Narrative Threads: A Conversation on Crafting the Reunion Duology, Part the Fifteenth

 Jim has a sentimental nature and self-deprecating humor. How did these traits influence his interactions with other characters and the story’s overall tone?

Jim Garraty is pretty sentimental, a trait he got from his late mom, Sarah Garraty (and in real life, from me). It’s both a strength and a bit of a weakness for him. He cherishes sweet memories like the comfort of his mom’s hugs or that first kiss with Marty in Reunion: A Story just like a pirate hides a treasure chest on a deserted Caribbean island. But it also makes him quite susceptible to emotional wounds, like the breakup with Kathy Maraschino in ninth grade and the death of a key character that kicks off the Duology.

“Well, we don’t often get to talk like this. This is the first time we’ve ever spent time alone together, you know,” Marty replied in a gentle, reassuring tone. “I don’t know much about you, either, except that you sing well, and that you’ve always been nice to me.”

I blinked, not quite sure how to respond. Well, I could tell you that I think you’re quite possibly the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known, and that I wish we could be more than just singing partners, I thought. I bit my lip to squash the impulse to say something like that.

“There’s not much to tell about me,” I said instead. “I’m just a history nerd who likes to sing on the side.”

Marty’s hazel eyes twinkled with barely repressed mischief. “So, ‘just a history nerd,’ eh? I’m sure there’s more to you than that. You know what they say: ‘Still waters run deep,’ or something along those lines.”

“Well, maybe I oversimplified things a bit, but I’m nothing special,” I said, looking down at my shoes as if suddenly I needed to know if my shoelaces were untied, or my socks were mismatched. And, as I often did when I thought about Marty or saw her walking past me in the hallway on our way to class, I felt a hot flush rising from the back of my neck up to my cheeks and the tips of my ears.

(Reunion: Coda)

Jim’s self-deprecating humor, more apparent in Reunion: Coda than in the elegiac Reunion: A Story, emerged after high school when he moved to the Northeast for Harvard and later as a history professor in New York City. This humor, like his sentimentality, is inherited and serves as a way to manage adversities such as losing loved ones, his divorce, and balancing his academic duties with his literary career writing about World War II and other conflicts.   

I gave Jim these characteristics for two main reasons. First, they help to portray Jim as an “extraordinary yet wholly relatable man,” as one Amazon reviewer put it, making him a character who is both likable and credible. His sentimental nature shows his ability to give love, his desire to receive it in return, and his deep-seated empathy and respect for others. Secondly, his knack for self-deprecating humor – like telling Maddie that he was such a poor dancer as a teenager that his peers nicknamed him “Two Left Feet Jim,” or imitating Yoda to describe the high cost of parking in New York City – aims to make him leap off the page in a vivid and engaging way.