Take Five: Randy Susan Meyers and THE MANY MOTHERS OF IVY PUDDINGSTONE

We are thrilled to bring you a sneak-peek at the new book from bestselling author and WU contributor Randy Susan Meyers. The book, THE MANY MOTHERS OF IVY PUDDINGSTONE, releases this coming Tuesday (October 29th). What’s the pitch?

“The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone delves into the intricate and nuanced dance of familial love and communal ties through the lens of sociopolitical upheaval from the 1960s to the present day, examining which sacrifices are worth the price.”

Want to hear more? Here’s Randy!

Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?

RSM: Annabel’s journey begins in 1964 when she heads to Mississippi for Freedom Summer. There, the disappearance of her first love sparks a relentless fight for justice that will define her life. Years later, she, her husband, and four other couples—and their growing families— create a political collective, sharing a sprawling Boston house they name Puddingstone.

As social upheaval reaches a boiling point, the group relocates their children to the safety of rural Vermont, far from the chaos. The parents continue their activism, rotating visits to Vermont to care for the kids.
But not all threats come from the outside. Annabel’s daughter, Ivy, longs for something more than the patchouli-scented, organic world of Vermont. She craves normalcy, but most of all, she craves Annabel’s attention. When a cataclysmic event shatters their world, Ivy is forced to reckon with the limits of her many mothers and fathers.

The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone explores the fragile, tangled threads of familial love and communal bonds. Set against a backdrop of cultural upheaval from 1964 to 2020, the novel follows the five couples of Puddingstone and their seven children for decades, questioning which sacrifices are worth the price.

 Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?

The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone is an intensely personal story told from two points of view: a mother and a daughter. As I wrote, I wrestled with a series of questions, the ‘what ifs’ I wanted to explore:

• How does an idealistic 18-year-old from a small town become a Freedom Summer volunteer— and later, part of a political collective in Boston? What were the most unexpected moments living in that collective? (Voting on monogamy? Fighting over housework just like regular folk? Arguing over whose ‘cause’ is most important? The reaction of supposed socially conscious men to the rise of feminism?)

• Being terrified for your young children’s safety after the government’s ROTC shoots students? Would a mother believe it was better to send her children away—taking turns with childcare—as the price for building a better world?

• What could go wrong if you have seven children, five mothers, five fathers, and one idyllic commune?

• Would a daughter, who craved nothing but a normal life, forgive her parents after the idyll explodes with a cataclysmic catastrophe?

*What happened to all the members of these five families from 1964 to 2020?

• Is any family ever the same after a tragedy?

Q3: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?

Annabel must juggle two opposing forces: her unshakable commitment to social justice and her love for her children. She embarks on an experiment, believing she can have it all—by sending her children to a communal childcare arrangement in rural Vermont while she continues the work she believes will change the world. But can a mother have both?

Throughout her life, Annabel is haunted by the mystery of her first love’s disappearance during Freedom Summer and a secret act of passion that threatens to unravel everything she’s built. When tragedy hits Puddingstone, Annabel and all the adults must reckon with the costs of their choices.

For the children of Puddingstone, the challenge is how to move forward with their lives, carrying the weight of their parents’ decisions. Ivy, Annabel’s daughter, grapples with whether to rebuild her fractured relationship with her mother—or walk away forever.

Q4: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?

Balancing research and story in a novel that spans fifty-six years was challenging. Nothing matters more than story, character, and plot, and, in the words of Stephen King, you can’t capture a reader without “the gotta know,” but a novel resting on historical events requires grounding the story in solid facts.

Luckily, like most authors, I love research, reveling in discoveries of forgotten historical moments and lost hours, days, and weeks (years?) in piles of books that tempted me to force-feed readers huge information dumps. But I knew I had to keep most of that whale below the surface, allowing it to inform my story without drowning it. But I offered my research— for those who share my geeky need to learn more and more—in my author’s links at the back of the book and on a PDF on my website at randysusanmeyers.com.

Q5: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book?

I developed a penchant for books rooted in social issues in childhood. My earliest favorites were Karen and The Family Nobody Wanted, quickly moving on to Jubilee and The Diary of Anne Frank. At the age of eleven, I wondered why I couldn’t simply walk from house to house (across Brooklyn? America? The world?), explaining why racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hatred were wrong and horrid.

Much of the time depicted in The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone were years I experienced, though I am younger than Annabel, the mother, and older than Ivy, the daughter. I had my first daughter at twenty-one and lived in a communal situation in Mission Hill—and Berkeley and Pennsylvania before then. I shopped at a food coop, participated in endless meetings, and dreamed of living off the land (though I never came close.) I lived on the edges of what took place in this book. The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone is my “what if”—what if I’d dived far deeper into my wants to save the world—what if I’d done the real-life equivalent of my nine-year-old dreams? And what if I’d gone too far?

Congratulations on your new book, Randy! Thank you for sharing this enticing look behind-the-scenes.

WU Community, you can learn more about Randy’s latest novel on her website, or by following her on Facebook or IG, or by following the buy-links below. Read on!