CELTICLADY'S REVIEWS: What You Don't Know Now by Marci Diehl, Spotlight, Q&A, and #Giveaway! @writerdiehl

Book Details

Paperback: 316 pages
Publisher: Merge Publishing (September 29, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0990443205
ISBN-13: 978-0990443209

"In the Summer 1967

The grass was soft and she could smell the rich earth beneath her. Some voice of reason tried to struggle up inside her as she lay stretched out with him on the ground. You’re in big trouble now, it tried to say, but her legs ignored it, they opened beneath him. The hem of her dress bunched in a creased crumple under her arms. Her bra stretched, deflated, along her neckline. She sensed the disarray, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the feeling of her breasts against the warm skin of his chest, the soft tickling of hair that spread across his breastbone. Her head was cradled in the grass and she slipped into his eyes, a swimmer walking into the warm surf of an ocean, poised to dive in. This was what she'd wished for at the beginning, wasn't it --? The unexpected? Something real? He was all of this, and so much more. She'd prayed for something to happen, something extraordinary from this trip, but even when she was praying, she doubted. She’d wanted to come to this city least of all. What could it hold for someone like her? Now she knew. She closed her eyes and let him take her where she needed and wanted to go."

It’s the summer of 1967, and 18-year-old American Bridey McKenna is in Europe for the first time. It’s supposed to be the ultimate mother-daughter vacation, but nothing about it is working out that way. Chances for adventure, romance and enlightenment look slim-to-none until Bridey arrives in Umbria and meets Alessandro — someone who could change everything about her future. Alessandro is no ordinary singing waiter, and he’s the last person on earth Bridey’s mother wants in her daughter’s life. Bridey’s only hope is to connect in Rome with her worldly aunt and uncle — a man who holds a position at the British embassy in Jordan that no one ever quite defines. When an emergency takes Bridey off the tour, on to Athens and further into her aunt and uncle’s world than Bridey ever dreamed, the complex terrain of family, love and womanhood holds a surprising itinerary.

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Marci Diehl has been a writer ever since she was the geek who got excited when her grammar school class had to write paragraphs for English. She won the English medal when they graduated and the awards kept coming. She once met (then Crown) Prince Hassan of Jordan. That was pretty cool and he was very nice -- although he was 20 & she was 17 and she was too involved in being cool to know how cool it actually was. The prince was being semi-hidden in the living room of her aunt & uncle's house in Washington DC by her uncle, who was in the CIA. As a traveling mother of four, she started writing for national, regional and local magazines on lifestyle, golf, travel, and humor when she wasn't traveling the country and parts of the world while her former husband played the PGA Tour. Behind the scenes of writing non-fiction for a living, Diehl always has a short story or novel in progress. She's been an avid reader her entire life. When she isn't walking her dog or going to the movies for the popcorn, she is the associate editor, head writer, and essayist for a regional magazine. She lives in the Finger Lakes area of New York State.

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F.A.Q
What Genre is Your Book?

What You Don’t Know Now is a coming-of-age novel. This is women’s fiction (a commercial novel with a female on the brink of life change and personal growth, and includes a hopeful/upbeat ending to her romantic relationship). It also crosses into a new genre – New Adult (a genre of fiction with protagonists in the 18-25 age bracket, with a focus on issues such as leaving home, developing sexuality, and negotiating education and career choices).

Describe The Main Character?

Overprotected, raised to follow the rules and longing for even a hint of adventure to experience, Bridey McKenna is an 18-year-old American touring Europe in the summer of 1967 with her mother, aunt and 14-year old cousin on a 21-day, 7-country bus tour. The tour is loaded with nuns, widows, a priest and an elderly man, and worse, is inauspiciously named the Summer Vacation Pilgrimage. Smart, flippant, and self-absorbed, Bridey is a ‘60s girl with her long hair, mini dresses, and Twiggy eye makeup but she’s no hippie. She’s just graduated from an all-girls school, college-bound for Georgetown University. “She wasn’t about to follow some priest around all day. She planned on finding enlightenment in other ways.” Bridey comes from a small town in western New York State where her father is a carpenter and her mother stays at home, raising Bridey and her two brothers. But Bridey has an aunt and uncle who have lived most of her life in Pakistan, Lebanon and Jordan. Bridey idolizes her glamorous, worldly Aunt Maura while feeling intimidated by her mysterious and distant Uncle Hugh, who has a job with the British government no one talks about. Bridey’s journey causes her to question old rules and roles, and stirs her rebellion, her blossoming sexuality, and her awakened sense of miraculous possibility in life and the world around her.

What Made You Write This Story?

When I was 18, I took a similar trip in Europe and kept a travel journal. Turning 18 is a threshold for girls – a step into early womanhood, and most 18-year-olds think they know all they need to at that stage. I think I certainly felt that way. The tour I took was so terrible I knew it would make a great (possibly funny) book someday. It wasn’t until I was grown and reread the journal that I saw myself as an 18-year-old complaining endlessly about the misadventures of the tour, not appreciating what was before me. I did see how much I loved my family for keeping their sense of humor and bond despite separation. I imagined a different story unfolding. It was a story about the love between mothers and daughters, aunts who were like “second mothers,” and the bond of sisters. I also wanted to write about the idea of the lightning-strike of love during a summer holiday, and the question of whether you fall in love with someone because of his charisma and talent. The push-pull of love.

Our trip also included dumping that tour and heading to Athens, where my aunt, uncle and cousins were staying after being evacuated out of Jordan during wartime. The uncle character in the novel is based upon my own uncle, who was a spy for the U.S. – but I had no idea as a teen that he was an important intelligence officer. I thought the idea of writing about the “normal” side of a spy’s family life was intriguing and lent an unusual element to Bridey’s story.

Who should read your book?

It’s definitely for adults at least over 18, due to the sexual content of a couple of scenes. Who should read it? Mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, cousins, grandmothers, nieces; women who lived through the 1960’s; anyone who took a trip to Italy or Europe and found a romance (there are more women out there that did than you may imagine!). People who are interested in history, travel, operatic tenors and their incubation, Italy, the Vietnam War era, life in the 1960’s, or Greece. Or anyone who has faced the choice of giving up what you most want to keep.

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