Margaret Hutton — If You Leave — with Alexandra Zapruder

In the final year of World War II, Audrey is holding tightly to her dream of becoming a painter, while falling hard for a naval doctor. Not long after they marry he's sent overseas, leaving her alone in Washington, DC. Audrey rents a room to Lucille, launching an unlikely friendship that's a comfort to them both. But not everything is quite what it seems. Although Lucille's past has been a mystery to Audrey, nothing prepares her for the shock when Lucille abandons their makeshift family-- including her child-- and retreats to her orchard home in North Carolina. When the women meet again in 1973, Lucille is intent on mending the past. But Audrey is focused on leaving her unhappy marriage, and Lake, the daughter Lucille left behind, is trapped in an abusive relationship. If You Leave is an intimate, immersive story exploring motherhood, love, and art, as three women carve a wayward path toward reconciliation.Margaret Hutton's fiction has appeared in The Sun, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Antioch Review, and Abundant Grace. She graduated with honors in creative writing from UNC-Chapel Hill and holds an MFA from George Mason University. A native North Carolinian and former environmental reporter, she now divides her time between the Washington, DC, area and her art studio in Chester County, Pennsylvania. If You Leave is her debut novel.Hutton is in conversation with Alexandra Zapruder. Zapruder is the author/editor of Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, which was published by Yale University Press and won the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category in 2002, and Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film, which tells the story of her grandfather’s home movie of President Kennedy’s assassination. She serves as the Education Director of The Defiant Requiem Foundation and has been published in Parade, LitHub, Smithsonian, and The New York Times.https://politics-prose.com/book/9781646036417?ic_referral=0KiNgaxk1BPqFM38XMckFoLDmSUN5FzTyuw6cyRflHEwM-kTv1Gexe7s7PqL8RH29mn7314glOX9siK-boDW3U3aW1zdyTe6K-Dt-pXvab06hpBdHT7ZoFcqTR--cxCAAXuH8vw