But no matter the locale, Siddons always populates her pages with strong women, be they Steel Magnolias of the south or Maine Yankee survivors.
The strong woman in Off Season is Lilly, a widow who journeys back to her Maine coastal roots after the death of her beloved husband, Cam. What Lilly discovers upon her return changes her whole way of looking at life.
“All my books are about women taking journeys they might not want to take,” says Siddons.
Do these women echo parts of herself? Of course, she says. “How else would I know how they would react in any given situation?” But she is quick to add—“I always make my characters a good bit better than I am.”
Much like her writer friend, Pat Conroy, she’s not afraid to shine a light into the darkness of personality, perhaps because she once battled and overcame a depression that left her unable to write for three years.
“I take tragedy and I run with it. The darkness is just an aspect of the self. It’s in all of us. But I try not to crawl in there too strong. My books are really about growth and change in spite of infinite pain and suffering. They are about women who are a misfit but in the end, find their fit.
“It’s about finding wholeness. I know so few whole families anymore, and how can we have whole families if we don’t have whole women?”
By Bonnie W. Mason and Port City Life Magazine
Photo courtesy of Anne Rivers Siddons
