D. Liebherr is a writer and a nurse. Her stories delve into the moral complexity of real life and ask readers to consider what they would do faced with the same situations. One reviewer described her work as “achingly real.” Life is not black and white. Fiction never should be.
Your background as a nurse brings a unique perspective to your writing. How has your experience in healthcare influenced the themes and characters in your novels, particularly in House on Fire?
Being a nurse, and specifically having been an ICU nurse (I’m not anymore), influenced not only the story I chose to tell in House on Fire but also how I chose to tell it. The novel is a deliberate juxtaposition of moral dilemmas. On the one hand in her role as an ICU nurse, the main character is required to prolong life to a degree that is questionable. On the other hand she’s being asked by her mother to help her father, who is living with dementia, die peacefully as he would have wished but there’s no mechanism to do this that isn’t fundamentally murder. The book is an active exploration of the values around preserving life at any cost, while at the same time a deeply personal story of a family dealing with dementia.
House on Fire deals with the sensitive topic of euthanasia and moral dilemmas surrounding end-of-life care. What inspired you to tackle such a controversial and emotional subject?
House on Fire is a story I had to tell because of my own family’s experiences. My father had vascular dementia and my mother often said, “If he would’ve known this was going to happen to him, he would’ve gone out in the backyard and blown his brains out.” That exact line appears in the book.
My dad never had a moment where he knew what was happening and could make a decision like that for himself. But my mother’s statement and my own experiences as a nurse compelled me to take it a step further. How would a real family deal with a situation where someone knew with all their heart that their loved one would rather be dead?
Something else I wanted to do was show nursing, dementia, and end-of-life in as real a way as possible while at the same time making them accessible and understandable to non-healthcare professionals. I have a strong interest in end-of-life issues and too often we shy away from these conversations. If one person talks to their loved ones about end of life issues after reading my book, that would be fantastic.
Family dynamics play a significant role in your stories. Could you discuss how you develop these complex relationships and the impact they have on your characters’ decisions?
My characters often start as amalgamations of people I know but pretty quickly morph into their own unique selves. I don’t know that I deliberately develop them a certain way but I write with a healthy respect for the complexity of the modern human experience. I don’t look for explanations and motivations that fit into a standardized story frame. I look for things that feel real. There’s certainly a time and place for tales that are pure entertainment but the many things that influence and drive human behavior are fascinating and diverse. I want readers to walk away from my stories feeling like they’ve been through an experience, a genuine one.
Feral Creatures of Suburbia explores the lengths mothers will go to protect their children. What drew you to explore this theme, and how did you approach balancing the characters’ maternal instincts with the challenges they face?
Like House on Fire, the stories in Feral Creatures of Suburbia, are based on real events. One parent finds out her son is a budding white supremacist. Another is trying to determine whether her daughter is truly suicidal. A third is struggling to protect her son from the truth of her terminal condition. I took these three very different situations and used them to explore the duality of trying to protect your children while knowing that is somewhat impossible. I find dualities fascinating: Actions to protect are sometimes harming. Efforts to find the right answer leads characters to do the wrong thing. Trying to control makes things careen off the cliff.
Your essay Thalassophobia won the Linda Julian Creative Nonfiction Prize. How does your approach differ when writing nonfiction versus fiction, and how does each genre inform the other in your writing process?
I don’t think I have a different approach with nonfiction, except of course with having to stick to reality. I’m always trying to find truth I think even with fiction. I’m currently working on a memoir about caring for my mother as she died and at first all I was doing was writing out a very detailed timeline. On Monday this happened, on Tuesday this happened. Finally, I had to ask myself what’s the story here? What truth are you trying to get at? I think that’s easier with fiction in a way because you can change things to fit the truth you are trying to show. With nonfiction you have to find it in what actually happened.
Winning multiple awards and receiving recognition for your debut novel is impressive. How has this success affected your writing career, and what are your future aspirations as an author?
Honestly I don’t feel particularly successful. I mostly love to write and had to force myself to pursue it beyond the solitude of my own desk. Thalassophobia is a great example of this. The events in that essay happened in 1998 and the piece wasn’t published until 2021. I was perfectly happy to tinker with it for more than twenty years. I think the only time I feel successful as an author is when a reader says something about my writing that makes me feel like I’ve truly connected with them. That makes me cry.
