Author Stories Podcast Episode 701 | Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg Interview


Today’s author interview guest is Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg. Jeanne returns to the show to talk about her new book The Nine.

Hannah Webber fears she will never be a mother, but her prayers are finally answered when she gives birth to a son. In an era of high-stakes parenting, nurturing Sam’s intellect becomes Hannah’s life purpose. She invests body and soul into his development, much to the detriment of her marriage. She convinces herself, however, that Sam’s acceptance at age fourteen to the most prestigious of New England boarding schools overseen by an illustrious headmaster, justifies her choices.

When he arrives at Dunning, Sam is glad to be out from under his mother’s close watch. And he enjoys his newfound freedom―until, late one night, he stumbles upon evidence of sexual misconduct at the school and is unable to shake the discovery.

Both a coming-of-age novel and a portrait of an evolving mother-son relationship, The Nine is the story of a young man who chooses to expose a corrupt world operating under its own set of rules―even if it means jeopardizing his mother’s hopes and dreams.

Jeanne Blasberg is the author of Eden, winner of the Beverly Hills Book Awards for Women’s Fiction and finalist for both the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Fiction and the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Historical Fiction. Edenwas released in May 2017 by She Writes Press.

After graduating from Smith College, Jeanne embarked on a career in finance. Even as she worked primarily with numbers, she always had an interest in writing. She made stops on Wall Street, Macy’s, and wrote case studies at Harvard Business School before turning seriously to fiction. She has kept a journal throughout her life, eventually taking inspiration from her childhood writings to pen her first novel, Eden.

Jeanne is the founder of the Westerly Memoir Project as well as a board member of the Boston Book Festival. She is a student and board member of Grub Street, one of the country’s pre-eminent creative writing centers where she wrote and revised her second novel, The Nine which will be released by She Writes Press in August 2019.

Jeanne and her husband split their time between Boston, MA and Westerly, RI. They love to travel, hike, ski, and spend time on the water. She caught the travel bug during a three-year stint in Europe. She’s found that her power of observation is the strongest on foreign soil, providing ample inspiration for her personal essays and travel writing.

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