Jennifer Weiner on Navigating the Deaths of Her Mom, Father-in-Law and Dog Last Year and Her New Book
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Courtesy Jennifer Weiner Jennifer Weiner
As Jennifer Weiner travels to different cities across the U.S. for her latest book tour, she's still navigating the passing of her mom, who died last Mother's Day, and the deaths of her father-in-law and dog Moochie not long after.
"It felt like a country Western song. My mother died and then 16 days later, my father-in-law died," says Weiner, 52, in an interview with PEOPLE about her new book, The Summer Place.
"When you're writing fiction you can pace things out a little bit and you can kind of give readers some closure," continues Weiner, the prolific, bestselling author of books like That Summer and Hungry Heart.
"[You can give them] some resolution and some space to breathe before you hit them with the next tragedy. But what I learned is that sometimes in real life the hits just keep coming — and you feel battered."
Weiner started thinking about her latest novel last spring, while her mom was dying. The Summer Place is a moving tale about a dysfunctional family whose secrets come to light during a Cape Cod wedding. At its center is Veronica ("Ronnie") Levy, the widowed matriarch of the family, who has to grapple with her own past. Weiner explains that the "energy" and "humor" in the novel is going to "feel familiar" to her readers, but there's also a new undertone to the story.
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Courtesy Jennifer Weiner Frances Frumin Weiner
"What I've heard from people is that they feel like my mom's spirit is there on every page," she says. "That sort of embracing, and joyful, and you can screw up and it's still okay... and you can still be the main character in your own story. All of those are things my mother taught me."
The author's mother Frances was "extremely easy going," Weiner explains. Frances showed her four kids how to approach life with humor and taught Weiner to view every bad occurrence as material for a future book.
"No matter what was going on, no matter how awful it felt, she'd be like, 'This is all material and someday you will laugh about it,' " Weiner remembers.
When Frances was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February 2021, and died nine weeks later at the age of 77, Weiner was shocked and "devastated."
"I was really sad. I thought I was going to have more time," says Weiner. "I felt bad for my daughters because I thought they would get so much more time with her." (Weiner shares daughters Lucy, 19, and Phoebe, 14, with ex-husband Adam Bonin. She married Bill Syken, 53, in 2016.)
Courtesy Jennifer Weiner The author with her family
Weiner says there's one special memory she treasures from those difficult weeks before Frances' death: Frances married her partner Clair after 18 years together.
"For the longest time, she would say, 'I don't want to get married. I don't want the government involved in my personal life.' She'd had a really terrible divorce from my father," says Weiner.
"I think that, in her head, she was just like, 'I'm never going to do that again.'... I'm never going to make anything official and maybe have to go through something like this," she continues. "And then at the end I think it was just one of these love-wins moments. She wanted to make that gesture and have Clair be her wife, even if it was not for very long."
The wedding took place at the end of April, and Frances died in May. During the last week of Frances' life, she "wasn't really responding," Weiner recalls. She'd stopped eating and was sleeping most of the time.
Atria Books
"Her wife and I were with her and we were just sort of waiting and waiting," says the author. "And looking at each other and saying, 'She's not going to actually die on Mother's Day, is she?' And we're like, 'No, no, she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do that.' And then of course, Mother's Day, that's when she died. So that was how it went."
A few weeks later, Weiner's father-in-law died. He was in his 90s and had been "sick for a really long time," she explains, but it was still a shock.
"That was a much more expected loss," she says, "but boy did I never think it was going to come so quickly on the heels of my mom's death."
Frances' family scattered her ashes in the bay in Cape Cod. It's the same place where Weiner and her family have spent summers with her for the past 18 years. Through it all, Weiner's Rat Terrier Moochie was by her side. "My little dog Moochie, who was my constant companion for the last 11 years, Moochie came down to the beach with me," remembers Weiner. "And I went out on the paddle board and we scattered the ashes."
Two days after the memorial, Moochie died. She'd been living with congestive heart failure.
Courtesy Jennifer Weiner Frances with baby Jennifer
"My husband was like, 'She was just hanging on to just get you through your mom's Memorial. And then she couldn't hang on anymore,'" says Weiner, who was rocked by this third loss.
While this past Mother's Day was difficult, Weiner is grateful for the support of her loving fans and the world of fiction that have seen her through the past year.
"The good news is that I've always got stories that I can dive back into. Fiction is the place where I take my pain, and my hurt, and my suffering," she says. "And it's like, okay, I can use this in a story, and I can let my mom inspire me, and I can sort of work through all this sadness. And I'm very glad I have that outlet."
The Summer Place is a loving tribute to her mom, who in part inspired the character Ronnie.
Weiner says that crafting Ronnie's character "made me think a lot about the way [American] culture treats women in their 60s, and in their 70s, and in their 80s, and how we sort of erase them in a way. They become invisible. And they're not main characters anymore."
In The Summer Place, Ronnie defies the matronly and wisdom-doling grandmother stereotype — just like Weiner's mom.
"For my mom to come out of the closet in her 50s, meet the love of her life in her 60s, and lead the happiest life, her best life in her 60s and her 70s — I think that there's really a lesson there for all of us women" says Weiner. "No matter what pop culture tells you, or movies tell you, or TV shows tell you, you can still be the main character in your 60s and beyond."
