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The Only Way Through It Is Through It
Dying to Meet the Newcomer follows the aging residents of a tight-knit mountain community who encounter an oddly ageless newcomer that pushes them to confront grief, secrets, and their fear of growing old. What first sparked the idea for this story?
I am now seventy-three years old. A little over ten years ago, relatives, dear friends and neighbors, in their sixties, seventies, and eighties began to announce they’d been diagnosed with certain maladies. In several cases they were diseases which are quite rare. A person my husband and I had hiked with only a year-and-a-half before, was diagnosed with a disease so horrible, it is nicknamed “the suicide disease.”
Only a few years before that, people I typically only visited with once a year at the annual holiday party decided to form a neighborhood-wide women’s book club. Everyone was welcomed. Over the months and years, we revealed ourselves in deep and meaningful ways through our discussions of the books we read together. Acquaintances became dear friends. As I marvelled at the number of people I cared about who were suddenly suffering pain, disability, and death, it also struck me how much comfort we in the book club seemed to be taking from our now intimate friendships. I wanted to explore this.
It also feels to me that there are few novels which examine the complexities of aging. There are a number of excellent memoirs. And many novels address older protagonists looking back at what they did when they were young (especially their experiences during World War II). But I wanted to be a part of telling the frank, painful, and important story of aging today in America. How the only way through it is through it. And how that experience can be made bearable.
Sen is both ordinary and symbolic. How did you develop him, and is he meant to be read literally, metaphorically, or both?
The character, Sen, is meant to be read literally. The story is an account of what he did as he interacted with his new neighbors in Mountain Ridge Village. But the reader is meant to wonder who, or what, this mysterious man really is. The ending, however, is intended to be taken metaphorically. There is a broader meaning to all that has happened, and even Sen’s antagonist, Ann, understands this.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
First of all, I wanted to isolate the issue of old age. Therefore, I wrote the story so that the characters faced no issues of poverty, lack of education, racial disharmony, or prejudice based on sexuality. Characters include a gay couple, a Black couple, an Hispanic couple, and an elderly single woman. So many things help the elderly endure: humor, positivity, valued hobbies, and learning in every form. But deep social connection (even for introverts, like me) seems to be that which is most helpful in facing the inevitable pain and loss that comes with growing old.
Did writing this book change how you think about friendship or aging?
I’ve been thinking about these issues for quite some time. Writing the book reminded me that, if, as I believe, friendships are essential, then I have to make an effort. I need to keep in contact with dear friends who move away. Just “showing up” is actually a large part of making and maintaining meaningful friendships.
Dying to Meet the Newcomer
Dying to Meet the Newcomer follows Sen Smith, an oddly ageless newcomer who drifts into Mountain Ridge Village, a tight little community of long-time neighbors in the Virginia mountains, all now in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. Using garage sales, pastries, music, and simple conversation, he edges his way into the lives of couples like Robbie and Michael, Rose and Charlie, Betty, Ann and Albert, Jerry, Agatha, and the rest. As illnesses, grief, old secrets, and marital messes start piling up, the neighbors first lean on him, then grow wary, then flat-out suspicious, until some of them even mount a petition against him. By the time a magical Christmas gathering, a crown of light, and the reveal of his full name, Senectus, shift everything, it becomes clear that the real story is not about a mystery man at all. It is about a group of aging people learning how to move from polite “wave and smile” habits to real, scary, stubborn friendship in the face of old age.
The opening chapters move slowly, almost like a walk through the neighborhood, and that pace fits the material. The author lingers on small things. A tray of pastries on a blue sedan’s passenger seat. Moss between patio stones. The smell of marigolds and the way soil looks in different states. Those details made the place feel lived-in, and I liked sinking into it. I also liked that the prose is very clear. Simple on the surface, but with emotional weight tucked inside straight lines. A scene in the writing group where Sen talks about fiction as a kaleidoscope of our memories and lives stuck with me. The idea that “it is all true and none of it is” and that every time we remember something, we change it, fits so well with a story about people rewriting their own pasts in order to survive the present. The symbolism around Sen, especially once we learn what “Senectus” means, is not subtle. Some readers will love that clarity.
The book was very emotional. It treats aging as something hard and raw and not pretty, yet it never loses kindness. We see disability, betrayal, grief, and the slow grind of disease. We also see people who would rather keep it light and wave from the driveway finally admit that they are scared and lonely. The Christmas scene with the glowing light circling the neighbors while they sing is sentimental. I teared up. The story makes a big claim. That what saves you at the end is not perfect health or perfect behavior. It is other people who choose to stick around and hold your hand when things get ugly. I liked that the book lets Ann, the most suspicious character, be the one who finally names this truth out loud. It felt earned that the person who once tried to pin all the pain on Sen ends up saying, basically, “old age is just this rough, and we get through it together.” That arc made me oddly proud of her, like she was a real neighbor who had grown up in front of me.
I walked away feeling warm, a little wrung out, and honestly a bit challenged to look at the older people in my own life with more patience. The book is not twisty in the thriller sense, even though the title and early suspicion around Sen hint in that direction. It is more of a gentle, ensemble drama with a faint shimmer of the miraculous. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy neighborhood or book-club fiction that leans into character over plot, people who are interested in stories about aging, caregiving, and long marriages, and anyone who does not mind a story that wears its heart on its sleeve. If you like the idea of sitting in a cozy living room with a group of slightly nosy, relatable neighbors while they face the last big chapter of life together, you’ll enjoy this book.
Pages: 401
