Secrets and lies and betrayal.

Add in three sisters and a scandal set among the background of the glamour and money of the 1% in Palm Beach.

This is Susannah Marren's latest book, "Maribelle's Shadow."

I'm Ann Bocock, and welcome to "Between the Covers."

Susannah Marren is the pen name of Susan Shapiro Barash.

That's the name she uses for her fiction.

Her latest is her fourth novel, and she's written 13 nonfiction books, including the widely read "Tripping the Prom Queen."

Her latest novel is a page-turner, and it explores family relationships in high society.

It's "Maribelle's Shadow."

Susan, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

So I'm gonna start this way.

When is the right time to tell your husband you know he's a cheater?

That's not just a question; that's the first line in your book.

So we're not gonna give away spoilers, because everybody's gonna want to read this, but what a first line.

Thank you.

Well, this is a story that's been with me for years, the story of Maribelle and her two younger sisters, Caroline and Raleigh, and their, shall we say, tricky mother, Lucinda.

And I have long known the beginning and the very end of this book, and then, of course, had to work through the story.

The crafting of a novel is very interesting.

No two authors really do it the same way.

You knew the beginning, you knew the end, and then you have to make it work.

So is it like a puzzle?

It is.

That's really a good way to describe it.

For me, because I come from the nonfiction world, I usually outline it, and I detail each character before I start the book.

So I always knew that Maribelle would be the perfect first child.

And she's always been a pleaser.

And then, as you said, no spoilers, but within the first 12 or 15 pages of this novel, her supposedly perfect husband, Samuel, dashing young Palm Beach guy, dies.

And then everything unravels.

So there's suspense, and we need to know who was Samuel, and then who was Maribelle to marry him?

Well, let's talk about who was Samuel, because this Palm Beach, someone dies the way he did, which we won't talk about exactly that.

But as we said, this is a Palm Beach scandal.

And it begs the question here: is Samuel, this perfect husband, who we thought he was?

No, and that was very important to, you know, carry through the entire novel, that the discovery and then, of course, as you said, the secrets and betrayal that all unfolds after Samuel dies really proves that, in our lives, as long as there's no inciting incident like Samuel dying or something that triggers the reveal, women do very well.

I'm very interested in how women are positioned in society.

All right, there are four women in this book.

There are the three sisters, Maribelle, Caroline, Raleigh, and you talked about their mother, Lucinda.

The family dynamic is so strong and so interesting in this book, especially when it comes to the mother's influence.

Can we talk about that?

Well, Lucinda is a mother who has tremendous ambition for each of her daughters, and she really measures them based on how well they do on her terms.

So she's a very hard mother to please, and trust is a real issue among the sisters and when it comes to their mother.

And in this story, she's mostly happy with Caroline, because although Caroline works for the family business, she has two little daughters, and she's a perfect Palm Beach young mother.

And that pleases Lucinda.

Let's look at each of the women for a moment.

Tell me who they are, what they do.

And favoritism certainly comes into this.

Favoritism, for sure, and she really plays one daughter off the other.

So Lucinda had Maribelle.

They come from the Panhandle.

And they've reinvented themselves and made a lot of money.

And I think reinvention, for women, is a really interesting theme.

I see it a lot in my nonfiction.

So she gets the family to Palm Beach.

She's really the brains behind the social life that they create.

And Maribelle has a great job.

She is the editorial director of "Palm Beach Confidential," which is fictive magazine in Palm Beach.

And Caroline works for Barrows, which is this, you know, convenience store chain, and she works for the family.

And Raleigh, the little sister, and I'm very interested in family systems, so she's much younger, and she is an artist.

And she is not part of the kind of Palm Beach life that the other two sisters and their mother have so easily slid into.

It's interesting.

I have been a fan of yours since "Tripping the Prom Queen" Thank you.

Which was nonfiction.

Nonfiction.

I don't know, you were so good and so on target with female relationships, rivalry.

You had a handle on women that I don't believe I had read before.

Maybe we didn't talk about it before like we talked about it with your book.

Well, my 13 nonfiction books and the research for those books certainly feeds into my fiction.

And for each of those titles, from "Mothers-in-Law and Daughters-in-Law" to "Toxic Friends," to three studies on the role of wife in America, to the idea that women's sleepwalk through life and then wake up, all of those studies are really because I never saw the books in the bookstore, and I felt that how women navigate a path in our society is really important to note.

So and for each of the nonfiction books, I've interviewed a very diverse group of women, and you know, several hundred women per book to really understand and then, of course, done the research.

What is it, and it also translates to this book, the novel, what is it about the mother-daughter dynamic?

First of all, why does it make such a good story?

The mother-daughter dynamic is so nuanced and so multilayered and so ongoing.

You know, it starts really early.

Our mothers are our first model.

I had written a nonfiction book called "You're Grounded Forever...But First, Let's Go Shopping."

And I interviewed several hundred women who had daughters between the ages of 3 and 30.

And I was really looking for how they felt about raising them in contemporary society.

And almost, I think, 90% of the women told me that it was harder to raise a daughter than a son.

And then 90% of my interviewees told me that they sometimes favored one daughter over another, and I definitely factored that into this novel, or related more to one daughter than another.

That's fascinating.

I was gonna ask about the favoritism.

But obviously, you've done the research, and it shows with what Lucinda does to her children and through them.

The mother-daughter relationships are complicated.

They are good storylines.

But as I'm reading the novel and knowing about your nonfiction books as well, is that what makes the story and the characters ring with this authenticity, because you know, from your other books, the patterns?

Well, I hope so because I really feel that I've taken my research and I've put it into my fiction, how women truly feel, the faces we wear versus, you know, what we yearn for, what we really long for.

So I'm really looking at that, and how facile are women at keeping secrets?

And I had done a whole study on that.

And I think it's really important to note that in a patriarchal culture, women have to behave a certain way.

We're taught to be pleasers and good girls, and we're also very acrobatic.

And so that definitely factors into my Palm Beach novels.

There are plenty of secrets in this book, as, when you read it, you will find out.

The setting is Palm Beach.

You've used Palm Beach before.

Why do you think it makes such a good setting for a novel?

Well, I know Palm Beach very well.

My parents were residents for decades.

And I've been coming here my whole life.

And I look at Palm Beach as a microcosm.

It is very rarefied and privileged.

We know that.

But within even such a beautified, rarefied society, women do have secrets, and women do fight for survival.

And that really fascinates me, because for every nonfiction book that I've written, and as I said, I interview a disparate group of women, I'm listening to emotional issues.

So it doesn't matter if you have a degree from Harvard or you barely got through high school.

If you're unhappy in your marriage, or you're having an affair, or your colleagues at work are really competitive in an unhealthy way, or your daughter or granddaughter is difficult, it just doesn't matter.

So what women want is really based on their emotional needs.

And I bring that to a Palm Beach setting, because when you walk down Worth Avenue, as I did many times with my mother, everything seems perfection.

It's a wonderful facade and a wonderful backdrop for the story.

But I'm gonna touch on what you just said, because women's issues are universal, generational.

And it doesn't matter your bank account.

It really doesn't.

And bringing it to Palm Beach, in a way, made it much more dramatic and more dire, because the higher you rise, the harder you fall.

And such judgments among women, which is factored into this novel, you know, why are the other women watching Lucinda and watching Maribelle when she's a young widow, and you know, calculating how it is for her?

Is that a truly female thing?

Do men do that as well?

Well, I've never interviewed men for any of my work.

But based on what females report to me, I feel it's a very female trade.

I think that we live in a limited-good society for women, a world of not enough pie.

So if there's not enough pie, then women are always measuring themselves against others, which, by the way, other women, is not healthy and really has to change.

Thank you for saying that.

Absolutely.

The Palm Beach are known for the old guard, for the families with generational wealth and influence.

And people like Lucinda, who have come from nothing, totally discard their past as if there wasn't a past.

And I am sure you have met people like this, but you detailed that one very well.

Oh, thank you.

Yes, Lucinda, what I admire about Lucinda, because let's face it, she's not the mother we dream of, what I admire about her is her ambition, how almost unidimensional it is.

She has to have this life.

This is what she's chosen.

And really, Maribelle's loss of Samuel and the discovery of who Samuel really was is a real cog in the works.

And so she really balances this dissatisfying result with her own ambition, and I think that this can happen.

There is a line in the book, and it's attributed to Lucinda, where she says, "There is ownership in being happy."

What did she mean?

That you have to earn it, that being happy is a very deliberate decision, and that the world is complicated, and so it requires ownership.

Are people in this book happy?

They should be, if you believe in a capitalistic society and a material world.

No, not always.

But they also wake up.

This is a book about, you know, learning who you really are, which is very important to me, for women to take that journey and to own the happiness and to also own your successes and your failures.

I really look at these characters in that...

Your characters, Susan, are really well-drawn.

And I was particularly impressed with Lucinda, and maybe that is a surprise.

Maybe people think Maribelle is the one, you know, that you feel for.

But there were so many layers to her.

And her story, as we peel the way the layers, is very, really something.

Lucinda shows us that, in a culture where the messaging is that motherhood is the end all and be all, are you a good mother, and if you're not, what a judgment, what criticism will follow?

So we're looking at her, and we can't ask those questions.

Is Lucinda a good mother?

I mean, we don't wanna give away the story, but she certainly has her own circle in this book.

So it goes to character, but again, it reflects how women get to where they need to be.

You've been observing women's relationships for a long time.

You've written a dozen books on this.

You have done a ton of research where lies and deception, and you know, what women talk about.

That's also part of the novel.

Let's look at the lying.

Why do people lie?

Why do women lie, particularly?

Well, I wrote a whole book on why women lie and keep secrets.

So the secret is the cause, and the lie is the behavior.

And women are so judged and feel so scrutinized that in that study, women told me they lied to their children and would say, "I hit traffic," rather than say, "I'm sorry.

You'll have to wait outside for 20 minutes while I pick you up at school, because the truth is, I couldn't get outta my office."

So women lie, big and small.

I mean, there are paternity lies.

There are financial lies.

During the downturn in 2008, I interviewed women who told their friends that their husbands had decided to become consultants, when they'd really lost their jobs.

Women lie a lot about money, how much they earn, how much money affects their lives.

Women lie about their children.

They feel so competitive.

An example would be, so a child's not doing well, but a woman won't even reveal that to her best friend, when in fact, she'd then have the friend's support.

We are so afraid that we are not achieving the place we're meant to be as women.

We are afraid we're not good enough?

Not good enough or not falling into these categories that, in my opinion, based on my research, are really societal prescriptions instead of being an individual.

And Lucinda, this circles back to what you said, Lucinda is certainly an individual, and it turns out, so are her daughters.

But you know, the herd mentality for women, for girls, for girls, I know you have a daughter, I have two daughters, what is expected of them?

And if they don't fit in, well, then what?

So I really took a look at this in beautiful Palm Beach, where you must fit in.

We live in a patriarchal society.

And I'm curious, with what you know now, has the idea of marriage as a goal or marriage as a solution changed over the last decades?

It's such a great question.

Based on my research, my ongoing research, so I wrote a book called "The New Wife: The Evolving Role of the American Wife," a book on second wives, and a book called "The Nine Phases of Marriage."

And in each of those studies, I really looked for what it is that makes women so hope to be wives at all different stages of their life and why the rate of remarriage after the rate of divorce, at about 50%, is just ongoing, why we remarry.

We live in a very coupled society.

And wives, in all fairness, hold the bar very high.

We expect the husband to be confidant, lover, provider, best friend.

And these men, they're like, "Hey, I married you, didn't I?"

And so because of that, women are so often disappointed.

Now, Lucinda's a widow.

And you know, Reed, the dead husband and father of the girls, he's talked about and referenced.

But Lucinda, you know, we really wonder how that felt for Lucinda.

She's remarried, but he's arm candy.

Everything you just said, I can apply to the sisters in the novel.

It's fascinating.

And women are putting a lot of this pressure on themselves.

I think so, but for example, you know, the wedding industry, you know, it just profits and profits.

And everyone wants to be, you know, a princess for a day, and everyone fantasizes.

You know, we're all raised on these fairytales still, that somehow, you know, it's happy ever after.

So it's very much the messaging, celebrity culture, who marries whom among celebrities.

So we see it everywhere we turn.

In this novel, the sisters have very different kinds of husbands.

But at the very beginning, after Samuel dies, the comment is, well, he was the best of the Barrow sisters' husbands, but was he?

Was he?

Yeah.

Female infidelity is also a very interesting topic.

Is there a difference in our perception of male versus female infidelity?

That's been my longest ongoing study, female infidelity.

My first book was on female infidelity, and there was a 30year study till last year.

And again, I have to keep saying it.

In a patriarchal culture, the expectations of a woman who has an affair versus a man who has an affair are very different.

And the amount of women, based on my anecdotal qualitative research, yields that many, many women of all different ages in this country have some kind of affair, whether it's an affair of the mind or a full-blown physical affair.

And so I really am seeing it.

And women are so good at keeping secrets, that circles back to this novel, that they can really pull it off.

They pull it off quite well.

I'm not gonna get into the plot.

I'm talking around it.

But in general, why do women cheat?

I think we know kind of why men cheat, but is it for the same reasons?

Research, they have affairs for four different reasons.

So they do it for empowerment, because they are now trading in the same currency that men do.

They travel for work, and they are out and about and meet someone else.

And they do it because of self-esteem.

Many women are turning 40 or 50 and look in the mirror and say, "Is that all there is?"

You know, "Where did all the great romance go?"

Some women do it for sex, which is what we always thought men did it for often, or assumed.

And then the trickiest, and of course, there's a love affair in "Maribelle's Shadow," they do it for love.

And those are the poignant stories where it's just a thunderbolt.

You walk across the room, and there's that man, despite that your life is status quo.

Well, we've tried to talk around the plot so that we don't give anything away.

Who was the most complicated character for you to write?

Maribelle.

[Ann] Tell me why.

'Cause Maribelle, and she really epitomizes a lot of my research, Maribelle is someone who works so hard to do it well, to get it right, to meet the expectations, to be the older sister.

She's a wonderful older sister to Raleigh, her little sister, 'cause there are so many years between them.

She wants to be a dutiful daughter.

And so the shock of Samuel's death and how she, you know, shapeshifts is really something that, you know, took a lot of thought and work to create.

She's definitely well-drawn.

Congratulations on that.

I'm gonna guess she wasn't the most fun to write.

You know, it's like, when I'm writing these books or about to write a book, the characters just live in my head.

And so she was there a lot of the time.

But the whole dynamic of this female family, you know, very matriarchal, was always there, so they were all fun to write.

But full disclosure, I know you have interviewed myriad authors, but I'm not one who will come on your show and say, "Oh, I just think writing's fun."

I think it's arduous, and I think that really understanding the characters and the plot is, you know, not for the faint of heart.

You knew the beginning, and you knew the end.

The characters themselves, had you drawn them completely, between their physicality and their jobs and how they would behave?

Did you know these characters before they were on the page?

I really knew them well.

I can even tell you that Lucinda, despite the money that the family has made, she still goes to Costco for ketchup.

Like, I know the details that don't get on the page.

I know exactly how Raleigh would dress, despite that Lucinda wants her to dress a certain way.

I know what she will wear.

I've known them very intricately.

How long did it take you to write this one?

About a year and a half.

That's a long time to live with the characters, isn't it?

Well, this story has had notes in different iterations for years.

Each sister in this book finds her own path and her own truth, really.

Is this, in some way, a lesson, a message for all of us that we each should be finding our own way?

I really love that you said that.

Yes, I think that these sisters are models of survival despite privilege and also of self-searching.

And you know, Raleigh's 29, but the other sisters are in their late 30s.

And Lucinda had Maribelle so young that she's a really young, beautiful mother.

So I think it's really interesting that, for each of them, this inciting incident of Samuel's death is a way to really wake up and claim yourself.

I'm gonna switch it up just a bit.

When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you know that you would be writing fiction as well as nonfiction?

So I wanted to write since I was six years old.

I wrote a family newspaper and tried to sell it to my father and my uncle, you know, like, a handwritten edition for, you know, a dime.

And they gave me a nickel.

I thought long and hard about that.

And I've always written.

I went to Sarah Lawrence.

I chose it because of the writing program.

So here's a story that's sort of a cautionary tale.

I got into Columbia right after Sarah Lawrence.

And instead, having gone to Sarah Lawrence, I got married and had two children, and I did not finish Columbia.

And I was turning 30.

And I said to my husband, he was a lot older, I said, you know, "I have to finish that degree, have to earn it, and I have to have a third child."

And I went to graduate school at NYU.

I finished there, pregnant with my third child.

And I remember that all the students were right out of college, and it was a different time.

And I knew then, I earned my master's degree in fiction writing, but I had always done journalism, you know, like the school paper and that.

And so I started with nonfiction, and one contract led to another.

And as I said, there were all these books.

I needed to know more about how women felt for each of these titles.

And then I returned to fiction about... You did everything at the right time.

I know you've taught college students.

What's one thing you've learned from them?

College students are fantastic.

They really are.

I was at Marymount Manhattan for 23 years.

I think that it's their earnestness and their openness to ideas.

And I love the conversations in classes, just love to hear what they think and how to look at writing in the world.

[Ann] The new book is "Maribelle's Shadow" by Susannah Marren.

This has been such a pleasure.

I want to thank you for spending this time with me.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Ann Bocock.

Please join me on the next "Between the Covers."