The earliest inklings of Meet Me at the Lake came to me like far too many of my ideas do: in the middle of the night. It was several weeks following the birth of my second child, and I couldn’t sleep. Sleeping has never been a skill of mine, but I developed chronic insomnia during my pregnancy, and it continued after Finn was born. As I lay awake, I found myself wondering what I was going to do about my next book. Writing my debut novel, Every Summer After, in 2020 was a joyful experience, and I was brimming with ideas for future stories. But in the spring of 2021, I was empty. I was also in the midst of my second bout of postpartum anxiety.
I find writing similar to reading in that I get to travel to wherever my characters exist. That night, I asked myself where I wanted to be. I shut my eyes, and I saw it: a classic lakeside resort in Muskoka, with a hilltop lodge and cabins overlooking the water. And I saw Fern, reluctantly running the place following the death of her mother. I thought of Maggie’s diary, too—how it would recount her own romance but ultimately show a mother’s love for her daughter. I wrote Every Summer After partially as an escape from life in 2020, but I created Brookbanks Resort to give myself a world to escape into. (Smoke Lake does exist, by the way, but it’s slightly east of Muskoka and inside Ontario’s famous Algonquin Park. There are no resorts on its shores.)
There are pieces of me scattered throughout Meet Me at the Lake. My parents owned a restaurant and inn when I was growing up. I gave Fern my insomnia as well as my fondness for both the city and the lake. Maggie received my dedication to my career and my worries about not being very good at anything outside of work. And to Will Baxter I bequeathed the quiet, invisible terror of postpartum anxiety.
Meet Me at the Lake has evolved over the course of writing, but from the earliest conversations with my editor, it was always about how life doesn’t always turn out the way we expect. But I didn’t set out to explore the ways parenthood shapes us—perhaps that’s what happens when you begin writing a book about a mother and a daughter a few months after having your second baby.
During the late stages of editing Meet Me at the Lake, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and I began to worry that the two unplanned pregnancies in the book (and the fact that both Maggie and Annabel decide to become mothers) would be perceived as an endorsement of that ruling. That is not my intention. I firmly believe the choices to continue a pregnancy and to become a parent are exactly that: choices every person with a uterus should be able to make. Reproductive rights, including access to contraceptives and safe abortions, are fundamental to individual well-being and to society at large. I’ve always considered myself pro-choice—becoming a parent only strengthened my stance.
There was a moment when I was in labor with my first son, when my hospital room was suddenly swarming with doctors and nurses, their faces tense, that I thought I might die. It wasn’t my life at risk, it turned out; it was the baby’s. Long story short: He needed to get out of my body as quickly as possible and was born via a brutal forceps-assisted delivery. It took fifteen minutes of active labor for Max to come into this world, and an hour and a half for the doctors to stitch me back together.
From that day to the first weeks and months of the baby’s life, it felt like I was fighting for survival—my own and the baby’s. There were many intense challenges in those early days, and coping with them was made more difficult because my mind had become a very scary place. As a journalist, I’ve written about some of the struggles I faced as a new parent, but I’ve never publicly spoken about my postpartum OCD.
There’s a good chance you’ve heard of baby blues and postpartum depression but not about postpartum OCD—I know I hadn’t. (During both my pregnancies, no medical practitioner mentioned it to me.) It’s a serious but treatable anxiety disorder with symptoms so horrifying, few of us are comfortable talking about it—it’s often misdiagnosed and unreported. Despite its name, it can affect not only birth parents but adoptive parents and anyone in a parenting role: people such as Will.
I didn’t experience compulsions, but like Will, I was bombarded by recurring intrusive thoughts and images. I made a conscious decision not to describe Will’s thoughts—I didn’t think he’d be ready to share them with Fern, and to be honest, I was worried you’d judge him. It took me months to tell my husband what was happening in my head. Years to tell my mother. The thought of putting it out into the world makes my chest tight. I don’t want to burden you with what plagued me, with what made me afraid to be alone with the baby every day, with what made me certain I’d be institutionalized if I told anyone. But the reason I’m writing about it (and as vaguely as possible) is in case you find yourself in a similar position. If you become terrorized by thoughts of harming your baby, if the same horrible images keep flashing through your mind, if kitchen knives or stairs or subway tracks fill you with terror, you are not alone. The thoughts are just that—only thoughts—even though you dread the possibility of losing control. You won’t. In fact, I’ve been told people who experience these kinds of thoughts tend to be highly contentious. You will be okay—your baby will be, too—but you need to tell someone. In fact, telling someone is the first step to being okay. We go through our darkest moments alone, but we emerge from them with help.
My postpartum anxiety was different the second time around. I had a few episodes with intrusive thoughts and images, but I was better prepared to acknowledge them, see them as a nuisance, and send them on their way. My anxiety, however, was almost debilitating. I’ve experienced anxious thoughts before, but nothing compared to the spring of 2021. It was like every problem I could possibly face for my entire life needed solving. Getting out of bed each morning took immense effort. Tearful conversations with my mom (about how I sucked as a mom) and my husband (about how terrified I was for the future) helped. Walking helped. Therapy helped. Will and Fern helped.
In the epilogue to Meet Me at the Lake, we learn that Fern is pregnant with a baby girl. I don’t believe I’m a more fulfilled person because I’m a mom. When someone tells me they don’t want children, I get that. Sometimes I envy that. But for this story, I wanted to give Fern the opportunity to forge her own path as a mother—to decide what elements of her relationship with her mom she wanted to preserve and what she would do differently. Perhaps most of all, I wanted to show that Will’s anxiety had not stopped them from having children, that mental health struggles don’t preclude you from being a wonderful parent. I like to think that when Fern and Will discussed having children, they did what my husband and I did before we had our second child: They talked about the possibility that Will’s intrusive thoughts may resurface, and they came up with a plan to ensure he’d have support.
What I admire about both Will and Fern is that they love hard. It’s not easy for either of them to open their hearts—to risk rejection, judgment, failure—and they stumble along the way. Near the end of the book, Fern gives Will a chance to explain his actions. She decides to reach out her hand. This, I think, is one of the bravest, most challenging things to do in the early stages of any relationship. It’s also what makes them stronger. We all make mistakes. We experience trauma and loss and plain old bad days. We all fly, face-first, onto loose gravel. But with any luck, someone stands beside us, reaching out their hand.
Discussion Questions
Fern and Will develop a close bond over just a day. Have you ever felt that kind of strong, fast connection with another person, whether platonic or romantic? If so, what do you attribute it to?
How do Fern’s and Will’s life stages play into their friendship when they first meet? Do you think they would have been as drawn to each other at another time in their lives?
In chapter 5, Fern thinks to herself that secrets are a key ingredient in close friendships. Do you agree? Do you think Fern still believes this by the end of the book?
How did you see Whitney and Fern’s friendship evolve? Have any of your long-lasting friendships had similar ups and downs?
What do you make of Fern and Jamie’s relationship, in both the past and the present? Do you think they would have stayed together if Fern had never met Will?