Joy Jordan-Lake
Author Interview - Joy Jordan-Lake
Author of UNDER A GILDED MOON and ECHOES OF US
About ECHOES OF US:
From the bestselling author of Under a Gilded Moon comes the soaring story of an unlikely friendship of three men and one extraordinary woman and the legacy they built―if their own secrets don’t destroy it.
In the midst of World War II, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish Cambridge student, and a German POW forge a connection that endures―against all odds.
But now everything that Will Dobbins, Dov Silverberg, and Hans Hessler fought for is at risk as their descendants clash for control of the corporation they founded together. In an attempt to remake its tattered corporate image, the firm hires event planner Hadley Jacks and her sister Kitzie to organize a reunion for the families on St. Simons Island, Georgia, the place that changed all three men’s lives forever.
As Hadley and her sister delve into the friends’ past, they uncover the life of the courageous young woman who links them all together…and the old wounds that could tear everything apart.
Told in dual timelines spanning World War II and the present, Echoes of Us follows the ripple effects of war, the bonds that outlast it, and the hope that ultimately carries us forward.
Author Interview - Joy Jordan-Lake
About UNDER A GILDED MOON:
“Crawdads meets the Crawleys…Threaded through with a meticulously researched, well-crafted mystery, this is historical fiction at its best.” —Fiona Davis, nationally bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue
From the bestselling author of A Tangled Mercy comes an enthralling novel of secrets, a tumultuous war of ideas, and murder as classes collide in the shadow of Biltmore House.
Biltmore House, a palatial mansion being built by the Vanderbilts, American “royalty,” is in its final stages of construction in North Carolina. The country’s grandest example of privilege, it symbolizes the aspirations of its owner and the dreams of a girl, just as driven, who lives in its shadow.
Kerry MacGregor’s future is derailed when, after two years in college in New York City, family obligations call her home to the beautiful Appalachians. She is determined to distance herself from the opulence she sees rising in the Blue Ridge Mountains, however close its reach. Her family’s land is among the last pieces required to complete the Biltmore Estate. But something more powerful than an ambitious Vanderbilt heir could change Kerry’s fate as, one by one, more outsiders descend on the changing landscape—a fugitive from Sicily, a reporter chasing a groundbreaking story, a debutante tainted by scandal, and a conservationist prepared to put anyone at risk to stoke the resentment of the locals.
As Kerry finds herself caught in a war between wealth and poverty, innocence and corruption, she must navigate not only her own pride and desperation to survive but also the temptations of fortune and the men who control it."
Author Interview - Joy Jordan-Lake
Author I draw inspiration from:
2024: Ann Patchett--not just as an author but also as a person. She takes on tough social issues in her stories, yet the reader never feels like she's climbed onto a soapbox--the story is still of primary importance, but we're powerfully confronted with real life, too.
Since I live in Nashville, I hear her speak a good bit, and she is unfailingly eager to promote other writers' work--including, of course, by owning a fabulous indie bookstore that is generous to us local writers, but also shouting out author friends' books at every turn.
Of her books, three of my favorites are Bel Canto, which was just named one of the most important books of the 21st century by the NYT Book Review, Run, partly for its themes and it's being set in Boston, and Tom Lake, which is just so lovely and beautifully crafted in every way.
I also adore 19th-century authors, particularly the women authors like Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, the three Brontë sisters, George Eliot, etc. Don't even get me started on these because I will truly never shut up....
2020: Louise Penny, Charles Dickens, Kristin Hannah (Click here for my list of Best Kristin Hannah Books), Leif Enger, Toni Morrison, Jacqueline Winspear--and so, so many more. In fact, pretty much every author I read. If I commit to a book, I end up learning something--or LOTS of somethings--from the author. I like to read all over the place in terms of genre and time period, which is broadening, but it can mean my head feels a bit like it's exploding some days.
Author Interview - Joy Jordan-Lake
Favorite place to read a book:
2024: Three spots come to mind: at the beach with the tide lapping my feet; by a roaring fire in the mountains and on my own back porch--again with the fire in the fireplace--also with the crickets chirping and my little dog curled up in my lap. If I had to choose, I'll stick with the third.
2020: At the beach, in the mountains by the fire, on my screened porch. I love reading with people around me BUT they have to be people who are also ensconced in a book so they don't try and chat too much at the wrong times. (My whole extended family has mostly become excellent at this, bless them.) The ideal in my mind is hours of reading with the waves at my toes with one or more family members beside me, or a dear friend, followed by LATER discussing what we were reading over a margarita or shrimp. Or both. And key lime pie. Or chocolate. Always chocolate.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
2024: Absolutely Jo March from Little Women. I so completely felt as a kid when I first read the novel that at last someone understood me--how I felt so awkward trying to chat about hairstyles with other girls (mine was like Jo's--too much of it and its being unruly and wild), how I never could get excited about playing dolls and just wanted to go ride horses or climb a tree and read a book from the highest branch I could settle into, how I longed to be a writer but had no idea if anyone would care about the kinds of stories I might write--and whether or not the profits would even buy someone a coat for winter.
I imagine my thanking her for helping me feel less odd as a young girl in a family of public speakers and preachers and musicians when I was none of the above. I imagine tromping through the fall leaves in Concord, Massachusetts, together, talking about books we love, then settle down for lattes (she'd try her first) and scones and talk about what books we're writing now. She'd be intrigued by social media, and also appalled by it, asking how a writer is supposed to get anything done with all that distraction. Good question, I'd say. And wait 'til I show you TikTok....
2020: Jo March! But because of the best-friends-with-a-character question below, I'll add Jay Gatsby (THE GREAT GATSBY, F. Scott Fitzgerald) here. I have LOTS of questions for him. And he's so darn despicable in so many ways. And yet, I re-read his story every few years. And can't help myself for feeling compassion for and fascination with him, poor fixated man.
Author Interview - Joy Jordan-Lake
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
2024: Two moments, both in public elementary school (big shout out here to schoolteachers!). In fourth grade with Mrs. Gross, I was so painfully shy and so often at home sick. One day, we were asked to write a poem. I recall mine was about walking in winter and spotting a buck on a hill as the snow fell. I'm sure the poem was truly awful, but Mrs. Gross read it to the class and posted it on the bulletin board. It was the first time it occurred to me that shy people who love books could become the people who write them, and speak that way--connecting with other people through stories.
The second was a moment in fifth grade. My teacher Mrs. Buckshorn was one of those legendary educators that grown adults still mention with reverance. I had told no one of my new hope to become a writer one day. Yet, Mrs. Buckshorn quietly set an article on my desk and scribbled in one corner, "This is for you, for when you become an author." What an incredible gift that was to a kid so short on confidence! but big on dreams.
2020: In 4th grade as a shy, often-sick-at-home kid. The moment was when I wrote a poem about a buck standing alone in the snow on a hilltop and the teacher read it aloud in class. I was both horrified to be singled out and a tiny bit hopeful that meant she might like it--but terrified to be so exposed. As she read, I couldn't believe that, quiet and shy as I was back then, I seem to have connected somehow with the other kids in class in ways I wasn't as good at on the playground or in the lunchroom. The story of the poem had drawn them in to a world I'd only seen in my head and managed to sketch out in words on a notebook page--and no one was more shocked than I was. It was the moment I wanted to become a writer, and the same year, I think, that I discovered the Brontë sisters in my small-town church library (of all places) and realized that women had been quietly, defiantly, making a profession of writing, however hard it might be, for a very long time.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
2024: I still adore hardbacks, but they aren't cheap so I reserve that budget line item for buying friends' books at their signings. Paperbacks I love for underlining and dog-earing favorite pages and falling asleep holding onto. Ebooks are tougher for me to love, but it's a great gift when I'm traveling to have so many choices in case my current read bogs down and I want to switch. I have one of each of these formats going all the time. A good audiobook will keep me jogging or weeding the garden forever. My cardiovascular system thanks all the page turner-plot twisty authors out there!
2020: All the above. Lake Union/Amazon Publishing will have all available by Dec. 1.
The last book I read:
2024: I'm currently listening to No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister and just reading in paperback Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr. Both are fabulous books in very different ways. I love to read in different genres, and both of these books have me absolutely engaged so that I don't want to get up from my chair (Lisa Barr) or don't want to stop driving (Erica Bauermesiter). I am itching to get back to both right this very minute.
2020: THE MASTERPIECE by Fiona Davis in physical form and on audio, currently listening to STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING by Ibrahim X. Kendi. I'm often reading and listening to things in very different genres, which can be a bit of a whiplash, but good for one's mind and heart, I hope. To stay open and aware and learning and listening.
Author Interview - Joy Jordan-Lake
Pen & paper or computer:
2024: Usually laptop, but pen and paper can be so freeing and completely unlock something creatively--maybe because my laptop is also tied to answering email and all the business of life.
Early morning is completely the best time when my imagination is unhindered by all those voices that still, after all these years, niggle at me--the "who are you kidding, no one will buy this book, why are you wasting your time" kinds of voices that can absolutely paralyze a writer. In the early morning, I'm free just to enter the world of that particular story. But life being what it is, I'm often up late doing something interesting with interesting friends or family, so getting to my back porch by 5 a.m. to start writing isn't realistic many days. Still, as early as I can get there, and as much as I can keep off all email and social media, I just might settle in for some actual focus, and my imagination just might light up and be ready to carry me away.
Or, I might show up to work at 9 a.m., check email because I have some book marketing things due, and then the whole day turns into replying to urgent questions and responding to pressing things that do need doing, but then the creative part of writing doesn't get done--no new pages written. And then I'm one frustrated puppy. It's a balance every single day trying to put the creative piece first and still have the time to reply to the people who deserve the replies.
2020: Computer mostly, but when I am feeling like I'm just pounding out words just because I have a good, stern work ethic--but sometimes there's very little inspiration or pizzazz or heart involved in the words I'm pounding out--I'll stop and shift to pen and paper. Something different happens in the process. And sometimes something powerful, as if scribbling on the page releases another part of my brain. I think there've been articles written on this. But whatever the psychological reason, it's a very real shift in creativity.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
2024: Jo March from Little Women mentioned above and Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. I feel like both those are too commonly mentioned but there you have it! Oh, and also a grown up Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables.
2020: Jo March (LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott). She helped me through some very awkward years growing up, so I'd insist on treating her to lunch often. As a kid, she reminded me that it was okay not to fit into other people's expectations. And it was okay to have your long, thick, unruly hair be your best feature, and also okay to have a very bad hair day, or several. Especially for a bad hair day for a good cause. She also gave me the courage to think I could be a writer, no matter how nutty that sounded in a world where bills had to be paid on a regular basis.
Author Interview - Joy Jordan-Lake
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
2024: So many things I'd like to be--like a large animal veterinarian or owner of a little book shop that also sells coffee and warm, flaky-crust pastries and locally made art and is a gathering spot for the community, including a corner for live music and songwriters' nights. The good news is that telling stories allows one to put on lots of different hats and "become" other professions and go other places, so the "what would it be like to...." part of my brain gets to stay buzzing in fun ways.
2020: A veterinarian. I should've said English professor, since that's what my educational training prepared me to be, but I'll go with the truth of what popped into my head. I'm still not quite sure how I didn't end up living on a lovely, thriving horse farm as I'd intended as a kid when I had a farm's worth of animals in my suburban backyard (to my poor parents' bafflement) and was saving up money for my own horse. Maybe I never went that route because I love to travel so much, which always fit well with university teaching (which I used to do) and writing, but not well at all with a barn full of horses (my lacking the Downton Abbey's worth of stablehands). At any rate, I get my large animal fix by including horses in my books, and my current work-in-progress that I hope becomes a series (set in a fiction coastal town in Maine) has a secondary character who is a vet, so that's been a blast getting to research things like red bag births and to watch videos on delivering a breach-birth calf. Sounds really odd as I type this, but, truly, that is one of the most fun things about being a writer: being able to step in and out of those lives you ended up not living yourself.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
2024: Ah, so many! I love the Regency period of Jane Austen's era in terms of watching it on film, but I'd have hated that sort of constraint that made running and hiking and riding horses and swimming so laborious or cumbersome--just notice Elizabeth Bennett's frustrations! I'm in the midst of the marketing for my novel Echoes of Us, so I'm pretty much in love with the flight jackets and belted coveralls of the women pilots (WASP) and the high-waisted shorts and long-sleeved shirts tied at the waist from that WW2 era--even though, of course, the big skirts and New Look didn't come in until after the war and rationing was over . Also the men's fedoras.... And the women's shoulder-length wavy hair: so love it!
For this book I'm just beginning, it's sent in present-day in a fashionable village in Northern Italy near Milan, so fashion will be important, and the flashbacks with be the late 1960s, so that will be a blast to scroll through lots of that era's clothing.
2020: The era of this particular book, UNDER A GILDED MOON, has been my favorite so far, the 1890s. SUCH gorgeous dresses for the upper crust. And interesting tensions as women were beginning to want more freedom of movement to ride bicycles (a new rage at the time) and play tennis and hike. I'm just beginning to research the 1950s for my work-in-progress (the one set in coastal Maine), so feel free to suggest websites and books! I do love googling for fashion from a historical era. And, again, the 50s strike me as fascinating in its tensions: right after the deprivations of the war and after women have experienced being in male-dominated professions but before the huge upheavals of the '60s. So looking forward to learning more!
Place I’d most like to travel:
2024: Soooo many places since I love to travel--and love finding ways to do it affordably (lots of traveling-affordably tips included in my author newsletter), but the next one on my list is going back to the western shore of Lake Como in Northern Italy since that's the setting for the next book I'm working on. Lots of research to be done, friends, and somebody's got to do it!
2020: I've been grateful to see a good bit of Europe, including backpacking on about a dollar a day when my husband and I were both in graduate school--so no five-star resorts in the Alps!--and then later with my three kids (even the four-year-old pulling her own little suitcase:). Though I would always jump at the chance to go back to Europe, I guess I'd have to say visiting a place I'd never been before like Kenya or New Zealand or Thailand. My youngest child is adopted from China, and I'm wanting to go back when I can really relax and soak in the culture and surroundings, as opposed to just being so entranced by a sweet baby girl and focused on the lovely business of the adoption.
My signature drink:
2024: I'm a margarita chick myself, especially in a gathering of friends, and peach margs...oh my. But for my soon-to-launch novel Echoes of Us, a dear friend of mine who's a fabulous cook, Elizabeth Rogers, created a drink called The Detector for a pivotal scene of the book. It can be made as a cocktail or mocktail and the peach and basil recipe is on my website: wwwjoyjordanlake.com. I hope book clubs will have a blast making it while discussing the stories behind the story the novel. You can find some of those backstories on my website, www.joyjordanlake.com, and others in my newsletter. Cheers to you!
2020: Ah. I do love a good margarita, frozen, never on the rocks, with salt on the rim always. And extra lime, if it's not too much trouble. Especially in a warm climate. With the rattle of palm fronds and the splash of the ocean in the background. With dear friends across the table. Oh my.
Favorite artist:
2024: On the music front, I'm not exactly the demographic for the typical Swiftie, but I really do get a kick out of Taylor Swift--the person and the music. One of my daughters plays her music a lot for me in the car when we drive together, and I am awed by her creative genius and business savvy. In my own adult life, I've needed to learn to care a whole heck of a lot less about what other people think, and in one recent season of my life, her "Shake It Off" was a kind of team fight song for me when I was working out and working off steam about some haters in the world--haters NOT in the book world, I should add!
In the world of painting, my most recent artist to learn about is a 15th-century Italian bad boy I won't name quite yet. But one of his paintings figures into the contemporary novel (but with mysteries based in the past) that I'm beginning now and I've been intrigued and appalled by him--and his undeniable gifts. That's one of the great delights of the writing world: learning about an aspect of life you'd never have known a thing about, and suddenly a whole new world opens up, and you can try and bring the most intriguing bits forward for your readers to devour.
2020: Claude Monet. Not a very original answer, I'm afraid, but there it is: the truth. His paintings allow me to drift into them somehow, and they light my own imagination. For portraits, I'm a fan of John Singer Sargent, which contributed to my enjoyment researching Biltmore Estate for UNDER A GILDED MOON, since he painted a number of the portraits hanging there. I also love an abstract expressionist who isn't a household name, Becca Wildsmith (you can find her work on Instagram). She's a personal friend, but also becoming steadily better known and admired. Her abstract seascapes in vibrant greens and blues and golds are the inspiration for the gallery/bookstore that the protagonist for my current WIP owns in the coastal Maine village. So much interesting light and color and wind and emotion in the work.
Number one on my bucket list:
2024: Okay, this is a bit embarrassing but becoming a better dancer--lots of different dances from different eras. My husband and I are both pretty terrible, truly--that's not false modesty and you'd agree, chuckling, if you saw us. Don't tell him I said so, but he was so awkward at first, bless him, that the few lessons we took were excruciating for both of us, and I'm not anywhere good enough to cover for him or make us look even mediocre together. Laughable is what we've been, but doggedly determined. Charming, maybe, if you don't put much value on skill, grace or execution.
I'd love to think we'd be decent at it someday, but meanwhile, we've improved at least to the point now that we are actually having a ball--and don't care much if spectators find us amusing. We're having enough fun for everyone in the room. So invite us, please, to your family weddings, and we'll come, both to celebrate with you and to enjoy the dancing!
2020: Great question. So many things come to mind, and I've never been good at putting things in order of priorities since it shifts regularly. I'm way too much like the Golden Retrievers I've had as pets for years (squirrel!). So here are several that come to mind: hiking the Camino de Santiago; visiting the gorgeous mountains and rivers in western Hunan province, China; becoming a person in better physical condition in middle age, at least in terms of endurance, than I was at eighteen. (Fortunately, I wasn't in fabulous physical condition at eighteen, so while the goal is a little delusional, it's not as completely, stupidly, impossibly unattainable as it might've been); read all of Charles Dickens. Ask me again in ten minutes and I could give you an entirely different list.
Anything else you'd like to add:
2024: I love connecting with book clubs and fellow readers in general. Through my newsletter (lots of giveaways and subscriber interaction) is the best way, but social media is great, too. Thank you for reading and connecting!
2020: So happy to be interviewed by and connect with you, Ashley!
Find more from the author:
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https://www.tiktok.com/@joyofbooksandtravel
About Joy Jordan-Lake:
Author Interview - Joy Jordan-Lake
Joy Jordan-Lake is the #1 Amazon bestselling author of thirteen books, including Echoes of Us, A Bend of Light; Under a Gilded Moon, a 2023 North Carolina Reads selection; A Tangled Mercy, an Editors’ Choice recipient from the Historical Novel Society; Blue Hole Back Home, winner of the Christy Award for Best First Novel; and three children’s books.
Raised in the foothills of the southern Appalachians, Joy spent many a summer vacation on St. Simons Island, Georgia, a place of heartbreaking and surprising history--and the setting for the upcoming Echoes of Us. She holds two master’s degrees and a PhD in English and has taught literature and writing at several universities. Now living outside Nashville, she is startled to find only the ten-pound rescue pup still living at home full time, the kids launching to college, getting married, and building careers of their own. She and her husband console themselves with hiking to waterfalls and traveling to story-worthy settings.
Joy loves to connect with readers. You can visit her at www.joyjordanlake.com.
