AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg

​Jeanne Blasberg is an award-winning and bestselling author and essayist. Her most recent book, The Nine (She Writes Press 2019) was honored with the 2019 Foreword Indies Gold Award in Thriller & Suspense, and the Gold Medal and Juror’s Choice in the 2019 National Indie Excellence Awards, among others. Her debut novel, Eden (She Writes Press 2017), won the Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Best New Voice in Fiction and was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Historical Fiction. Blasberg founded the Westerly Writer’s Workshop and sits on the boards of the Boston Book Festival and GrubStreet, one of the country’s preeminent creative writing centers. Her essays have been featured in Zibby Owen’s Moms Don’t Have Time To, as well as in The Huffington Post, Indagare, Grown and Flown, diyMFA, The Jewish Book Council, and many others. Blasberg also reviews contemporary fiction for the New York Journal of Books and is a 2021-22 Southampton Arts Bookends Fellow. She and her husband have three grown children and split time between New England and the American West. 

Q: Tell us a little about DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE and what inspired you to write your third novel.
Answer: As in the past, I’ve taken inspiration from ancient bible story. This time, I’ve written a retelling of the story of David and Bathsheba. Full of ambition and desire, this contemporary version is set against the high-stakes world of investment banking. It’s the first time I’ve written a novel entirely in the first person, and I’d like to think I’ve been working up to in order to fully portray the inner workings of my heroine, Betsabé Ruiz.

In addition to giving voice to a woman who had none in the original story, I have long held an interest in drawing upon the revelations I had right out of college as a baby banker on Wall Street.
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Q: Would you call it a sequel to your previous two?
Answer: After the success of my debut, EDEN, in 2017 my agent along with readers encouraged me to write a follow up. That’s not what I did with THE NINE, although there is some overlapping of setting in the two novels. Although I wrote DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE as a stand-alone read, I’m certain those clamoring for a sequel will be satisfied. Betsabé Ruiz is roommates and close friends with Rae Stern, the baby born in the last scene of EDEN. Their relationship gives fans of EDEN another glimpse into the women and the family they already know.

Q: Some describe DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE as an unconventional love story. In what ways does it break the rules?
Answer: My novel is a love story in the traditional sense that a woman and a man meet, have a strong attraction, and fall in love. Their relationship, however, is unconventional due to the significant age gap between Betsabé and David. They are aware of what it looks like and that they are risking a scandal. Then comes the pandemic and their ability to sequester together, allows their bond to incubate. Betsabé finds herself searching for the correct vocabulary to describe what they have. In a world where such relationships are coined disparagingly with expressions such as gold-digger, sugar-daddy, or baby-mama, Betsabé has a hard time knowing if what she really feels is love.

DAUGHTER OF A PROMISE is about more than just romantic love. Over the course of a year, Betsabé is awakened by close, female best-friendship with Rae; by maternal love for her son in utero; as well as by a true love of self. It is all of these types of love combined that spur her growth and promise for the future.

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Visit Jeanne on her website: 
www.jeanneblasberg.com
Join Jeanne on Faceboook: 
www.facebook.com/jeanneblasbergauthor
Follow Jeanne on Instagram: 
www.instagram.com/jeanneblasbergauthor
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LINK for BOOK:
https://www.amazon.com/Daughter-Promise-Jeanne-McWilliams-Blasberg/dp/1647426081​
UPCOMING EVENTS:
https://jeanneblasberg.com/news-events/events/