I was fascinated with the idea that a midlife crisis could have a positive effect. That some profound dissatisfaction with life can wake up dormant dreams: To be a pilot, a ballerina, a pianist, an actor—success so elusive, it’s intimidating. Or maybe someone had discouraged us at one point—a parent, a teacher, or even a stranger. The dream was too big, too impossible.
But I soon learned that impossible dreams were the key to it all. I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.
For years, I was an A&E writer for the Arizona Republic. In December of 2008, I interviewed the Tony Award-winning Broadway playwright, Dale Wasserman, who wrote Man of La Mancha, one of the most performed plays in the history of musical theater. At one point in the interview, I asked him what the meaning was behind the play’s iconic song, “The Impossible Dream,” the impetus behind the windmill-jousting hero, Don Quixote. Dale Wasserman said, “Impossible is just what it means: a goal that’s not attainable. The power is in the dream, a drive that engenders the person dreaming it—he won’t give up.”
Driving home after that interview, I was unexpectedly overcome with emotion. It was in that moment that the fantasy of publishing fiction had been liberated into a dream. I picked up where I left off in college and started writing short stories again, knowing that getting published in a literary publication was next to impossible. Still, I’d get up early every morning and write. It became my favorite time of the day. My own secret space. When the writing went well, there was no obstacle in the day was insurmountable. The immense satisfaction I got during those early hours could carry me through just about anything.
That interview would be his last words to ever go to print. Dale Wasserman died three days later at 94. He told me he wrote every day. And that it was writing that had defined him, not his many successes.
When I was writing The Second Ending, I thought about the peripatetic ranchers in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men whose lives were so bleak yet their dreams got them out of bed each morning—George to someday own a little piece of land, Lennie simply to tend the rabbits. Even the most jaded of people in the most hopeless environments, need dreams. My hope in this post-pandemic world is that The Second Ending inspires people to unearth their own dreams, harness their power, and experience the extraordinary in an ordinary day.
Music became the perfect medium to tell that story. I had been playing the piano since I was five. And I knew, Prudence, the hero of The Second Ending had to be a middle-aged housewife navigating a midlife crisis. A prodigy with an enormous talent who abandoned a dream because she lacked confidence, convinced it was too late for her. I want the reader see herself in Prudence, to know that fear is part of having a dream.
It takes more than talent to fulfill our potential. To go after the impossible, we need someone to champion us. A key element in Prudence’s journey to self-actualization, was the support her husband, Stuart and her first piano teacher, Mrs. Martinelli. When someone truly believes in us, it unlocks something inside, something that pushes us to seek out the extraordinary. Immortality is achieved not just through our accomplishments, but also in our relationships. Each of us lives on in the people we connect with, whether through music, or love, or a shared dream.
The Second Ending is available from Amazon and Bookshop.