Patricia Leavy - Sugar Sand Land

In this episode, host Terry Shepherd sits down with Dr. Patricia Leavy—a sociologist, pioneer of arts-based research, and author of over fifty books—to discuss her 25th work of fiction, Sugar Sand Land. The novel is a contemporary romance that follows the unlikely connection between Emerson Blue, a 28-year-old wildly famous social media influencer, and Ren Walker, a 48-year-old Grammy-winning country star living in exile after allegations of sexual misconduct.

Beyond the engaging, escapist surface of a beach read, Leavy uses the story to ask difficult questions about modern society. The conversation explores the dangerous illusion of intimacy on social media, the harsh realities and lack of nuance in cancel culture, and the lifelong project of finding the courage to live authentically. 

Episode Highlights:

• The Illusion of Connection: Leavy unpacks how curating our lives on social media creates a gap between appearance and reality, which can actually leave people feeling more isolated and lonely.
• Cancel Culture and Nuance: A candid discussion on the dangers of reputational harm by rumor, the importance of due process, and the uncomfortable challenge of separating the art from the artist.
• Arts-Based Research: Leavy explains her groundbreaking work merging the arts with social sciences to make dense academic research accessible to the public, highlighting resources like the London Arts-Based Research Centre (LABRC).
• From Sociology to Fiction: Discover how Leavy's academic career studying women's lives paved the way for her transition into fiction, a medium she says builds deeper compassion for flawed, in-progress human beings.

Resources & Links:

• Learn more about Patricia Leavy and her work at https://patricialeavy.com/.
• Grab a copy of her newest novel, Sugar Sand Land.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:35

In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author, a deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

What happens when two people who live at opposite ends of fame fall in love, and the entire world decides it has the right to judge them? Patricia Levy has spent her career exploring the complicated territory between art, culture, identity, and the stories we tell about ourselves. A novelist, sociologist, and internationally recognized pioneer of arts-based research, she has published more than 50 books, earned over 100 book awards, and built a body of work that deliberately blurs the traditional boundaries between scholarship and storytelling. Her new novel, Sugar Sandland, turns that lens towards one of the defining forces of modern life, celebrity. Emerson Blue is 28, beautiful, wildly famous, and the second most followed celebrity on social media. She calls herself a living piece of art and has transformed reality television fame into an enormous influencer empire. Once adored by millions, he has spent years living largely outside the public eye. Then they meet. Patricia Levy, it's an honor to welcome you to the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Thank you so much for having me, and I love how you describe the book.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Give us the 411 on Sugar Sand Land. What did I miss?

SPEAKER_02 2:38

You didn't miss much, except the twists and turns that I can't tell you about.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

But I will tell you, I have published over 50 books. Sugar Sand Land is my 25th published work of fiction. And I have been sitting on it to mark 25 because it just felt like a life and career milestone to me. And I know every author says every book is their favorite book. I don't say that. I do love all my books. I wouldn't write them and publish them if I didn't, but I can tell you honestly that Sugar Sand is my favorite book I have ever written, and that is why I've been sitting on it. It's it's a contemporary romance, so it is an escape, and it's for people who want a bee treat and an escape, that is what it will provide. It's a very sweet, tender, and sexy romance, but it is more than that too. And there are some twists and turns. There are a lot of things for people to think about if they choose to think about them. I've always been fascinated with the gap between appearance and reality. So, you know, how our lives look or how we want them to look and how they actually are. And I think that we need to mine that gap. I think the bigger the gap is between what we want our life to be and what our life actually is, the more unhappiness that comes with that. I think there's no real fulfilled life if you're not authentic. And I think in the age of social media, that's a lot more challenging. And you don't have to be famous. Sugar Sand is about two huge celebrities, but it applies to all of us. It applies to kids in middle school, it applies to you, it applies to me. In this day and age, everybody has this curated representation of their life and their career. And there can be a big disjuncture between that image and the reality behind it. How many pictures should you take and how many filters should you use for that perfect profile picture? And what are the things you choose to share? How do you share them? And what do you not share? Social media is like a highlight reel. And the really crazy thing is people compare themselves to it, but it's like comparing your insides to somebody's airbrushed outsides. And it's like actually crazy. And we all do it. I do it too. None of us are immune. We all live in this culture. And so I really wanted to write a book that explores that. And so on the one hand, the book is about Emerson and Wren, and it is their love story, and there's all this Hollywood stuff, and it is fun. And so if you're looking for that, I hope the book has that for you. But on the other hand, I feel like the book is about all of us. And the further you get along reading it, you realize it's really not about the characters. It's really about the rest of us. And so there are, I don't usually have twists in my book. This book is different, but there are some twists in the book. I'm not going to tell you the meaning of the title, but I will tell you whatever you think. That isn't it. It's one of those books. And it's a book that starts off, I think, like big celebrity, fun paparazzi. And you might think it's going to be a superficial book, but it becomes something else. And I hope readers enjoy it and I hope it stays with them.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

You are truly a Renaissance woman. What motivated you to move from nonfiction into the fiction world?

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Okay. I have to be honest and tell you, I was not brave when I was a child. So we have to go back to childhood. I was a very shy kid. Like I wouldn't even raise my hand in class to go to the bathroom until I was like going in my seat. I was just super, super shy. And I was bullied badly, as many shy children are. And I always wanted to be a writer my entire life. I before I could write, I would recite stories that an adult would type for me. And then I would illustrate them and I would find old scraps of wallpaper and I would bind them with glue and staples and tape. And my mother actually saved some in like Ziploc storage bags. And I have one that says I was six years old when I made it. So I consider that my first book, even though it wasn't officially published. So I always was a creative and a storyteller. I always wanted to be a writer, but I did not pursue that because I always felt that a career in the arts was like a life of rejection and critique. And as someone shy who had been bullied for years, I just could not imagine like volunteering for a lifetime of rejection and critique. So I pursued a different path. And I ended up studying sociology in school. And I got my bachelor's, master's, and PhD. And once you go to grad school, you start publishing nonfiction. You start articles and then books. And I published my first nonfiction book when I was a graduate student getting my PhD. And I just continued on from there, and the arts became the thing I did on weekends and at evenings. And eventually I actually had a lot of success in nonfiction, which was completely unplanned because I was writing about things that nobody else was writing about. People were saying it's not sociology. It's, you know, I was writing about arts-based research, which is how researchers in any discipline can use the arts to make their work more engaging and accessible to the public. And basically, when I started writing about it, people were like, this is not a thing. Like, and so fast forward, my like, I don't know, seventh or eighth book became just hugely wildly successful in a way that none of us anticipated. And 20 years later, it's still going into new editions and it's been published all around the world. And that created a lot of opportunities in nonfiction. But I also thought at that moment, if I'm ever gonna write a novel, like this is a thing I've always wanted to do, I'm gonna do it now. At least I can say I had a career that was successful. At least I and at that point I didn't have the same fear of rejection and critique because you go through that in life anyway. And you don't know that when you're young, but as an adult, there's no academic who's not critiqued. It's ruthless. So I wasn't scared anymore. So I had a sabbatical. I wrote my first novel. It was called Low Fat Love. And I wanted to publish it as both a novel and a work of research because it had been based on the research and scholarship I had done for years about women's relationships and body image and their lives. And then everybody again thought I was just madly crazy. Every publisher rejected me. And I really pitched it hard to a small academic, independent publisher based in the Netherlands. The owner was a playwright. And so I just convinced myself that this was like a bridge not too far, and I could explain this to him. And I made a creative deal with him because he was afraid to take it, that he'd lose his money. So I paid for some of the production costs, which at the time people thought was crazy, but it turned out to be like one of the best things I ever did because I got much higher royalty rates and I got a lot of other things. That book actually became a huge bestseller. And that book, too, has it's been published many times, it's been published in other languages. Nobody expected it. And it was the launch book for what I called the Social Fictions book series, which was the first book series that an academic publisher ever published with original works of literature. And I served as editor for that series for a decade. We published 45 books, plays, short story collections, poetry collections, many of my novels and other authors' novels. And this was how I transitioned from nonfiction to fiction. And then ultimately I decided after 10 years to close the series and to look for a commercial publisher for my fiction and make the full transition. But it's funny because I still have feet in both worlds. I do keynote addresses at academic conferences. My novels are read by beachgoers, but they're also read in book clubs and academia. I still update some of my nonfiction books. So it's I always keep my feet in both worlds. And it's so funny because 25 years ago everyone thought that was very foolhardy. And now I'm asked on a daily basis, like, how did you do that? Like it's just a message and carving your own path.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Patricia Levy is our special guest. Patricia L-E-A-V-Y, Patricia Levy.com is her website. Dr. Levy's newest book is Sugarsand Land, which reminded me as I was reading it a little bit of A Star Is Born. The age difference is significant. Why is it important that Emerson be 28 and Ren 48?

SPEAKER_03 11:24

Well, honestly, I thought it would bug people. Now that you're asking it, I wish I had a different answer, but I'm just going to be truthful. Most often in my novels, the characters are very close in age. So maybe there's a couple year age difference. But this novel is poking at a lot of uncomfortable things. It asks uncomfortable questions about cancel culture. It asks uncomfortable questions about our social media use. It asks uncomfortable questions about the relationship between the art and the artist. It's meant to make, it's meant to ask these difficult questions that we don't often like to ask. And we live in such a divisive world right now, and everybody is like, you're for something or you're against it. And there's just a complete lack of nuanced thinking, which to me is the key to solving any problem. It's rarely an extreme position. It's much more likely some nuanced, complex thinking. And so I thought I wanted to make it a little bit difficult for people to get on board with these characters, which I know sounds crazy. You're supposed to make your characters that everybody roots for them on page one. But I've never prescribed to that. My first novel, Low Fat Love, every character is basically unlikable. People thought I was insane, but I was like, no, there's a reason that there's a and sometimes the characters are super likable. But in this book, and I in this book, I admire Emerson and Wren both enormously. I truly admire them. I think they're amazing human beings, but I don't want to give that away on page one. And I want to make it a little uncomfortable for readers and a little, is this okay? How do I feel about this? Because that those are the questions I want people to ask about the more important stuff, like cancel culture, like how we use social media, how we respond to things that we don't really know about. I I want people to be a little uncomfortable asking themselves those questions. So that's the reason why.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

The key question that the novel asks is whether we can ever really know a public figure. Do you think social media has convinced us that access is the same thing as intimacy?

SPEAKER_03 13:29

I think that it gives that illusion. I also think it gives the illusion of connection, which sometimes there are those things. Look, I'm used social media for many years. I have to, I'm very honest about that. If I didn't have a career as an author, I don't know whether or not I would. But for my career, I have to use it. And so I make the most of it when I try and make it as positive as I can. But that being said, this idea that because you have a lot of strangers and people that you'll never be in a room with or never know what their voice sounds like, that's connection. Sometimes I've made some real connections online, but a lot of it is not that. It's not all that. And you're responding to people's constructed version of themselves and their lives, and that's what they're responding to. Look, I'm much more likely to put this podcast on my Facebook page than I am to put that I went to the dentist and it hurt. We don't put all of our lives. It's if we don't, it's not, it's not this constant data flow, it's this curated offering, it's this constructed reality. And you don't share the same way. So my very close friends, the things I say to them are not the things I say on social media to the public and to strangers. And I don't think you have to be famous for that. I think it's everybody. I think it's all of us. I think it's the kids in middle school. I think it's the kids in high school. Everybody is thinking about what they are presenting and how they are representing themselves. And everybody is selective with what they do or do not share. Everybody is curating an image, everybody is filtering their pictures. And what does that do for intimacy? What does it do for connection? I actually think it can make people feel more alone. Sometimes this thing that's supposed to connect us all can actually make people feel very lonely. Because, gee, like all these people like my picture, but I'm still sitting here alone and I still feel lonely. And I think that's very real. And like I said, the book is it's definitely meant to be written as a fun, sexy beach read because I like to write escapist things and because that is a way that you can get at topics that might be a little uncomfortable. But I do think it asks these real questions about how we participate in the tools that we have. They're just tools, they don't have to run our lives, but they often do. And how do we choose to participate? And we live in a culture where people are constantly commenting on other people in a way that you never would in person. People say the most vicious things online, I don't like your hair like that, or you look fat, or that outfit's not good, or why did you give your kid that snack or all this crazy stuff? You would not go up to a person you don't know, and hopefully not even a person you do know, and say those things. So I think it has radically changed the way people interact with each other. And I think that there's a lot we don't understand about that. But my impression is not that people overall are happy and contented, and this is a big part of our lives. So maybe this is a part of why.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Fitting in, though, has preceded social media as an important thing for us as human beings. Why are we so afraid to be our authentic selves?

SPEAKER_03 16:46

Yeah, it's I I think it starts when you're young and with bullying and all of that kind of stuff, where kids just want to fit in. They don't want to be targeted, they don't want to stand out. And the more you're socialized into that, the harder it is to break free from that. It is, it takes courage and it takes bravery. And that's something that I think we often get more of as we get older because you have more perspective, you care less what other people think. But you care about that stuff a lot more when you're young. And it's not for nothing. There are harsh consequences. When you're a little kid, it's not crazy to want to fit in because if you don't fit in, there can be punishments. There can be very real consequences. And so if you teach people from a young age that there are going to be negative consequences for not fitting in, they're going to want to fit in. That being said, I have absolutely found throughout my life that every time I didn't try to fit in is when the best things happened, when I met the best people, when I had the most success, when I felt the happiest. Even my most successful books, they would not exist if I was doing what publishers or anybody else wanted. They only exist because I was doing what nobody thought was a good idea at the time, but I was following my own vision and I believed in it, and I was I was willing to take what comes with that. But it's real. So I understand why people feel that way. It's a real struggle. It is hard to be a lone voice in a sea. But one of the things that being older teaches you is that if you're thinking it and feeling it, there are probably other people thinking it and feeling it too. The thing you don't understand when you're eight years old and being bullied is that at least half the kids in that classroom don't like the bully either. And if you all figure that out, you could stop the bully. But you can't necessarily figure that out when you're eight years old. And it just all feels like it's directed at you. But adults, hopefully, you start to see that at some point. And it's a life project. Becoming who you really are, the best version of who you really are, there's no there. It's a life project. You get how long you get. Hopefully, life is long and you get a long time to start to get things right. But there's really no there. Identity is always in flux, it's always in progress. And that's one of the things that the book touches on too. This whole idea of how we construct our identities, but they're not fixed. We evolve, we change, we become. And sometimes people who are viewing us from the outside want us to remain something they're comfortable with or remember or that's familiar, but that's no longer who we are.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Patricia Levy is our special guest. Her newest book is Sugar Sandland, and her website is patricialeavy.com. You are a sociologist and one of the leading advocates of art-based research. What is art-based research?

SPEAKER_03 19:41

Okay, so it's research that basically merges the arts or humanities with the social sciences or sciences. In other words, researchers in different fields, psychology, healthcare, doesn't matter what it is, education. They all do research on their different topics in their areas, and they usually write journal articles that are very dense and very boring. I've written many of them myself. It's just, it's what the system is, it's not a critique of an individual. Nobody wants to read a journal article. There's no academic who takes them on their beach vacation. But this is what you have to write. And we publish them in peer-reviewed academic journals that circulate in university libraries. So basically, there's all this research that people spend all their lives doing that nobody likes reading and nobody in the public has access to. I've always thought that's insane. So that there's got to be a better system or at least an alternative for people who want it. And so I discovered arts-based research, which I did not invent. People credit me with that all the time. It's not true. I did not coin the term. Art educator Elliot Eisner and one of his writing partners, Tom Barone, coined that term in the very early 90s. And basically, it just means that researchers in any field can use the arts doing their research andor sharing their research with the public. For example, a psychology researcher might do some kind of study on something. And instead of just writing a journal article, maybe they would write a play and put that on in a community center. Or healthcare researchers who are studying aftercare for cardiac surgery patients, which is one of the most painful kinds of surgery. They might take their research and instead of just writing a journal article, they might create a visual art display that could be housed in hospitals. Those examples, by the way, are real examples of studies that have happened and arts-based research that has happened. For me, I started taking the research I had done as a sociologist about women's lives and relationships. I had done interview research for a decade, interviewed hundreds of women and written many boring articles about it. And I decided, what if I took some of these lessons and themes and created composite characters and wrote fiction? But I've written short stories and novels that are rounded in the research I've done over the years. And it's so funny because one of the biggest compliments that I get about my novels is this rings so true. I feel like this is my own life. And the reason it does is because I have experience studying people, real people and their real lives. And I use that as one of the tools in my toolkit when I'm writing a novel. But arts based research, it merges the arts and the sciences. There's this incredible Organization that I want to plug because I just love them. It's called the London Arts Based Research Centre. Anyone who wants to learn about Arts Based Research, I'm not, I don't run it, I'm not an owner or anything. They asked me to be on their advisory board, and I am, because it's the best organization I've seen on arts-based research. The London Arts Based Research Center, L A B R C, and they offer webinars, conferences, book events. They offer things both online and in person. They offer free events and paid events. And it's really incredible. They have a community of artists and researchers from truly around the globe. I've done many events for them, both free and paid, and had people join from Africa and Australia and Europe and Canada and the United States and all in one session to talk about whatever the topic of the session is. So it's really incredible.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

How has writing fiction changed the way that you think as a scholar?

SPEAKER_03 23:36

That's a great question. I think I think when you write fiction, you develop compassion for people on an even deeper level. And it's hard to explain in unless you're a creative person. Creative people understand that. But I love them. And I understand their backstories and I understand their motivations. And I understand that we are all imperfect and we are all in progress. And when you develop true love for characters who are really messed up sometimes or who do things that you think are wrong or you don't agree with, it just helps you build compassion for people so that you start to think about when you see and hear things that you don't like, what is that person going through? What are those people going through? What is their perspective? Where are they coming from? And I think that's hugely important as a scholar because I think, look, as a sociologist, you're doing research on human beings and how society functions. And sometimes you can get rigid in your thinking and you can forget that the reason that different groups do different things is because of where they're coming from and that they have different struggles that you might not understand and you might not agree with their choices, but they are coming from something. And so I think fiction has given me that. And I also think it's just made me a better writer. In fiction, you have to, every word counts. And I am a huge fan. I like to write short novels. My books are like 200 pages. I want every single word to matter. That's just what I like to read. So it's what I like to write. And with when you're an academic, you ramble, you use ridiculously big, stupid words, you do all kinds of nonsense. And I think I become a much better nonfiction writer, much more concise, much clearer. I think I've become a better speaker. I do keynote addresses and stuff at conferences around the world. And I think I've become a much better speaker to all different kinds of groups because fiction forces you to think about every word in a way you don't actually have to do in nonfiction. I think it's the opposite of what a lot of people might think. So I think it's made me more compassionate and it's made me a better thinker and writer.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

What is your advice for someone who has been the victim of cancel culture?

SPEAKER_03 25:57

Oh, look, I am sorry because I'm not a proponent of cancel culture. And I am a proponent of the Me Too movement and women sharing their stories. So just to be clear, because these things have become falsely polarized in our society, as so many things have become, in my opinion, falsely polarized. You can be an absolute proponent of Me Too and women sharing their stories and those stories being heard and not agreeing with the idea of harming someone's career or their life based on rumors or allegations. I think that is so dangerous. And it's really easy to get on board with that when it's someone you think you don't like because you think you know something about them. But it's really dangerous. And it doesn't just happen to celebrities. Kids in high school and kids in middle school, there are kids who have committed suicide because other kids spread rumors about them, put it on Facebook, and they kill themselves. It's real, it's serious. So I think harming people's lives with rumors and allegations is problematic. I also believe in due process. And so I don't believe that in hanging people in town squares. And I think a lot of people who are proponents of cancel culture are the very people who would be against the idea of stoning someone to death in a town square. So I don't understand why they don't see it's the same thing. And again, I'm a huge advocate of me too and women sharing their stories. I just don't see these things as opposed. So the best thing I can say to anyone who has been subjected to cancel culture or just feeling that way. It doesn't have to be on a big grand scale, but just feeling misunderstood or feeling like there's gossip about them or people are saying things about them that isn't true is the best thing you can do is to live your authentic life. That is all you can do. And time tells. And some of these people that are accused of things and the whole internet goes after them, yeah, I'm sure some of them, time will tell that they've done horrible things. And so let that be the judge, or let it be a judge in a court or some other appropriate setting, depending on what they've done. It's also problematic, cancel culture to me, just as an artist, because like how do we link the art and the artist? And I think this is a hugely, hugely important question that people just don't like talking about. It makes them uncomfortable. But how do we link the art and the artist? And what do we do now? If we've decided, okay, if we don't like an artist, we therefore can't like their art, what does that actually mean? Are we gonna go into all the museums in the world and start doing backstories on everyone who has a painting hanging there? Are we gonna go every book that ever won an award? Are we gonna start digging into the life of the author? And what are we looking for? Are we looking for crimes? Are we looking for accusations? Are we looking for they're a good person or a bad person? What does that mean? Who gets to decide? I could go on and on. And so I am, you know, I do think, and I don't have the answers, but I do think just this idea of automatically like lumping the art and the artist together is problematic. And we're not going back and looking at all the art that's been created for throughout history, it seems to be a very of the moment thing that is happening. And so there's just this question about fairness and who's going to be targeted. And when it's somebody that you feel like, oh yeah, I had a bad feeling about them, or I don't like them. So it just hits you the right way. You're willing to get on board with it. But what about when it's not someone like that? Or what about when there are dire consequences? You look at this academic from Cambridge University who just committed suicide. I think the story is absolutely devastating. And look, I have no idea, and I'm not going to pass judgment on what he may or may not have done wrong. I know there's allegations of plagiarism. I know there's allegations of fabrication in his life story, none of which is okay if those things are true. And I'll tell you, you'll meet very few people that have suffered more from plagiarism than I have. I published over 50 books. Every single book I've written has, in part or in whole, been plagiarized and been stolen. So believe me, I have no love loss for people who steal other people's work or misrepresent their words. That being said, it's irrelevant to me in this situation. What happened is absolutely egregious. I was in academia long enough to know how certain people are targeted and other people are not. I absolutely think there was incredible and obvious racism at play in this incident. I also think for any lay citizen, this is not a politician, this is not somebody who is meant to have a public life in that way, for any lay citizen to get the amount of media coverage and negative media coverage that this professor got in an incredibly short amount of time had to be just incredibly overwhelming. I also question if there was fabrication or any other issues with his memoir. There was a whole publishing team involved in that. Like, why is nobody talking about that? This was not a self-published book. This was a book published by a major publishing house. And I can tell you when that happens, there is a team of people. There were copy editors and development editors and who knows who else, marketing people. So how this all ended up on the foot of this one young man with this incredible and incredible public scrutiny of his life is just incredible. And I can tell you that very few academics could withstand it if people actually went through their entire body of work and checked every line on their CV and went through every article at every book. And I wrote something about this on social media and I had a got a lot of nasty things in response. But ironically, some of the people who posted nasty things in response are people that I know have stolen my work. And I'm like, I know some of these people, they have illegally photocopied chapters of my books and distributed them completely against copyright law, completely illegal. I know some of these people have published books and articles using my entire citation list from books I previously published. So give me a break. This is all stealing. Okay. And people don't want to look at that, but it's all stealing. So all of these people who were saying, well, he did something wrong, you know what? I think a lot of those people need to look in the mirror with a really critical eye. But I think more importantly, as a culture, we need to look with a compassionate eye that regardless of whatever happened, why did this hunt for this one man happen? How did it happen? Is it reasonable how it happened? And the answer is no, it's not, because he's dead. Clearly, it's not. And so I think cancel culture is extremely dangerous and it doesn't just affect celebrities. And I think that anybody who is cheering for somebody to kill themselves, which I can tell you from the Facebook post I posted, that I never had to block so many people or delete so many comments, and then I had to change the privacy settings. I can tell you that there are people cheering for someone to be in so much pain that they commit suicide over something which is basically reputational harm. Okay. That is really what this was about. This is not about someone who hurt anyone. There was nobody's being accused of violent crimes or abuse. At best, there's reputational harm. So there is something very disturbed and ugly in our culture right now that people jump on that bandwagon like they are clapping when somebody who might have professionally made a mistake is being harassed to death. Something very deeply wrong. So I'm sorry for that tangire, but you you poked a bear.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

What do you hope that people will take away from their encounter with Sugarsand Land?

SPEAKER_03 33:54

I hope that the love in the book lives inside of them in whatever way that happens, and in whatever way they choose to carry forward.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

A beautiful conclusion. The website, Patricia Levy.com. The book is Sugarsand Land, written by our special guest, Dr. Patricia Levy, great sociologist, an author of over 50 books, a best-selling author, and an amazing human being. Patricia, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Thank you so much for having me. In conversation with Terry Shepard, it's a copyrighted presentation. All rights reserved. I'm Lisa Davis. Join Terry Shepard next time in Conversation.