Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern, White Russians

Oh! What a treat this one is. First of all, SOMONE FINALLY PICKED WHITE RUSSIANS!!! I have been dreaming of this for years. And second, The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern is a magic trick of a book. A beautiful dual timeline with a historical timeline that I found fascinating.

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https://www.instagram.com/lloigman/ 
https://x.com/lyndacloigman 
https://www.facebook.com/people/Lynda-Cohen-Loigman-Author/100057989951456/

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Transcript

Molly Fader (00:28):

 Hello everybody. Welcome to Day Drinking with Authors, the podcast series where I pick a book and the author picks a drink and we discuss both. I'm your host Molly Fader, and today I'm talking to Linda Cohen Loigman. Did I just blow it?

Lynda Cohen Loigman (00:40):

No, that was good.

Molly Fader (00:44):

We spent like five minutes talking about names. Linda is the bestselling author of The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern. Now, this book might seem slightly less witchy compared to the other books that I'm reading and this my season of the Witch, but it has a beautiful layer of magical realism, incredibly compelling dual timeline, and a great aunt that I think could be argued might be a witch. I'm going to read the back cover copy because my mom likes that. Mom, you'd like this book very much. On the cusp of turning 80. Newly retired pharmacist, Augusta Stern is adrift when she relocates to Tondo Springs, an active senior community in southern Florida. She unexpectedly crosses path with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father's old pharmacy, and the man who broke her heart 60 years earlier as a teenager growing up in 1920s, Brooklyn Augusta's role model was her father.

(01:42):

Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighbourhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta's mother dies and great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta can't help but be drawn to Esther's curious methods as a healer herself. Esther offers Solomon's customers her own advice, unconventional remedies, ranging from homemade chicken soup to a mysterious array of powders and potions. As Augusta prepares for pharmacy college, she is torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her great aunt, all while navigating a budding but complicated relationship with Irving. Desperate for clarity, she impulsively uses Esther's most potent elixir with disastrous consequences, disillusioned and alone Augusta vows to reject Enchantments forever. 60 years later, confronted with Irving Augusta still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago, and how did her plan go? So spectacularly wrong. Did Irving ever really love her or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it's too late? Sounds good. It is good. Welcome so much, Linda. Thank you for being here today.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (02:45):

Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is the best. I can't think of a more fun podcast to do.

Molly Fader (02:52):

This is how I lure authors in.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (02:56):

You get to drink a cocktail in the middle of the day, like, okay, fine.

Molly Fader (02:59):

Sign me up. I'll answer questions about my book. Okay. From

Lynda Cohen Loigman (03:05):

The comfort of my

Molly Fader (03:05):

Own,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (03:06):

My dog's invited too. He's here. He's happy. We're all good.

Molly Fader (03:10):

Yeah, you didn't have to lock him in the spare room.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (03:13):

Yep.

Molly Fader (03:14):

Love it. Linda, tell us about the drink we're having today.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (03:18):

So we are having a modified white Russian. So instead of using kaa, which I think is typical for white Russian, we're going to use Amru, which is a cream lur, a Bailey's kind of, it tastes a lot like Bailey's with the marula fruit, which is like an African Laur. My writer friend Elizabeth gave this to me. Well, first introduced me to this, I don't know, 10 years ago, and it's so good. I love it so much. You could put it in coffee if you want it hot, but I was thinking we would have it hot in coffee, but then it got a little, it warmed up today, so I'm going to put it, oh, how long it's been. I'm putting some in a shaker. I'm going to put some of that. You're supposed to put a little vodka in,

Molly Fader (04:06):

But it's the middle of the day. It's day. I'm doing it. I'm going,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (04:10):

Well, you're going for it. Oh, Linda. Yeah, I'm putting a little vodka. I got my mother-in-law leaves vodka at my house. I don't usually have it, so I'm using her vodka. Sorry, Carol.

Molly Fader (04:24):

I mean, there are worse things that a mother-in-law could leave at your house.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (04:26):

Exactly. She always leaves vodka. And then I'm using almond milk actually, because I'm trying to be like, I don't know, I'm trying to be a little healthier, so I'm using, I'm being so healthy. See me

Molly Fader (04:36):

Drinking hot.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (04:38):

It's a healthy regime,

Molly Fader (04:41):

Linda. You just have to make choices. That's all. I

Lynda Cohen Loigman (04:45):

Singing it up in my little thing so people can hear. And now we're going to pour it in. I even got a fancy glass for you.

Molly Fader (04:52):

Oh, I love it.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (04:53):

So you could see it. I know listeners can't see it, but you can see this baby. Oh, that is

Molly Fader (05:00):

Beautiful.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (05:01):

It's good. Yeah. Okay. Cheers. I wish you were

Molly Fader (05:04):

Here. Cheers, Linda. Cheers. Linda, you have no way of knowing this, but I've been doing this podcast for a long time and I have been waiting and we've had a lot of drinks and no one has ever picked a white Russian, and all I ever want is someone to pick a white Russian. So when someone says, oh, I don't know, what do people usually have? And I always say, white Russians, and they're like, nobody does it.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (05:25):

Is it because it's your favourite? Why? What is it about it that makes you want us to pick away?

Molly Fader (05:31):

It's a drink that is, to me, deeply nostalgic, but extremely decadent. Yeah.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (05:39):

Yeah. The cream laur stuff is very, yeah.

Molly Fader (05:42):

And so I never order it. If given a choice, I will not pick it. But if the opportunity comes up, say in a drinking podcast about writing

Lynda Cohen Loigman (05:55):

Of your own invention.

Molly Fader (05:57):

So is this a favourite of yours?

Lynda Cohen Loigman (06:01):

It's funny that you say that about nostalgia because my mom used to a white Russian,

Speaker 1 (06:08):

And

Lynda Cohen Loigman (06:08):

We had friends, my parents had these friends, and we would go to their house every year for Christmas. We didn't celebrate Christmas. We were Jewish. We didn't have Christmas, but we would have friends and we would go to their house and they always made white Russians for Christmas. And my mom was sort of a big believer that demystify alcohol. It's not so mysterious. My parents were not big drinkers at all, but she just didn't see anything wrong with letting me have one. I wouldn't have a vodka in it, but she would give me, it would be mostly milk and then a tiny little bit of Kula. She would do that. The other thing my mom used to let me have was an amaretto sour, which was mostly sour mix, and it would just have a little bit of amaretto. But she, and as a result, honestly, I'm not really a big drinker. I dunno, it never, I had friends when I was growing up whose parents would drink in front of them and never let them have it, and that wasn't how it was in my house. They barely drank, and if they drank, they always said, if you want some, you can have some. And so it just wasn't so mysterious.

Molly Fader (07:08):

Yeah, they took all the rebelling out of it.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (07:11):

Yeah, exactly.

Molly Fader (07:13):

My parents had, they used to do these travelling dinner parties.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (07:17):

Oh, nice.

Molly Fader (07:17):

I've come from a very small town, and so somebody would do the appetisers and a drink, and then you'd go to the main, and my mom, I am blurry on the details, but there are two of them that I remember. One was she made grasshoppers. She must have been dessert, I guess. And so I just remember these green drinks in the fridge and opening up the fridge and being like, oh. And then another one was white Russians, and I think she gave me a sip of it, like a sip from the bottom of the Yes. And so it's

Lynda Cohen Loigman (07:49):

Delicious. It's sweet, it's creamy. It's like a milkshake. It's grownup. It's a milkshake for grownups.

Molly Fader (07:54):

It is like a milkshake for grownups, but enough about this delicious cream, about forever. Linda, you're here to talk about your book for crying out loud. So one of the things, I have a list of things. It's actually kind of a list of compliments that I'm going to try to turn into questions. But one of the things that I loved about this book is I feel like when a successful dual timeline, when a dual timeline is successful, one of the timelines feels like magic. You're getting such a glimpse into something you didn't know existed. And not that the 1920s, Brooklyn, I mean, we've all read books and seen movies and stuff like that, but the pharmacy that he's a pharmacist and life, the family life lived around this pharmacy felt like magic to me. Can you talk to me a little bit about what made you choose this time period and obviously the pharmacy of it all? Yeah,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (08:54):

Sure. So my husband's great grandmother was a pharmacist. She

(08:59):

Graduated from Fordham's Pharmacy College in 1921, and she was married to a pharmacist. He had a store. He died unexpectedly very young, and she had a 2-year-old daughter, and she wanted to keep the store and provide for our daughter. So she went to pharmacy college and there were very few women at that time that did that. So I had always heard stories about her. My good friend in this book, Augusta, she lied about her age. She doctored her certificate so she could keep working. She worked into her eighties, and I just loved the stories that I heard about her. And so that setting, I knew I was never going to write a book about her. This book is not about her. It's inspired by her. But that pharmacy setting just always seemed magical to me. I love the idea of the soda counter and the kind of people sitting around there and making egg creams and all of that.

(09:55):

So I was interested in the twenties because that was when she graduated. But then I had to really decide, is that a good timeline for me to use? Is that a good year? Sort of good decade to pick. And it was so fascinating, and because it was prohibition and pharmacies had a really interesting place during prohibition because they were one of the few places that could sell alcohol legally. You were allowed to get a prescription for whiskey, one pint of whiskey every 10 days for medicinal purposes. And there were special government issued prescription pads for this. It was a very interesting thing. So it was ripe for all

(10:32):

Of bad stuff going on with gangsters. Gangsters used to set up fake pharmacies on paper without a real brick and mortar store. And then when the government cracked down on that, they would flood a pharmacy. They'd pick a pharmacy and flood it with fake prescription, whatever it was to try to get their hands on it or just steal it, just be there in the alleyway and just steal the and stuff. So all those things were interesting. And I read a lot of memoirs by pharmacists back then, and that was what was, so when I read the memoirs and sort of the compilations of, I had something called Pharmacy Memories, drugstore Memories, a book which had all kinds of just short vignettes written by different pharmacists. And I understood then the role of the pharmacist at that time, which was so fascinating because you went to your pharmacist, you didn't go to your doctor right away. If there was something wrong with you, you went to the pharmacist and the pharmacist told you what you needed and sort of diagnosed you. Doctors were kind of fancy, especially in certain neighbourhoods. And oftentimes if you lived, I mean not in Brooklyn, but if you lived somewhere else, if you lived in the Midwest or whatever, it might be pretty far away to get to a doctor. So the pharmacists were your doctor, your priest, your rabbi, your confessor, your therapist. You told them everything. And it was just a fascinating role. And that combined with prohibition and just this idea, it's a ripe setting for magical realism. You have a prescription room with all the bottles.

Molly Fader (12:03):

Oh my gosh, yes.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (12:04):

All the things. And there's a million ways you can play with it. So it was sort of a perfect setting.

Molly Fader (12:12):

One of the things that I was charmed by were the details about some of the medicines that would be prescribed, and considering my time of life, the one that I loved so much was Linda Pink Man's Vegetable Compound

Lynda Cohen Loigman (12:27):

For

Molly Fader (12:27):

Women's Ailments.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (12:32):

Yeah, for women's S. Yeah, I know. I also, I got a lot of old magazines from the twenties on eBay, like American Druggist Magazine and all these different things. And so I would just go through and see all the things that were being advertised. So I knew the source of things that the store would carry back then, and that was one of them. And they were all just, things were surprising. There were Coex back then, which I thought was really interesting. But it was also reading those memoirs. It was a lot of anecdotes about how important it was really for the pharmacist to know the customer, because there were things back then, there were a lot of anecdotes about pharmacists preventing people from doing harm or even committing murder. Arsenic was something that people would use back then to whiten their skin and keep their skin beautiful. But if a man would come in and ask for arsenic, and the pharmacist knew he was having an affair with someone, he would know this guy wants to kill his wife. He's going to use it for nefarious purposes, and they wouldn't give it to them. And there were a lot of anecdotes like that when people were asking for things that they shouldn't have been asking for, and the pharmacist could always sort of suss it out.

Molly Fader (13:43):

I feel like every once in a while as an author, you stumble into a world where you're like, well, I could write 20 novels.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (13:50):

Oh, a hundred percent.

Molly Fader (13:53):

I mean, it had to have been hard to

Lynda Cohen Loigman (13:56):

Choose to focus. I mean, there was a whole thing. I could write a whole other novel on the chocolate syrup mobster racket, which is a whole big thing back then because all these soda counters had, they carried chocolate syrup and they would make ice cream sodas, but also egg creams, which were cheap and very popular because they were cheap. They didn't have ice cream in them. And it was just chocolate syrup and milk and seltzer seltzer. And there was a whole, somebody organised, it was protection money belong. You had to pay your protection money to the chocolate syrup gangster guy, or people were killed about over chocolate syrup business. That was a whole other book that I could have

Molly Fader (14:39):

Written. Well, I hope maybe that you do, I dunno. I live in Canada and there's this whole maple syrup heist. Oh, yeah. Now it's going to be a movie. So listen.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (14:51):

That's great,

Molly Fader (14:52):

Linda. This could be a real moment. One of the characters that I loved, I mean, we will talk about Esther, the aunt in a second, but Mrs. Diamond.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (15:01):

Yeah, I mean Mitzi. Yeah.

Molly Fader (15:05):

So she's married to the zip gangster,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (15:10):

Sort of head gangster in the neighbourhood at the time,

Molly Fader (15:13):

And she is her own driver of the story. Without her, this story doesn't really happen. So she's one of those incredible secondary characters that has just, every scene she walks into, something happens. It's lots of energy.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (15:33):

My editor calls that page presence. It's like stage presence, but on the page. So Mitzi has page presence for sure. She walks in and all eyes on her.

Molly Fader (15:45):

So there's this very pivotal scene where Scene Irving runs into them at a department store looking for a coat. And Mitzi is clearly very angry with zip. What did zip do in your mind? What did zip do?

Lynda Cohen Loigman (16:02):

Well, zip. I mean, he's just kind of losing it. He becomes ill in the story, and she sort of takes over. I think she's just frustrated. She's frustrated that she's so smart and so capable. She's in the background all the time. And so they walk into this store and she just takes over. She just doesn't want to hear it from him. She is always thinking 10 steps ahead. And when she sees Irving and she sees this young man, she's thinking about how he might be useful to her and to her husband. And zip is just, she thinks he's adult for a variety of reasons, and he's not thinking that way, and he just doesn't take interest. But she sees everything, ask this woman.

Molly Fader (16:51):

And a parallel to that is Aunt Esther, who also sees everything,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (16:54):

Who also sees everything. And when they're in a room together, they have a couple scenes together because Mitzi is not, she's one of the things that I really liked about writing her was she has some vulnerability and then she gets past that vulnerability. But you see her not at her best. You see her when she's so many women sort of going through menopause and having all these problems, having all these medical problems that the male doctors don't want to acknowledge and don't want to help with and don't care about. And Esther is able to help her with all of her homoeopathic remedies and all these different things. Esther acknowledges this, acknowledges that even though this woman is not necessarily so trustworthy or good, I'll put my fingers up in quotes,

Molly Fader (17:42):

She's

Lynda Cohen Loigman (17:42):

Not necessarily a good woman. She recognises that common bond of suffering

Speaker 1 (17:49):

That

Lynda Cohen Loigman (17:49):

All even go through. And so she's going to help her, and she does much to Solomon Stern's dismay and

Molly Fader (17:58):

And

Lynda Cohen Loigman (17:59):

Not happy about it.

Molly Fader (18:01):

She's caught between her father's science. He forbids her, he forbids Esther from seeing customers out of sight, out of mind a little bit, but he's kind of constantly saying, this is why it's bad. This is why it's wrong. And she's caught between what her aunt is doing and what her dad is doing when they're both doing the same things.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (18:25):

Yes. So Augusta grows up over this pharmacy. They live in this apartment over the pharmacy, which is very common back then. And her mother dies, and great Aunt Esther comes to stay, and she is from the old country. She's Russian or Polish, depending on what the thing was at the time, where all the boundaries were. And she's been in this country a long time. She's gone and stayed with different relatives. She goes sort of where she's needed and where there's room for her, and now she's kind of needed there. And Solomon Stern is very reluctant to ask her to come and stay because he's heard stories about her. He's by the book pharmacist. He weighs everything out on his little scales. He follows the formulas. He does everything by the book. And she comes in and she has all these ideas. And when a pill doesn't work, someone doesn't feel better the way they feel they should. She's there at the pharmacy and saying, oh, this didn't help you. Come upstairs with me. I've got a little something for you. And Solomon Stern hates this. He thinks it's going to ruin his reputation. He thinks she's a quack. He doesn't like the way she does things, and they're both very strong characters. And Augusta poor, Augusta is caught between, because Esther's way of doing things is fascinating,

(19:41):

And she gets results that are inexplicable sometimes. And she helps Augusta's friend when he's ill. And Solomon Stern is unfortunately, he doesn't have so much imagination all this, if not this, then this. And if he gets to the end of the list in the book, he says, I'm sorry. There's nothing else we can do. But Esther always thinks there's something else you can do. And Augusta is really fascinated by that.

Molly Fader (20:12):

Yeah, it's interesting. Not without compassion. You see, part of his role in the community is like you said, confessor. And he takes, let's go have a conversation, and people are telling their heartbreaking stories to him. So he has lots and lots of compassion, but it is that lack of imagination that he

Lynda Cohen Loigman (20:32):

Can't see past his books

Molly Fader (20:34):

And past

Lynda Cohen Loigman (20:35):

His formulas. He is a kind man, but he's also, when you first meet him, he's really, his wife has died. He's caught up in his own grief too.

Molly Fader (20:44):

Yeah. No, it's beautifully done. It's beautifully done. So the danger in a dual timeline when one of the timelines is so fascinating is that the other timeline could be skippable. And you have countered that I think you've battled that problem. First of all, was it a problem ever while you were writing it? Did you ever feel like,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (21:06):

No. I always write in the order that you read. Some people will write all of one timeline and all of another and then chop 'em up and put 'em together. But I don't do that. I feel like that doesn't make for smooth transitions or for the story to make sense necessarily. I take a lot of pride in my dual timelines. The matchmaker's gift was really hard. I swore I would never write another dual timelines, although this one, it's the same character in both timelines. You see Augusta when she's young and she makes her mistakes, and you see her when she's old and she's paying for those mistakes. But it's hard sometimes because what I want ideally is for the reader to finish a 1920s Brooklyn chapter and be like, oh, I don't want to leave it. I want to stay so great. And then you go to the 1980s one and you're like, oh, I don't want to leave this one. It's so great. And that's, for me, when I was writing it, I had to force myself to stop and

Speaker 1 (22:09):

Make

Lynda Cohen Loigman (22:09):

The transition, because I would know this is a dramatic point where there's a little secret, there's a nugget that's being revealed. And now we're going to go back and we're going to see where that nugget came from, and to kind of keep layering and keep connecting the two timelines. I had to write it that way. And so it does take more time. It's a little bit more cumbersome, but I just think I couldn't do it any other way.

Molly Fader (22:31):

I find that the editing process when you're doing that, because you get distracted by am writing this day, and then you're like, oh, here's this beautiful day with all these details and these things that happen, but they don't serve the purpose of the story. But anyway, I find that the editing of it is all. But the thing that I thought in the 1980s timeline was that was where all the longing was.

(23:02):

And I felt like you, I mean, I'm a sucker for longing in any book, but her longing for Irving and his longing for her, and all of these secrets that we knew were in the way was so well done. And the tool I felt that you used with such success was swimming. Every time they talk to each other, it's an argument. There's a disastrous barbecue. All these things happen. And then they get to this place where they're swimming together early morning, and they don't talk to each other. And it's very awkward, except when they get into the lane side by side, and then everything is sort of synced. And I mean, I don't have a question. I just wanted to tell you. I know. What was your research on swimming, Linda? Well,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (23:53):

I have a good friend. My good friend Jocelyn, her husband Jeremy, is a swimmer. He was a college swimmer. And I talked to him about swimming and just sort of, I mean, he's my age, so he's in his fifties. So I was like, well, if I had an 80-year-old, how much could she do? But swimming is, I think it's a great non-impact, low impact exercise. There's just something beautiful about, it's poetry, like watching people swim. There's something beautiful about it. There's something beautiful about the idea of being in the water. Augusta swims because she swam when her mother, when she was a young girl, her mother took her swimming. But back then, she always swam in the ocean. And the ocean became a little scary after her mother died. Sorry. And when she lives in New York, she swims for all these years in an indoor pool.

(24:51):

But when she moves to Florida, even though she doesn't want to retire and she doesn't want to move to Florida, the one draw for her is this beautiful pool outside at Rotondo Springs. And that's what she is so excited about. And there's something beautiful about just the breath work. You're alone, but you're not alone. And when they're in the pool together, the idea that you feel the wave, just like the movement of the water from one person, one person can move one arm, and you can feel that echo in the water and know that they're there next to you, but not have to acknowledge them because mad at him,

Molly Fader (25:36):

But drawn can't not go swimming in the morning.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (25:40):

She says she's not going to let him get in the way of her cardiovascular wellness. She will not. And so this idea that he's doing this at the same time, and eventually when they first meet, when she first realises he's there, he's just very loud and

Speaker 1 (25:57):

Very,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (25:58):

He comes on very strong, so happy to see her, and he wants to be close, and he wants this, and he wants this relationship. And she just rejects him at every turn until he finally gets it. And he stops talking. And when they're in the pool together, they're not talking. And it gets to the point where it's early morning and she doesn't want to talk to him, and he stops. He just gets in the pool and he doesn't say hello, and he doesn't hold her up, and he just swims. And then he says, bye. And it's when he finally gets that and understands the space that she needs to forgive, it's in those moments that she learns to forgive him and to forgive for the choices that she's made over her life.

Molly Fader (26:46):

Yeah, it was a beautiful showing of this very internal process. I quite liked it.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (26:52):

Thank you.

Molly Fader (26:52):

Quite liked it. So we'll talk about the magical realism. We'll talk about Aunt Ter. I am. I've took a hiatus from the podcast for a while after Covid ended. You know how the world started to go really fast, and I couldn't keep on top of everything, but all I want to do is read witch fiction. Every book that catches my eye is across every sub genre. Is Aunt Esther, would you consider her a witch in the modern fictional vernacular?

Lynda Cohen Loigman (27:29):

I don't think so. I think that, I think when you read this book, there's magical realism, but that phrase, just by itself, magical realism, which is it? I think there is an argument to be made that she is more of like a holistic

Molly Fader (27:48):

Homoeopath.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (27:49):

Some people are going to read it and think that some people are going to read it and think, which, but she doesn't. I will say no, that she's not, because she doesn't like the word herself.

(27:58):

She lived in this village in Russia slash Poland. There was a man in the village who studied, who was allowed to study. She was not allowed to go to university as a young woman at that time. He is the apothecary. He has a respectable title. He is the village apothecary. She knows everything. He knows she knows more. She's studied with her mother and her grandmother, and she's been in the woods, and she knows all the herbs, and she knows all the plants. She knows just as much, but she's not allowed to be called the apothecary. They call her a witch. And she says to some men, to jealous men. Every gifted woman is a witch. And I think she would say, no, I'm not. Because that has negative implications

Molly Fader (28:42):

To her for sure. And I feel like right now, there's this boom of fiction where every educated woman is a witch. And there's a really interesting reclaiming of it, sort of right now. I mean, every time I turn around, there's another fascinating,

Lynda Cohen Loigman (28:59):

I think now it's a term of power and female empowerment. But for Esther, she wouldn't think that. She doesn't like that called that. And I think she feels like she definitely has. I mean, she has sort of a magical mortar and pestle. She has chance, she has songs. She has knowledge of folklore and mysticism and the evil eye and all of these things. She's superstitious. She believes in things. She tells a woman,

Molly Fader (29:31):

Don't wear those fancy shoes. Don't wear those fancy

Lynda Cohen Loigman (29:32):

Shoes. They're jealous, and they're going to put the eagle eye on you. And is that real or is it not? We don't know. Does anybody ever really know? But I think what Esther would say is she is gifted. She

Molly Fader (29:45):

Has a gift. I agree.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (29:47):

That gift is rooted in magic or knowledge. I think she would say it's rooted in both primarily knowledge, because she knows so much. She sees people, she pays attention. I think she would say all of these things and her skills are real. And so I think that's what she would say to that. So I think she's very tough, and she's very strong, and she has rules. She lives by certain rules, which she tries to tell Augusta about, and Augusta unfortunately breaks them.

Molly Fader (30:21):

Well, which leads me to my final question. Sarah Penner, who wrote The Lost Apothecary, said about this book that is one of the most satisfying endings she's read in a long time. And the ending is lovely. This character who's torn between the science of her father and the magic of her aunt and the heartbreak of the past, holding her back from a future, we're not going to do a whole lot of spoilers, but when you start a book like this, do you see the ending? Do you know what's going to happen?

Lynda Cohen Loigman (30:56):

I do. I know what's going to happen. I don't know every detail of what's going to happen, but I knew the ending before I started writing this book. I mean, the research came first and figuring out the timeline, and then figuring out the voices of the characters and sort of figuring these things out. And then I know how it's going to begin, and I know how it's going to end. I wasn't sure about, there's a big pivotal ending scene that's kind of funny. I knew always that I wanted Augusta to make this mistake when she was young. And in her youth, it's sort of tragic. But I knew that I wanted her to then make the same mistake, or almost make the same mistake when she's older. And then it was going to be comic. It was going to be humorous. And because the 1980s timeline has a lot of humour in it, Irving really uses humour to get him through all of the sorrow and the heartache of his life. That's how he, that's his coping mechanism. And so that whole timeline is infused with a lot of humour. When Augusta first sees him, he says, I thought you said you'd never leave New York. And she says, and I thought you'd be dead by now.

(32:01):

They banter. They have a lot of banter. I always knew how I wanted. I knew that I wanted there to be a symmetry to the

Molly Fader (32:12):

Book

Lynda Cohen Loigman (32:13):

For the end, to mimic or mirror the beginning, but with a different result.

Molly Fader (32:20):

It is a fantastic, satisfying ending, which feels like, I feel like the nailing the endings can be hard to nail. They can really can. And this felt, this is one of those sort of organic feeling where your reader heart goes, oh, yay. So it's, it's very lovely.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (32:42):

Thank you.

Molly Fader (32:43):

Well, Linda, thank you so much for taking the time to have a white Russian and talk about your beautiful book with me.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (32:48):

Oh, it was great to chat with you. I loved it.

Molly Fader (32:50):

Really good. Thank you. And everybody out there listening, happy reading. Stay safe. And, oh, what do I usually say? Stay safe because of Covid, but stay safe anyway. Continue to stay safe. There's

Lynda Cohen Loigman (33:04):

So many weather disasters right now. Stay safe.

Molly Fader (33:08):

Stay safe, everybody. And keep reading. Absolutely.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (33:10):

Yes.

Molly Fader (33:10):

Thank you. Have a good day.

Lynda Cohen Loigman (33:13):

Stay drinking

Speaker 1 (33:14):