The Case for the 58-Year-Old Protagonist | with Kathy Sherbrooke
September 15, 2026
Featured Guests:
Katherine A. Sherbrooke
Katherine A. Sherbrooke (Kathy) is the award-winning author of four novels. Her latest, This Much Is True, comes out September 17th. Before turning to fiction she co-founded a Boston company called Circles, and she went on to write the New York Times notable Leaving Coy's Hill, a Massachusetts Book Award fiction honoree; Fill the Sky, winner of a 2017 Independent Press Award; and The Hidden Life of Aster Kelly. Her work has also appeared in Cognoscenti and Zibby Magazine. A longtime champion of literary community, she served as chair of the board of GrubStreet from 2013 to 2023, and she lives on the South Shore of Massachusetts.
What happens when the story you need to tell won't let you write it until you're ready? This week Jenna and Cait sit down with Kathy Sherbrooke (Katherine A. Sherbrooke), author of the new novel This Much Is True, out September 17th. It's a conversation about elapsed time, trusting your subconscious, and making the case for protagonists who have some real life experience behind them.
Kathy first had the premise for This Much Is True more than a decade ago, then set it down twice to write two works of historical fiction before she finally found her way through it. We get into why that ten-year wait made the book better, what it means to write a woman reckoning at 58 with something that happened 40 years earlier, and her craft choice to tell one timeline in first person and the other in close third.
We also talk about GrubStreet, the Boston writing center Kathy chaired for a decade, and why community is the thing that turns one novel into four. Plus the writing-as-channeling conversation, a little Big Magic, the trouble with the "women's fiction" label, and why this is a book Kathy hopes men will read too.
In This Episode
The value of elapsed time and letting an idea percolate instead of chasing a word count
Writing an older protagonist with real history, and why that felt so refreshing
First person vs. close third, and how point of view shapes distance
GrubStreet, writing groups, and the case for community
Historical fiction rooted in real women, from Lucy Stone to a 1940s Hollywood runway model
Getting past the "women's fiction" shelf and inviting everyone into the conversation
About the book
On her 58th birthday, veterinarian Veronica Harmon has a full life and a newly engaged daughter, until a face from her past reappears as her daughter's future father-in-law and forces a decades-old reckoning. This Much Is True is a story about survivorship, shame, and the choices that are ours to make.
Content note: this episode and the book touch on sexual assault.
Kathy's other books: Leaving Coy's Hill, Fill the Sky, and The Hidden Life of Aster Kelly.
Book launch: Thursday, September 17th at 6:00 PM at GrubStreet in Boston's Seaport.
Books featured on this podcast are sometimes provided free by publishers or autho
