S’mores (Bonus Episode)—Let’s Talk, with Anna Sale
“It doesn’t give you the answer, but it gives you a sense of company.”
About the Guest
Anna Sale is author of Let’s Talk About Hard Things. She’s also creator and host of Death, Sex, & Money, the award-winning podcast from WNYC Studios, where she’s been doing interviews about “the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more” since 2014. Before that, she covered politics for public radio for years. She grew up in West Virginia and lives in the East Bay in California with her husband and two daughters.
Best Books
Let’s Talk About Hard Things, by Anna Sale.
Anna recommended:
Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner.
Transcript
Intro - 58:13
BLAIR HODGES: Welcome back to Fireside with Blair Hodges. I’ve been working on season 2, getting it ready for later this year. But right now I’ve got a real treat—it’s a bonus episode featuring a wonderful journalist and podcaster whose work has informed my own. Her name is Anna Sale and you might know her from the award-winning podcast Death, Sex, & Money from WNYC Studios.
During the pandemic she released a great book called Let’s Talk About Hard Things. It’s all about how we can do better at talking about hard things like death, sex, money, family, and identity. The paperback comes out this month, you can grab a copy using the link in the show notes or at your favorite local bookseller.
Let’s get right to it, it’s a bonus episode of Fireside with Blair Hodges featuring Anna Sale and in this discussion we talk about discussing.
Urgency - 1:06
BLAIR HODGES: Anna Sale, welcome to Fireside. I'm so glad to meet you.
ANNA SALE: Oh, thank you for having me.
BLAIR HODGES: We're talking about the book you recently released, it's called Let's Talk About Hard Things. And the timing seemed pretty good for this book to come out. It came out during COVID. So this is a time when, I think, a lot of people were having difficult conversations. What was it like putting a book out during this weird time?
ANNA SALE: Oh, I didn't just put it out during a weird time—I finished it during a weird time. So it was very strange. You know, I worked on this book for a number of years before the pandemic. And then I was doing final edits while I was isolated with my family, parts of it without childcare. And if I thought that there were hard things that all of us were going through before, they just got harder and harder!
BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah.
ANNA SALE: Part of the thesis of the book is that hard things have always been a part of life, from the beginning of human civilization. What I think is changing and making hard interpersonal conversations more urgent is that the sort of ways that institutions and rituals—at least in American society especially—those have receded in a way, where we are more on our own when hard things smash into our lives.
I think about the decline in church membership, or church participation. Or about the ways in which we manage our money. You know, it's us on our laptops, figuring out what to do with our credit card debt, student loan bills, etcetera. So we're more on our own as we figure out this stuff. So the onus is on each of us as individuals more to reach out to one another, to help each other through.
And that means leaning in more to awkward conversations where you are acknowledging hard things. And certainly COVID showed that to all of us. You know, when you have a phone conversation with somebody you haven't talked to in six months, because you haven't seen them at the office in the way you used to, or if you were going into work the whole time the way that you work is so different with masks and not hanging out afterwards and going to a bar.
BLAIR HODGES: Right.
ANNA SALE: You’ve got to say like, “How are you doing? Yeah, I'm–yeah, things are rough here, too.” And then how do you have that conversation?
So I feel like the urgency for the book was just reinforced, unfortunately, by all these things compounding. Hard things in our lives and the necessity of talking about hard things in our lives.
A boring divorce - 3:22
BLAIR HODGES: All of that just reminded me of the epigraph in the book here. It's from Sarah Schulman, a novelist and an activist, and she wrote, “The values required for social repair are the same values required for personal repair.” Your book begins with that, you put that right at the beginning. What did you want to say with that?
ANNA SALE: Yeah, I love that quote, because it's sort of like you have the Self Help section of the bookstore, and then you have the History, or Society and Culture section of the bookstore. And part of what I wanted to say with this book is, “You all: this skill set? This applies to it all,” you know?
If you feel like you can't face the political news, or what's going on as far as polarization and our inability to talk about differences and encounter them with one another and say “I disagree, what can we agree on,” that is the same skill of figuring out how to establish what kind of relationship you want to have with your parents, you know, as you grow up.
And that takes skillful conversation. That takes listening. It takes the self-awareness to be able to take in information and say, “Okay, they're telling me this. I don't agree. How am I going to indicate that I don't agree? How much do I want to take care of this relationship while I indicate that I don't agree? How am I going to breathe while I figure that out while I'm in this conversation so I don't just go into my defensive, rage-fueled mode of conversation of feeling attacked?
That's all the same skill. So that Sarah Schulman quote really spoke to that idea for me.
BLAIR HODGES: And your book demonstrates it over and over with real stories from real people that you've talked to who talked about difficult conversations that they've had about issues like death and sex and money and identity and family. And you also host Death, Sex and Money, this is a great podcast from WNYC Studios. So you've kind of made a career out of fostering these types of conversations. I wanted to take a second to talk about, on that line, your “boring divorce.”
ANNA SALE: [laughs]
BLAIR HODGES: And I should say, those are your words, those aren't mine! You're the one that called it that, so.
But it's this idea that you've long believed in the power of words to get at the truth, ever since you were a kid. I feel like I'm a kindred spirit with you on this. And then when you became a political reporter, that informed your work, that the right questions could get you there. But then when you had your boring divorce, that seemed to not hold up very well anymore, that belief in the ability to get at truth through words.
ANNA SALE: Yeah. And get at resolution through words.
BLAIR HODGES: Right.
ANNA SALE: I think in my boring divorce, what I came to sort of realize through writing the book is, oh, we didn't get divorced because we didn't somehow successfully have hard conversations. We had hard conversations, and that led us to the truth of—our marriage wasn't going to last forever. Didn't need to last forever. We could separate because we wanted different things. But for me, that was a very—it was boring. And I say it was boring—
BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah.
ANNA SALE: I got that idea from a Nora Ephron essay that I read shortly after my divorce. She was describing her first divorce, I think. And she described it as “boring” because they didn't have children, and they only had a cat that they had to figure out how to take care of together, and it was fairly, like, “you take your stuff, I take my stuff—"
BLAIR HODGES: Cat custody, yeah.
ANNA SALE: So that was my divorce. We didn't have kids, so we were able to separate, move—we didn't have to do anything together afterwards. We didn't have to fight over anything of much consequence, because we didn't have much money or any kids. So—[laughs]
BLAIR HODGES: Which isn't to say it didn't hurt either, right? I should say—
ANNA SALE: Oh yeah, boring things can hurt, yeah.
BLAIR HODGES: Like, you talk about it being a really wrenching thing.
ANNA SALE: Oh yeah. Yeah, it was very sad for me. And it also was about, for me, facing for the first time, like, who I thought I was, quote, unquote, or what my values were. And what did it look like when life events turned me into a person that I didn't think I would ever be?
I'd never think I would be a divorcee. You know? I thought I was—Anna Sale is someone who believes in family, and sticks by her commitments, and she doesn't get divorced! She doesn't fail at things. And I had to update that self-image. And I since have come to think, for me, I don't see my first marriage as a failure. Even though it ended, I see it as a marriage that ended in a way I didn't expect. But if it hadn't happened, the rest of my life wouldn't have unfolded the way it has. And I'm quite happy with how my life has unfolded. So yeah, but it was still–still boring. [laughter]
BLAIR HODGES: I liked seeing you talk about this, because you talk about how conversations you had with people—trying to work through your feelings, trying to work through how to even think about what was happening to you—how those conversations helped you. But you still had a bit of vertigo about it. It didn't give you all the answers, it didn't solve things. But it surprised me that those conversations are what led, in part, to Death, Sex, and Money as a show. This idea that having these conversations about basic sort of existential things could be healing, even if it didn't provide immediate resolution.
ANNA SALE: Yeah, I think that is such a really key finding for me was, you know, anytime you're in a moment of uncertainty in life, you might kind of cast about for, where's the answer? Where's the thing that's going to fix this uncertainty? And for me, the way I do that is I talk to people, I read books, I say, “oh, what was it like when you were, you know, deciding to take this new job?” Or “what was it like when you were deciding what to study in college?” Like, just how did you figure out these moments of transition?
And the fuel for that is like, once I talked to just the right person and ask just the right question, they're going to tell me what to do. But that's never what happens.
BLAIR HODGES: You'll get the revelation! But no, it doesn't come.
ANNA SALE: Yeah! [laughs] Instead, what you get—and what I think actually is really valuable and why it's worth saying, like, "I don't know what I'm doing, tell me about when you didn't know what you were doing"—is then you just, it doesn't give you the answer, but it gives you a sense of company. And that, for me, gave me more bravery. Because it was like, oh, I'm not doing anything wrong. This is not an unnatural–this is a perfectly appropriate set of feelings to have in this moment of change. And this is what happens when you're in a moment of change. And you can't control when the clarity comes, but the shift will come.
And it just–for me, those conversations lower the sense of panic, because it's like, okay, I just need to be in this time right now, because it's not going to be this way forever. That's what you get when you talk to people who have experienced profound loss or profound disappointment, or just, you know, thought that one life choice was going to lead to one thing and it led to another thing instead. It just kind of dials back the stakes, we can live with the discomfort a little bit more.
BLAIR HODGES: I love how you said that. That's exactly why I wanted to talk to you here because that's what Fireside is doing. It's called Fireside because it's like these intimate conversations that we have around a little campfire where there's this warming glow, but we're also kind of surrounded by the wilderness. And it's a little scary beyond the edge of where the light ends. But we're here together, and we're trying to find comfort. And you know, we can have some s'mores and pass around the marshmallows too.
ANNA SALE: [laughs]
Shaken faith in the power of conversation - 10:25
BLAIR HODGES: I think to hear you explain it that way is really useful.
That's Anna Sale. We're talking about her new book, Let's Talk About Hard Things. She's also creator and host of Death, Sex, and Money, the award-winning podcast from WNYC Studios. If you haven't checked out Death, Sex, and Money I highly recommend it. So many good conversations there.
Alright Anna, so you say in the book that hard conversations in real life are a lot trickier than they are on a podcast. I'm interested in the difference for you, because sometimes when I'm in conversations with people—like I'm out to dinner and I'm with friends, I don't feel like I'm slipping into podcast mode. You're having more personal conversations than I am on this show usually, so what's it like? You say it's trickier than the podcast so talk a little bit about what talking about things is like for you.
ANNA SALE: Yeah, I mean, I think I have learned a lot about having hard conversations in my real life from doing it as a journalist. I've learned about preparation. I've learned about pacing. I've learned about listening.
And I think it's—when I say it's trickier in real life, I think it’s because my own emotional reactions get activated when I have a dog in the fight in my own life, in a different way, than when I'm interviewing somebody who's—I don't personally care whether you chose to go into debt to try and start that new business, or, you know? I want to talk to you as a journalist about, “oh, tell me about making that choice. And how did you deal with that anxiety? And how did you figure out how to pay your rent in the meantime?”
That's curiosity. It's only fueled by curiosity and wanting to understand. If I'm talking to my spouse about like, should we go into debt to do, you know, this thing? [laughter] It's like, that's a whole different conversation for me.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah!
ANNA SALE: It's like, whoa, that's really uncomfortable.
And so but what I mean by doing it as a journalist, it's so helpful for me to remember—usually when conversation speeds up, or when you notice that there's conflict, you're not hearing each other, it's because I'm failing to make the space for the person I love to feel like I'm trying to understand what they're trying to say, you know?
So what I think is like, the best kind of hard conversation is when you can achieve that, like, “I really want to know why you see it this way, I want you to know that I love you, and I care about you, and I want to understand, and I also want to make space for you to hear how I see it differently.”
And if we can do that, to have a hard conversation where you can say, “I hear what you're saying, and I disagree”? Like, I think that is really—I just think that's really interesting and hard to achieve. And the reason I say the disagree part is because I think, you know, that's for the people out there who have the impulse to want to be a pleaser, you know, want to be sort of like tamp down conflict, tamp down hard things, be in denial. And I think that's not honoring the hard conversation that you need to have, right?
Like, if you see it differently, what's the way that you can say it to someone in the most, sort of just like, honest way, you can't control whether the person in your life can handle that? Maybe that person can't handle if you disagree with them.
BLAIR HODGES: Sure.
ANNA SALE: And that's on them, you know? But I think that that is—I wish there were more conversations, more examples in our culture of conversations where people say, “oh, you see it that way? Interesting. I disagree.” Like, huh! [laughter] We don't have to fight to the death, you know? Huh! Okay.
BLAIR HODGES: And in the past, I would be nodding my head vigorously. But I have to say, I come to you today as a person whose faith has been shaken over the past few years, my faith in the power of conversations to bring about change, or bring about connection.
And that's unexpected for me. One of the reasons I went for a master's degree in Religious Studies was to learn more about other faiths and learn about interfaith dialogue, and foster bridge-building and learn more about other cultures. And I felt like if I did that, I could understand more about other people, they might want to understand more about me. But the past five or so years I feel like has made me question whether I'm kind of fooling myself a little bit about the power of conversations—not with my own intimate circles, my partner and friends and stuff, but I'm saying with people I disagree with on big issues, political issues.
And I'm wondering, because I'm seeing conversations just break down, and I wonder if you've felt the same way, or if you can kind of, reinvigorate my faith in the power of conversation a little bit.
ANNA SALE: Yeah, I feel the same way. I mean, as I said that about like, “huh,” what would a conversation be like with a white nationalist, where you say, “Oh, you see it that way? Interesting. I disagree…”
BLAIR HODGES: Right!
ANNA SALE: You know, the reason—then the next step is like, oh, so who should be in power in Congress? Who should be making the choices for the future generations of people who live in the United States of America?
BLAIR HODGES: Or “should I still vote for that guy because I agree with this other stuff? And then I'll just bracket that out,” you know?
ANNA SALE: Exactly! You know, I think, for me, what the last several years of the tenor of the political debate and how what's happening in not just the US, but across the world, obviously, things like how power is expressed, and inequality, and all of these things are hugely consequential as far as whether the world is operating in a just way or not, and having a conversation between a person who has immense power and resources and somebody who has much less, and having them, you know, talk it out? That conversation is not going to change much materially or as far as the reality on the ground.
And so I don't make the argument that conversation alone is going to lead us to salvation. I do make the argument that whether you like it or not, we have to talk to one another. Like you know, maybe you're not going to want to have a conversation with the white nationalist, but the person who lives down the block who votes in local elections very differently than you do, but you've got to figure out what you're going to do for the roof and the school down the street that's falling in, and how that's gonna get paid for. You probably have to have a conversation with them.
And I think that we have gotten worse at that. Because we have other ways of throwing darts at one another, we're less practiced at, "I know that we don't see a lot of things on the same page, but like, you know, your kid goes to this school, my kid goes to the school, what's the way that we could handle this together?”
We have to be able to do some version of that conversation.
Navigating with privilege - 16:18
BLAIR HODGES: I feel like at the very least, I'm still inclined to want to talk to people. As you said, I'm still have a mind to try. And I think your book is one source that people can turn to, to get some ideas about how to have these hard conversations.
And I wondered what the hardest conversations are for you? Because on Death, Sex, and Money, you get to ask people all kinds of questions, and you get to talk about really difficult things. And so having the microphone turned around on you, I wonder what kind of things–where your hard conversations come from, maybe in a professional world and also in personal life perhaps?
ANNA SALE: Yeah. I mean, I think I, in my professional realm, I don't know if it's the hardest, but I would say where I feel the least surefooted is conversations around, like, identity and privilege, and how to think about my role as an interviewer, especially when I'm talking across some key difference of identity, right?
Because when you're an interviewer, you are the one who's framing the question. So if you use the term, who's centering what? I'm—I can be trying my hardest to not center my own experience in the world. But if I'm coming up with the question, how do I ask it in a way that's going to elicit the truest answer that's not just like responding to the way that I've framed it. Do you know what I mean?
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I do.
ANNA SALE: I think of those conversations so much as really trying to indicate: “I might have this wrong. Is this how you see it? When I–when I have encountered this, this is how I experienced in the world as a white woman, I realize you move through the world differently, what has it been like for you?”
I think I'm still learning how to do that the best way, and how not to impose my own worldview on somebody who's had a very different experience moving through the world. Because I want to understand—the point of the interview is to understand more about their experience. That's why I'm interviewing them, you know?
BLAIR HODGES: Right. On Death, Sex, and Money you recently had an episode with some panelists, and there were people, different sexualities, different gender identities, and it was great because none of you seem to be the expert, or necessarily even steering everything. I mean, you're the host, and so you kind of helped things move along. But it was great to hear different perspectives, talking about what relationships during COVID looked like. So I want to give a plug for that episode, because I think it shows the efforts that you're making as a host.
And I'm like you, I'm a white person, I'm cis-gendered, heterosexual, and so I've thought a lot about those questions. I feel like you've done a lot of good work on your show, and your book even addresses this too.
But I also laugh a little bit, because of all the answers you've given me, that was the one where you were like wrestling through it the most like, more pauses, more—
ANNA SALE: Yeah! I don't want to say the wrong thing, you know? I’m learning!
BLAIR HODGES: Oh, I know. I do know.
ANNA SALE: Right?
Personal conversations - 18:52
BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so that's professional. And then I’d asked you about personal, too. So go ahead.
ANNA SALE: Well, personal hard conversations are when it's hot, when it's hot with people I love. When there's a conflict revealed that I didn't know was there, or a hurt that I didn't know was there. Those are hard. Those are hard for me because I want to both sort of have direct, honest, conversations about what's going on. And then also realize the value of slowing down and taking a breath when your reactiveness is getting ahead of your sense of what's going on.
So that's–those are much harder than anything in my professional life. Because, you know, I have a big part of my ego that likes to be right, that likes to win. And, you know, when you're in that kind of conversation where you're not on the same page with somebody you care about, it's not fun.
There was this great–my husband is an ecologist, and he spends a lot of time talking to ranchers, and we were talking to a rancher named Kyle Farmer a few weeks ago in California.
BLAIR HODGES: Oh wow. [laughs]
ANNA SALE: And he was–it was so cool. We were talking about my book. And he was like, “I like to think about conversations in my marriage as prescribed burns, like hard conversations as prescribed burns.” And, you know, for somebody who doesn't think about wildfires, if you don't live in California, with prescribed burns, the idea is you've got to burn the fuel on a regular basis in a controlled way so you don't have these conflagrations that destroy everything. And I love that metaphor. Because it's like, okay, this doesn't feel good. This conversation then has conflict, like with my spouse, or with my sister, or whatever, but we got to do this because otherwise it's gonna come back in four years and could burn down everything.
The value of preparation - 20:38
BLAIR HODGES: That's Anna Sale. She's creator and host of Death, Sex, and Money, the award-winning podcast from WNYC Studios where she’s been creating incredible discussions since 2014. And she's recently published a book called Let's Talk About Hard Things.
Okay, Anna, as you put this book together, I'm wondering if there's any advice that you learned while doing the book, or an interesting thing that you got out of this process that listeners might be interested to hear? People that are thinking about having hard conversations and are wondering what kind of advice you would give about having hard conversations.
ANNA SALE: I think the most important tip I have for a hard conversation, if you have that ache in your gut that you're like, “ugghh, something, I gotta, how am I going to address this thing?” So if you know you need to bring something up, I think it's really important to take some time to prepare and just get clear on “so I feel that feeling, how can I put into words: why do I want to have this conversation? Do I feel like I'm withholding or keeping a secret from someone I love? Is there something they're doing that is hurting me that they don't realize? Do I feel like something has changed, and you know, this relationship, the terms of it need to change?”
I think really spending time to sort of be like, “oooh, what do I want to express?” And in that way, you can at least have in your head, what is the sentence that I think I might be ready to say, you know? “I need to tell you something important that I feel sad that I've not told you yet.”
And then when you begin that conversation, I think often when you start a hard conversation, it can be easy to be like, “Oh, I have to tell you something, but I feel like you're gonna be a little bit unnerved, or I hope that's okay, and I don't know if this is a good time or whatever.” And as soon as you say, “I need to tell you something,” the other person is saying like, holy moly, like what is this?
BLAIR HODGES: Triggered, yeah.
ANNA SALE: Yeah. So I think, to the extent that you can, to start a hard conversation by saying, “I need to talk to you about something important, is now a good time?” And then if they say yes, then you say, “here's the thing I need to tell you,” you just say the thing, right? Because this whole preamble of like “I want to, I'm having anxiety, and I want to manage your feelings, and I hope this isn't bad. And dada-dada-da” then it's like, no, just say the thing, and then take a breath. Because you don't know how they're gonna react. They might surprise you. So I think that's really important tactical advice.
The other thing that I really came away from all of the interviews of the book thinking about a lot was how useful—in life, in conversation, in your own sense of yourself—how useful it can be, to think to yourself something like, “I am sad, and this is the right thing,” both/and, you know? Or “I wish I could fix this both/and I know I can't fix this.”
Like, the idea of having two opposing emotions, two contradictory feelings, both of those things can be true, and you don't have to choose. And I think an example for that is like, if you're trying to comfort somebody who is experiencing deep grief, after a loss, you may have this feeling of like, “I so wish I could fix this feeling of sadness for you, I so wish I could tell you, you'll get through this, it's all going to be okay.” You might have that impulse. And you can't. Like, so just accept, you have this feeling you want to fix it, you can't fix it. The feeling that you want to fix it as an expression of love that you have for this person. But trying to fix it, you're not allowing the truth, which is you can't bring somebody back who's gone. And when you do try to, you know, sort of like shave down the depths of that sadness, instead what you're doing is saying, “I'm not actually here to hear about how painful this is for you.”
Managing feelings - 24:24
BLAIR HODGES: Hmm. That's helpful. I do have to ask one follow-up, which is for that managing of feelings thing that you mentioned, what's your advice for people who have adopted that kind of approach because they're used to strong reactions from the person they're talking to and so, prefacing it with all that, like, “okay, I'd like to tell you something, but I don't want you to be mad or whatever,” that kind of thing is usually a result of feeling scared or feeling intimidated by the person on the other side of the conversation. What's your advice for that?
ANNA SALE: I know! You know, I think that if you have that impulse, that's telling you “I'm afraid how this person is going to react,” but you saying to this person—if somebody who's been mad in the past or has flashes of anger in conversation with you—you saying, “I hope this doesn't make you mad, but,” and then you say a thing that's going to make them mad, you think, they’re probably still going to get mad! [laughter]
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.
ANNA SALE: And so, it's more like “ugh, I noticed that I'm afraid they're gonna get angry.” Then you go into this conversation, if you can prepare yourself to kind of feel like you have both feet on the ground, and they might respond with anger, and it's gonna feel either scary or unsafe, but that's not–that's how they're responding. I'm not responsible for that. You're responsible for delivering whatever thing you need to express in the most direct and loving and compassionate way. You are not responsible for managing if they have an unhealthy reaction to that.
BLAIR HODGES: Yes.
ANNA SALE: You can't, you know? But I will say there's some people you just–if you have a pattern of interactions with somebody where you're like, “oh, if I tell them this, it's gonna be, they're gonna be explosive. You're gonna come back at me with explosive fury,” that's not a safe person.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. You probably need to address that before the other thing that you feel you need to address.
I did see a headline for a thing that I want to read and open a tab for amongst my hundreds of thousands of tabs that I'll probably never read. But it was something along the lines of: “My partner and I only initiate difficult conversations by text and then move into talking directly, because then they can get some of that preliminary stuff out of the way.”
I don't know if that's a good idea or not, I haven't tried it, but maybe I'll read that one. [laughs]
ANNA SALE: I'm not against it! You know? I don't think hard conversations need to all be face-to-face or in person. I think that, you know, depending on how you–that can be a very—you can follow up by text too, I think that can be really effective. Maybe you sort of like, in the moment it's too intense and hot. And then you can come back around with words and say, “I know we're gonna keep this conversation going, I just want to let you know I love you,” like that can be very meaningful, you know?
BLAIR HODGES: I agree. That's Anna Sale. Her book is called Let's Talk About Hard Things. It's a wonderful book. And if you check it out, you'll see real examples of real people that Anna has talked to, a lot more specific than we were able to get into today. I highly recommend this book. It's a great way to think about issues like death and sex, money, identity, family—a lot of the hardest conversations we have to face. So Anna, I want to take a quick break and come right back for our best book recommendation. We'll be right back.
Best books - 27:21
BLAIR HODGES: We're back with Anna Sale, it's Fireside with Blair Hodges. And today we talked about the book Let's Talk About Hard Things. But now it's time to talk about another book. And I don't know what it is because it's Anna's turn to talk about best books.
Anna, what book do you have to recommend today?
ANNA SALE: You know, I want to recommend the novel Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. And I actually haven't read it in years. But I was just thinking about it this week, because I have a friend who's going through some medical treatments and has to rest a lot. And she was like, “what should I read?” And that book just like flashed, I was like, “oh, I have loved that book.” I love that book.
It takes place in two different periods of time. I believe it's kinda latter half of the nineteenth century in the US and then I think in the seventies in California. In the seventies in California it's a male lead character and the kind of nineteenth century part is a woman who's coming out to settle part of the West. And it's all about, sort of, change and relationships and what you can control and what you can’t, and I just was like, hmm, this seems like a book that I was comforted by in a time of a lot of change in my life. And maybe for my friend who's recovering it will just allow a sense of both company and perspective. It's a beautiful book, it's beautifully written.
BLAIR HODGES: I love that. I have to admit—this is so sad—I haven't read any Stegner before and I own several Wallace Stegner books that I haven't gotten to yet. So you're pushing me in that direction. I think I'm going to commit to check that one out. Thanks so much, Anna. Again, your book is called Let's Talk About Hard Things. And thank you so much for spending the time with us here at Fireside.
ANNA SALE: Sure! Thank you, Blair.
Outro - 28:54
BLAIR HODGES: Fireside with Blair Hodges is sponsored by the Howard W. Hunter Foundation—supporters of the Mormon Studies program at Claremont Graduate University in California. It’s also supported by the Dialogue Foundation. A proud part of the Dialogue Podcast Network.
This show is recorded, produced, and edited by me, Blair Hodges, in Salt Lake City. Special thanks to my production assistant, Kate Davis who created the transcript and also helped with some of the audio editing.
Our theme music is by Deep Sea Diver, you can check them out at thisisdeepseadiver.com.
Thanks for joining me for this bonus episode. Fireside with Blair Hodges returns a little later this year. You can get updates on Twitter and Instagram, or just keep watching your feed because this is the place where we fan the flames of curiosity about life, faith, and culture together.
[End]
NOTE: Transcripts have been lightly edited for readability.