview with Amy Griffin and thinking about all the similar similarities there. I think as women, especially coming out of the 1950s, if you get your sense of value in your sense of.

Self from the way you present. 

Zibby: Mm. 

Nicola: And if the standard of that presentation is perfection, it doesn't give you a lot of space to be human. And then if you don't ever allow your children to know you vulnerably as someone who is able to make mistakes, then you cut yourself off from a lot of avenues toward authentic love.

Zibby: True. That's right. Even in like relationships. 

Nicola: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: I have teenagers who are dealing with the same 

Nicola: Yes. 

Zibby: Same thing. It's like, how if you, if you only show a side of yourself.. 

Nicola: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: And how can the other person connect with you fully if you're not, you know, it's like the puzzle piece. You're not even putting the right.

Contours out there. 

Nicola: Absolutely. So I wanted to find a way to look at all of this. I attended a production of Measure for Measure decades ago, where the structure of the story was that the twins who were usually presented as adoring each other, I. Hated each other. So when the brother asked his sister if she will be willing to, you know, sleep with the Duke, uh, for his benefit or to save him, she does it.

But she is just loathing coming out of every po of her being. And we met with the artistic director the next day and he said, I'm really interested in taking a story and without changing a word of the text, seeing if the opposite will hold. And that always stuck with me because I think there are a lot of stories about women who have experienced abuse who are trying to integrate that reality into their lives.

Yeah, and I thought it was so interesting to create a story around a young woman who's been told since she was a child that she has been abused and she's trying to figure out an adult. As an adult, if that actually maps onto her sense of self and what are the consequences of that dissonance within her own brain.

So that was the origin of that. 

Zibby: Interesting. 

Nicola: Really delightful thread in the plot. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, you, you know, you talk later in the book about EMDR. 

Nicola: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: And I have not tried this, but I feel like I need to because it's all, all the rage. 

Nicola: Mm-hmm. 

Zibby: Uh, did you, have you tried it to like be able to write about it?

Authentically. 

Nicola: Oh, yes. I just wrote an essay about this. 

Zibby: I, I'm sorry. I didn't see it. I'm sorry. 

Nicola: No, no. It hasn't come out yet. It has, I literally, I just wrote it, but I first dis heard about EMDR in El Magazine in the nineties. It was just an article about this light bar that would go back and forth that was supposed to be good for healing PTSD, and I tore it out because the internet hadn't been invented yet, and I kept it in my desk, and it was about 10 years later that someone said to me that they were doing a therapy with lights.

I was like, oh, that's it. That's it. I found it and I did it for seven years. 

Zibby: Did you really? Wow. 

Nicola: I did. And it changed my life. I would not be married. I would not be a parent. I would not be able to have the capacity for joy that I have if I hadn't done it. I think everyone should do at least one session.

It will change the way you see the world. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, not to totally pry, but what led you to. Seek it out Aside from like intellectual interest, like what were you working through for? 

Nicola: So I knew that I was tremendously anxious. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Nicola: Just, and, and I think I put a little bit of this into Linden's life.

In her thirties, that just trying to get to a bus or catch a subway and my heart would just start racing. And I thought this, it feels like I'm going to die younger than I need to if I don't get my cortisol under control.

Zibby: Interesting. 

Nicola: So I went into the session saying, you know, I had a perfect childhood, but I seem to have a lot of anxiety and my, bless my therapist, she kept a straight face.

She's like, Hmm, let, let's look into that. And what's fascinating about it, and I got the privilege a few years later of working on a book called Every Memory Deserves Respect, EMDR, and it was the first book written by clinicians for Lay people. So it really lays out how EMDR works and why EMDR works. And it turns out that when the brain is in the high state of activation, it splits out its capacity to encode.

So the brain will hold a soundtrack. Separate from a visual or the sense of what happened separate from the sound or the visual. So the process of EMDR, and they don't know exactly why, but it allows the brain to reconnect these separate files. And so you're able to come in and make meaning, and you are able to change your narrative around the memory.

So let's say your parents divorced and you've always felt like I, I was powerless, or I was scared or no one was paying attention to me. You go through and reprocess these memories and the narrative that comes out is, I'm tremendously resilient. Wow. I got myself through that. That's extraordinary. I have such a, an amazing capacity to get through hard things.

So by actively changing how you feel about yourself, you're able to then move forward living your life completely differently. 

Zibby: Wow. Okay. 

Nicola: I know it's worth goal. 

Zibby: This episode has been sponsored by Emdr. 

Nicola: EMDR.. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. I mean, kidding. Wow. Interesting. Okay, so. Bunny Jane's sister Bunny leaves home early.

We reunite sort of with her. I mean, we do, and she, I mean, I, I never know what to leave whether is a spoiler or not, but she basically dumps her kids on her sister. When her sister is dying to have her own kids and she has kids of different ethnicities. Which, which comes back later in the book of how they're processing.

Mm-hmm. Particularly one of them, but how are they're processing. Race in today's world too. Talk a little bit about her, like about Bunny's, sort of, you know, let's say fair attitude towards life and how. How race, like played a, a thing and what you were trying to say. By including that element. 

Nicola: So Bunny leaves her home in Baltimore in the late 1950s and joins a commune, and that is based on a, a real commune that, of course blew up because.

They attracted a lot of attention because they did. They had blacks and whites working alongside each other, and eventually the community was like, we're not comfortable with that anymore. And thankfully the sixties came and things changed tremendously. But Bunny then moves from there to South America, and by the time she comes back to New York, in her mid twenties, she's had three children by three different fathers.

Of three different ethnicities and she's overwhelmed. She, I think, thought she was moving away from her very restrictive cold childhood into a, a community of love and support, and instead of course found that her first opportunity to move away from the damage she experienced, she replicates it, which I think characters continue to do throughout the novel.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Nicola: This, as soon as they have autonomy, they just. Play through exactly what they've just escaped, and so she. She caves, she is willing to acknowledge that Jane is the one who is competent, organized. It seems like leaving the children with her is the answer to everyone's problems. And of course it just creates a whole new host of problems.

But I also wanted to look at what it was to be not white growing up on the Upper East Side, going to these schools I had and have close friends who were invited into these schools given the educational opportunity. But the schools I think at the time were very bad at the integration part. And I think we saw now with the hashtag that came out during the pandemic, which started with hashtag Black at Chapin, where women who I had gone to school with and and knew were chronicling experiences of tremendous racism. And so the disconnect again between this opportunity, which seems like it's a pure privilege and what it actually felt like, which was an obligation of your, your sense of self, your sense of identity not being given a real seat at the table, and the schools didn't understand that one of their responsibilities was to be fostering relationships.

Across racial and socioeconomic lines, which I see now with my daughter's schools so much better. You know, she has really good friends who have very different backgrounds and they have sleepovers and they move back and forth to each other's homes, and I think that then you can create change because these girls are allowed to really impact my daughter.

And we were sort of, we were in the same building, but we were moving along separate lines. So, and I felt like thematically that also really tied into what was happening inside the home life of these characters. So I thought that that was important to represent. 

Zibby: Interesting. Wow. Well, even just the thought of managing all these different kids.

'cause Jane has.. 

Nicola: Five, five kids. 

Zibby: I mean, five kids. It's like, oh my. I mean, I know I have four kids, but I'm about five. Just feels like.. 

Nicola: Too many kids'. Too many, too many. 

Zibby: Way more than four. Can you take us back to how you became an author? How did you. Team up with Emma to begin with.

How did it change your life to be, have all the success early on, and did it make you feel paranoid about writing your own book? So take us back. Yes. And then up to here. 

Nicola: So I wanted to be an actor. That is all I thought I ever wanted to do. And I graduated from college a year early because I was so convinced that that was my path and I needed the extra time to get going.

And by the last year that I was acting. I hated it. And I was privileged though, in that I was making enough money acting I didn't have to have any other jobs. And I think that full immersion was what gave me the perspective. The thought that kept going through my head every day was, this is not a good use of my time on this planet.

And every few months I would sob and my parents would say, you should be a writer. And I would say, that's not helpful. You're supposed to tell me to be a CPA or something practical. But they saw it. They saw it for me, and they had a great belief in storytelling as a really valuable use of human time and energy, thank God.

And so when Emma, who I'd gone to college with, sent me an email one day saying, I've had this idea for a book for a long time. I really wanna partner with someone to write it. You, you were also a nanny. Would you do it with me? It was at a moment where I was. Exploring going back to school to do my pre-med requirements.

I was writing, I was teaching yoga. I thought one of these is going to be my path out. And so we say yes to everything, even though I thought it was a terrible idea because nannying was the worst job I'd ever had, and it was totally heartbreaking. And who on earth would wanna read about that? But then we were off to the races and it, it had a momentum of its own.

We finished the book. Relatively very quickly. I mean, one or the other of us was working on it t literally 24 hours a day 'cause she'd go to sleep just as I got up and then I would take it over and we were just so on fire about it. But at the same time, we had friends who were making sculpture in their bathrooms.

We had friends who were doing a lot of theater downtown. This just was an artistic endeavor for us. We had no idea what was coming. And then the extraordinary success of that, which just shocks us to this day, gave us the opportunity to keep going. And we wrote nine more books together, but we started getting funneled into this arena that was an aspect of women's fiction.

That wasn't it, it didn't light us up anymore. And we weren't doing it from the. Same place of just pure, pure energy, enthusiasm, and joy. And so by the time we turned 40, I knew I really wanted to go back to doing the kind of writing that I'd done before Emma and I started working together and she really wanted to go back to corporate America.

She wanted health insurance. So it was a really amicable, loving, uh, separation. But I, it took me nine years to do this on my own. It's very different when you're not under contract or under deadline. 

Zibby: Wow. I've never ridden really with anyone else, and I mean, I feel like that would be so difficult, but people, I mean, obviously it works really well for the right people to do it.

Who knows It. 

Nicola: It's like a marriage. You have to do everything very explicitly and you have to plot everything out because someone can't go rogue. You have to. So it, it requires tremendous communication and a lot of respect.

Zibby: I feel like there should be a panel with. You and like I had Lauren Weisberger on the podcast. And even Ne Freberg who wrote Lucky Girls. Like people who like peaked and not peaked, but like who had major success really early on. Like before they even knew how hard the industry was. Yes. And what does that do to you as a writer going forward? Right. It's like a child star or something.

Nicola: Oh, totally. Or before your Saturn return. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Nicola: It's really destabilizing. I think fame in general. I mean, even though this was, this was mini fame, MicroFame, the Hershey Kiss of Fame. 

Zibby: Oh, still. 

Nicola: But it's very destabilizing if you don't have other things in your life to ground you. And I was also fascinated by going through that experience.

And then it, it influenced a few books that m and I wrote because. We wrote one inspired by the Britney Spears story. What does that do if you have no core sense of self? 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Nicola: And suddenly you're getting all of this adulation. And the corollary to that is that your body is not experiencing fame as good.

Your body is experiencing it as being chased by a saber tooth tiger. You don't know the difference between being on the red carpet. And someone wanting to hurt you. Like it's just cortisol, cortisol, cortisol all day, every day. Which is why I think, especially for people who acquire their fame in their early twenties, they buy things all the time because they think this handbag will make me feel successful, or this vacation will make me feel successful.

'cause what I feel is exhausted and rung out. And so looking at how do you, what do you latch onto? What grounds you? What is the thing? I think for people who are very talented, they keep coming back to the work. If you just keep coming back to the endeavor, the thing that involves no hair, no makeup, no lights.

You know, just the, the endeavor and the love of it, you'll be okay. But if you don't have that to ground you and you're just, it's like the substance, which I loved so much. 

Zibby: I did not see it. 

Nicola: Oh my gosh. Just, just watch the first 10 minutes. 

Zibby: Okay? 

Nicola: But, you know, it starts with her on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and all these people are photographing her and, and everyone's saying, we love you.

We love you. And if you don't go home to even a pet. It's like, I love you and I have no idea what movies are. Then you can eventually get very far off center of what matters in life. 

Zibby: So interesting. Oh my gosh. Okay, so in addition to this book that took nine years and all the rest you contributed to, I'm being Jewish now.

Thank you so much for that. 

Nicola: Yes. 

Zibby: Can you talk a little just about like, did you debate doing that or not? Are you happy you did it and is there a part of your story that you feel comfortable sharing? 

Nicola: Oh yes. Oh, no. I loved doing that. I was so thrilled that you asked me, and I think I, I wrote the whole thing in about an hour after I got that email from you.

I mean, it, it happened to be perfect timing in that I was at the end of year one of my Hebrew studies, and at the beginning of my year two, I have my Torah portion right here, which I'm memorizing every day, every minute I have, when a Zoom starts late, I just sit here and sing. So my essay was inspired by the story of my family who, uh, they were refugees on both sides, Holocaust refugees.

But I was, I was raised without any awareness of that. There was no discussion of any Jewish heritage, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I started trying to get to the bottom of. What happened and why isn't anyone talking about this? And then trying to reconnect to my Jewish heritage and learning about the religion, and I've been in this phenomenal community for the last two years at East End Temple.

I love my classmates. We are all inquiring together and studying together and having headaches together, and it's just so beautiful to be accepted. I, it just, everything about it fills me with joy. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. And now you're getting ready for the bat mitzvah? 

Nicola: Yes, June 1st. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. That is so cool. And you've said something so funny about like ice sculptures and hot flashes and 

Nicola: Oh, yes, yes.

My per ice sculptures, hot flashes. That is the theme. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Um, that's so interesting. Wow. You have like so many different things and interests and book publicity. I mean, there's a lot going on. How do you manage your time? I'm always looking for tricks. 

Nicola: I, I read an interview with Aaron Sorkin once, who was also working on multiple things.

He always says, whatever's at the top of the pile gets my undivided attention. 

Zibby: Mm. 

Nicola: And I was like, oh, yes, me too. So I just try to block out my day where I'm doing a little bit of time for my creative pursuits, which right now means all the things that have to do with a book launch. And then when my clients who I'm helping write their books when I'm focused on them.

Everything else goes away. And then when my daughter gets home from school, she gets my undivided attention. And then I watch tv. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. I love it. Okay. Well just to, to close. There are family secrets that permeate the best we could hope for. And the effect of those and the things that we don't talk about or the things that those closest to us can't even articulate.

What do we do with the fact that there are people who might be keeping secrets from us. Like what, how do we go through the world where there is all this, this like parallel narrative and sometimes it could be quite dark and, and yet preserve a sense of optimism and vulnerability. 

Nicola: It's so hard. I think it can go both ways.

So you might have someone older in your family just the way I did, even with the Jewish narrative, where you want to make space for them to know that it is safe for them to give you their truth. That you won't judge them for it. Even if they have a narrative that was inculcated in them decades ago, that their sense of self-worth and their sense of belonging will disintegrate if anyone knows the full truth of them.

So. You may not succeed. Right? And that's also what the book is about. You know, someone who you love very much may die and take their truth with them, but that doesn't mean that they didn't appreciate that you still opened yourself up and made that extension to them. And you just have to make peace with it.

And on the other side, I think trust that the people around you love you thorns at all, and that we don't have to be perfect to be valuable.

Zibby: I love that. That's a good, a good message to close. Thank you. 

Nicola: Yes. Oh, thank you. This was so fun. 

Zibby: Thank you so much Nicola, and thanks again for contributing to the anthology.

Thanks for this read. Oh, I didn't even mention that. We have the same editor at Little A. 

Nicola: Yes, yes. 

Zibby: Love. Oh my gosh. Actually just interviewed Jordan Rotor who has the same, we should have like a little party of people with the same editor. 

Nicola: Yes, that would be great. Yes, I would love that. 

Zibby: Okay. Congratulations on the book.

Best of luck. And now I guess I'm off to schedule an EMDR appointment, so.

Nicola: Thank you. Oh my gosh. You should change your life. And then let me know how it went. 

Zibby: Okay. 

Nicola: Okay. 

Zibby: Bye. Thank you.