Runaway Moms

Guest Blog by Deborah K. Shepherd

“Mothers don’t walk out on their children, no matter how loudly the siren song of a past love calls to them. Peter might need me, but my kids needed more,” muses Caro Tanner, the protagonist of my debut novel, So Happy Together. Caro is stuck in a stultifying marriage, with her youthful creative spark quenched in service to husband and children. When she has a nightmare about her college boyfriend, she takes this as a sign he still needs her. She wrestles  with her conscience, but rationalizes that if she finds Peter she will recapture her authentic self, and takes off to find him.

Although many women throughout history and in our most beloved novels have left unhappy marriages, very few of them have left their children behind. So, when Caro drops her three kids off at summer camp and heads west instead of home to her husband, she joins an exclusive literary cohort.

Let’s start with Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the mother of all “runaway mom” novels, which also happens to be one of my favorite books of all time. Tolstoy has me at “Hello,” or rather, his famous first line: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And, although there are happy families in this tome, the focus is on one unhappy family in particular.

Anna leaves her staid, conventional, loveless marriage to an older man, Karenin, for a passionate affair with the dashing Count Vronsky. When Anna confesses the adulterous relationship and asks for a divorce, Karenin refuses because the scandal of a broken marriage will threaten his position in society. He gives her an ultimatum: If she doesn’t leave Vronsky and return home, she will have to give up her son, Seriozha.

When I crave a story about doomed lovers and am in need of a good cry, Anna Karenina is my drug of choice. Dive into this great big, romantic, heart-quickening, heartbreaking, indelible novel. You won’t be sorry, and you’ll never forget it.

In contrast to Tolstoy’s book, Donna Has Left the Building by Susan Jane Gilman, evokes hilarity, not tears (unless you count tears of laughter), when Gilman’s eponymous protagonist, former punk rocker turned kitchenware-party-hostess, Donna Koczynski leaves her husband after she comes home early from a business trip and finds him in their kitchen, cleaning the oven, dressed in a French maid’s outfit, while a hired dominatrix orders him around from the bathroom. She also leaves their monosyllabic teenage son and incommunicado teenage daughter and embarks on a wild and crazy road trip to find the youthful self she sacrificed in service to marriage and motherhood. Ultimately, this is a story about love and hope enrobed in humor and absurdity. Good to read when you need an escape from the misery of our current world, although, in a surprise ending, the current world encroaches.

I’ve been partial to Anne Tyler’s work ever since I read The Accidental Tourist nearly forty years ago. Her novel, Ladder of Years, does not disappoint. The runaway mother here is Delia Grinstead, who walks away from it all on a family vacation, wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a robe, to start a new life in another town, wearing another identity. The reasons Delia leaves are ambiguous—but life is ambiguous. When her family finally finds her, years after her precipitous flight, she can only say “I’m here because I just like the thought of beginning again from scratch.” This is a book about choices, and while you may not agree with the one Delia makes, the writing is so good, you’ll be glad you read it, even if the protagonist exasperates you.

In Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go Bernadette, the decision of a mother to leave her husband and child is also a mystery. Fortunately, we have a detective to help us solve it: Told from the point of view of precocious Bee, Bernadette’s adolescent daughter, this is a mother-daughter story the likes of which we haven’t seen before. I fell in love with Bee and was intrigued by the mystery behind her mother’s disappearance and relished the adventure of trying to find her. Semple’s writing is deliciously funny and speaks to the heart.

The jumping off point for writing So Happy Together was my unraveling first marriage and my fantasy about just leaving it all and finding my old college love. I think many women have had similar fantasies. I didn’t act on mine: I wrote a book, instead.

Deborah K. Shepherd is a social worker who served as director of a domestic violence program in central Maine until her retirement in 2014. Her debut novel, So Happy Together, will be published on April 20 by She Writes Press.  Her essays have appeared on the on-line publications Herstry, Persimmon Tree, and WOW (Women on Writing) and her Covid-themed essay, “Snow Day, Maine, April 10, 2020” was a winner in the Center for Interfaith Relations Sacred Essay Contest in 2020. She is the mother of two adult children, has two grandsons, and lives on the coast of Maine with her husband and two rescue dogs. You can read more of her work at deborahshepherdwrites.com.