September 30, 2025 • 33 mins
This week, we’re talking about belonging—finding where you feel most yourself and building community around that truth. Eliana Ramage is the author of this month’s Reese’s Book Club Pick, To the Moon and Back, a novel that explores identity, ambition, sapphic romance, and the complicated bonds between mothers, daughters, and chosen family. Eliana opens up about weaving her Cherokee roots and queer experience into her storytelling, and how that process shaped her own journey of self-discovery. She unpacks the many layers of connection—and what it means to find your place in the world when you live at the intersection of identities.
Book Mentions:
Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo
Before the Mango Ripens by Afabwaje Kurian
Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Danielle Robay (00:00):
Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books.
Hey, Bookmarked listeners.
Before we dive into today's conversation, I have some really
exciting news to share. It is almost time for the
gathering of the brightest female founders, thinkers, writers and creatives
(00:22):
at Shinaway.
Shine Away is more than an event.
It's a two day celebration of connection, creativity, and the
power of women's stories. I've been lucky enough to go
since its inception, so this is our third year, and
this year's programming invites you to step into a world
of joy and depth and discovery, surrounded by voices that
(00:46):
are shaping culture and truly shifting conversations. Talent announcements are
now live and we have an amazing author lineup for
you. You can check them out on Reese's book Clubs Instagram.
But I just want to highlight a for you.
We're going to have Rainbow Rob Temby Lock and Bookmarked
guest Reagan Reward. If you're looking for a little bit
(01:07):
of inspo outside of your favorite authors, get ready to
be amazed by panels like Morning Show star Karen Pittman,
empowerment speaker Chelsea Goodin, Founder Lizzie Mathis.
I'm personally so excited for so many women.
Mariska Hargate, Chrissy Teagan, Jen Hatmaker, Yvonne Orgy and how
about Maelon Ackerman and Britney Snow did any of you
(01:30):
watch Hunting Wives? Okay, tickets are selling so fast, so
buy yours now.
Eliana Ramage (01:37):
Hi.
Danielle Robay (01:38):
I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's book Club.
So earlier this month, we checked in with Ellianna Ramage,
the author behind the September Reese's Book Club pick, on
her very first pub day. I'm so excited to be
back with Elliana today to get into all the juicy
deats of her novel, To the Moon and Back. This
(01:59):
family saga takes us across the decades, across states, and
even into outer space. And I'd asked questions that all
of us have wrestled with. It's home, a place, or
a person. How do you look towards the future while
carrying your past? And what price are you willing to
pay for achieving your goals? We're getting into all of
that and more. You know you're in the right place,
(02:22):
So let's turn the page with Ellie on a Rammage.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Ellie Anna, welcome back to the club. Thank you exciting
to be back.
Danielle Robay (02:33):
Well, we're excited to have you back because when I
spoke to you, I think it was basically the end
of summer. Now it's fall, it's back to school season,
and I heard you're obsessed with school supplies.
Eliana Ramage (02:44):
Yes, it's the best part of all, Like even as
a non student who's not even getting school supplies in the.
Fall, like the school supplies are in the air.
Danielle Robay (02:52):
I have PTSD from going school supplies shopping, and my
mom would never let me get new stuff. She was
big into reach using, which in hindsight I appreciate, but
at the time I really wanted new folders.
The green one for science in the new stickers.
Anyways, when I heard you were obsessed with school supplies,
(03:13):
I knew I had to ask you about the school
supply that you are still obsessed with as an adult,
because I will never get over gel pens.
Eliana Ramage (03:21):
Ooh, that one's so much more fun. Okay.
So I am obsessed with colored index cards that you
can cut into tiny little pieces for storyboarding, and so
each one of them will represent a different thread, whether
it's like a chapter or a novel.
Or story like whatever it is.
(03:42):
When you see like the pink slivered index card, you
know that you're tracking.
Danielle Robay (03:46):
Like the love story aspect of the book, I like
that you color code everything that's so teacher of you.
So if you had to boil to the moon and
back down into keywords, I think it would be sapphic,
indigenous family, saga in space. So out of all those threads, family, identity, queerness,
(04:10):
the cosmos, what felt the most natural and the most
you to write, what parts poured out of you. I'm
torn between family and queerness. And the reason I'm torn
is because in this book they're like the same thing.
And what I mean by that is that we have.
Eliana Ramage (04:27):
A pretty central love story in this book between Stephan
Della and I don't think that that's the most LGBT
aspect of the book. I think it's the way this
book it understands family what it understands family to be.
I think that when I was writing it, I was
not out when I started it, and I was when
I finished it. And one of the biggest things I
(04:49):
learned in that process was how good the queer community
is at thinking about family. And again, when I say that,
like that could mean talking through thinking through the decision
to not have children, or to have children in this
way or in that way, or to think through what
is chosen family mean to you? Do you want to
(05:10):
be like a really really involved aunt, Like there's so
many there's such an openness and an intentionality to creating
and really nurturing those connections. That sort of was always
key to the relationships in this book.
Danielle Robay (05:27):
Were there any threads that were difficult to work through?
I spent the longest time thinking through and trying out
different versions for where to take the love story, because
with these two characters, we have two characters who meet
when they're very young. They really need each other, and
(05:48):
sometimes that's good, sometimes that's not good. Sometimes we get
through that, sometimes we don't.
Eliana Ramage (05:53):
And particularly for Della, she had such a hard start
in her early childhood with this tested adoption case and
all the ways that her story was told for her,
I just felt like if there was one character I
needed to do right by, it was just sort of
like shepherd Della to some kind of place where whatever
(06:14):
happened with her, like whatever she felt in the moment,
if we fast forward her way into the future, A
much older version of her.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I wanted her to feel at peace with.
Eliana Ramage (06:22):
The direction which she decided to take her life.
Danielle Robay (06:26):
One of the things I was thinking about reading this
is that the amount of research that you must have
done about space seems like a huge undertaking.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
It's famously infinite.
Danielle Robay (06:40):
But I am curious what that process looked like for you.
Where did you even begin?
Eliana Ramage (06:46):
Where I started was thinking that I needed to learn
everything there is to know about space, and that's like
such a classic place where people will struggle is feeling like, oh,
I can't write this. I can't give space to what
I really need to give space to, which is the
relationships and the connections between these characters until I am
an astrophysicist. So I had a few solutions. One is
(07:11):
I told myself that I wasn't allowed to go deep
with a particular setting or a particular aspect of space
or even science until the story first arrived in a
place where I needed it too. So, for example, I
learned a lot about this Mars simulation project, but I
(07:33):
didn't know I was going to need to learn about
it until the story took itself to the Mars simulation project.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I also read the memoirs.
Eliana Ramage (07:42):
Of astronauts, but I was surprised by how extra helpful
it was to read the memoirs of scientists.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Oh interesting, Yeah, there's one I really loved.
Eliana Ramage (07:50):
Called lab Girl, And I realized that astronauts they don't
spend that many hours of their lives in space. They're
primarily scientists, so I wanted to learn more about that.
And then the last thing that I'll say is that
I really really leaned on other people. I had a
biologist who read the bio parts from college, and there
(08:14):
was an astrophysicist who was kind enough to correct my mistakes.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Who did you write to the Moon and back?
Eliana Ramage (08:21):
For? When I set out to write it, I was
writing what I wanted to hear at the time, So
I thought it was going to be a really fast
and simple and straightforward story of ambition, Like you want
to write a book and you're like twenty and you
write it. So that was like the original intention, and
(08:46):
it wasn't that at all, And I'm really really glad
it wasn't, because as I got farther in the story
and life got more complicated, in the book just expanded
more and more and more outwards. When that happened, I
came to think of it more as like I'm writing
to my younger self, to my past self. I'm writing
(09:10):
kind of a reassurance that those feelings of uncertainty are okay.
So I eventually it got to the point a few
years in where I was like, anything in this book
has to feel true to my past self, and it
has to feel true to whoever I am as i'm
writing it. But now that I know how much we
(09:30):
all change and that that change continues, I can't ask
myself to write it towards a future self because I
don't know what the future is going to look like.
Like if I read this in ten years and some
of the ideas, like if they no longer feel true
to me, then I'm telling myself like, that's I want
that to feel like a good thing.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Is there a part of.
Danielle Robay (09:50):
You that wrote this story for a person or a
young girl who felt exactly the way you did, And
if so, what did you want them to take from
the story. So the answer to the first question is yes,
maybe not at first, because at first I was so
full of just ambition, just excitement about like do this
(10:12):
project get it done? That it was like a slow
unraveling of a story of discovery for staff and for myself.
And then your second question was what would I want
them to take from it? I hope that reader would
be left with the feeling of what it means to
belong and all the different versions of connection between people
(10:36):
that make a family, and what that looks like. In
this story, we see that in so many different ways.
We have mother and daughter stories, we have chosen family
and tribal nation, and again that expands outwards. That's like
a never ending thing, that connection we feel to one another.
So my main thing.
Eliana Ramage (10:55):
I hope is that a reader would understand themselves as
part of a greater whole, as an individual who shaped
by connection, and that with that feeling like understanding themselves
as part of humanity, as this group that's always been
shaped by connection, they would feel pushed to act on behalf.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Of future generations.
Danielle Robay (11:22):
So Steph is your protagonist, and she makes some messy
choices Eliyana sometimes some really bad ones, and you kind
of want to reach through the page and just like
yell at her sometimes even but somehow you're still rooting
for her, And I'm wondering how you pulled that off.
How do you write a character who's infuriating.
Eliana Ramage (11:42):
And lovable I secondly infuriating. It was important to me
that even if I didn't agree with her, I wanted
to understand her. I want to just understand all of
the characters in this book across different parts of their lives.
With Steph, it helped me to understand her as someone
who was searching for her place, and she was searching
(12:04):
for her place as a Cherokee person and as a
queer person who didn't have models for what that would
look like to become an adult who's a queer adult,
a Cherokeean adult, or like an astronaut.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
One place that that became really.
Eliana Ramage (12:22):
Clear to me was the scene early ish in the
book where Steph is a kid and she auditions for
this school play that's like written by the children, and
it's a really really like melodramatic kind of insane play
about the trail of years. Of course, no boys audition,
(12:43):
and she gets to play the husband of her.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Big crush, who's a girl.
Eliana Ramage (12:48):
So she and her big crush are like in love
on stage and they're kissing behind the curtain after the play,
and she's so happy. But what sticks out to me
and what really hit me after I had written that scene,
was that the only way Stuff was able to live
out that identity at that point in her life was
(13:10):
through this queer future that was set in an imagined past.
I think that got me thinking about how stories can
carry us across generations. It got me thinking about how
heritage can be a lifeline, and what Steph was trying
to do in that moment. Sometimes she does it successfully
over the course of her life. Sometimes she really really
doesn't is to write herself into a story that includes her.
Danielle Robay (13:35):
There's a quote early on in the book where Steph
dreams of how nice it would be to quote be
an astronaut, to be myself without the weight of everything
that came before. And that idea of wanting to be
weightless is so alluring. And yet there's this tension in
the book because Steph would actually benefit from some grounding.
Anyone reading this is going to think about their own
(13:58):
familial complication. Why can't we escape family drama?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
We can't, We really can't. But it makes literature. I know.
Danielle Robay (14:09):
It's like a universal tie in. We can all connect
to it in some way. Do you have any idea
of why you think we're drawn to them? I think
of like Succession, every TV show that has family drama
at the center of it really makes an impact on culture.
I completely agree, you know, whether it's it's books or
(14:30):
TV or movies, those are the stories that I'm drawn to.
And even in real life, I wouldn't love to hear
like a friend of a friend's like, what's going on
with your family? I need to hear these stories, even
if I'm not involved. Part of what's interesting to me
was this idea that with Stephan her mother, for example,
(14:50):
they are trying so hard to love each other, they
share so much, and at the end of the day,
when it comes to their maybe similar core values and
then take that next step with them, they're moving in
two different directions. That tension was really interesting to me.
More interesting, of course, than if two strangers disagreed. Well,
I want to dive into the tension between the two sisters.
(15:13):
So Steph and Kayla really embody this duality of experience
when it comes to connecting with your culture. Kayla embraces
it and Steph wants to run from it. Yes, so
you were a Cherokee woman who grew up in Nashville
and not on the reservation in Oklahoma. What was it
like growing up indigenous in Tennessee.
Eliana Ramage (15:32):
So this is something that I didn't appreciate until I
grew up. And I grew up, I mean until I
left home I went to college. I didn't realize even
though like, definitely we were not living around other Cherokee people.
They're just in terms of like Native people in general.
I was at a school with sixteen hundred kids and
there were three Native students, So like, even though that
(15:55):
was the environment, that Cherokee identity was really really nurtured
for me in a way that like I didn't have
to think about it. It was like I lived in
a house where not even just Cherokee identity, our family,
My parents were intentional about storytelling, about sharing so much
(16:18):
about our family and where we had come from on
both sides, and that gave me this foundation that was
wonderful and kind of opened my eyes once I left
that house to the idea that now you know what's next,
like now I'm in charge of my own identity moving forward,
(16:41):
and I sort of appreciated the gift afterwards.
Danielle Robay (16:43):
Well, when we spoke last month, you talked about how
you were sharing the language with your seven month old
daughter who's now eight months old. So it sounds like
you're trying to sort of plant the same seeds I am.
Eliana Ramage (16:59):
And what was unexpected for me is how much the
journey of this book correlates with that journey of different
waves of how I think through Cherokee identity for myself.
So I talked about the childhood and I talked about
when I got to college. What I didn't say is
when I said what next, there was a bit of anxiety,
(17:21):
like what is it going to look like or what
is it supposed to look like for me to now
like go forth in my adulthood as a Cherokee person.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Some of the ways I was asking myself.
Eliana Ramage (17:31):
That were inauthentic, like the anxiety that maybe I needed
to learn how to wave baskets when like, that's never
been a way that I connect.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But I will say that it wasn't a.
Eliana Ramage (17:42):
Ridiculous question, because when we ask ourselves things like that,
then it makes us hone in on what does really matter.
And that was when I started getting more interested in
learning the again, like very little of the language that
has come to mean something to me. And as a writer,
my way in was exploring these different characters and saying
(18:04):
to myself, like, if I have all of these different
Cherokee women and I'm in my early twenties and I
just give them space to see where they take that
and how they show up in the world. That ended
up giving me a lot of these different possibilities. And
so I was surprised in a good way when the
(18:24):
baby was born to realize very quickly I had a
lot more understanding for the mom character, for how what
she was trying to pass along wasn't confining but enriching,
and that if I want my daughter to feel free
like these characters, to take who she is and you know,
go forth wherever that takes her, hopefully not mars, I
(18:47):
first need to provide what I can of that foundation.
Danielle Robay (18:51):
So I was looking up the hallmarks of Cherokee storytelling
to see if there were sort of any touchstones that
I could recognize between your novel and like sort of
these hallmarks of indigenous storytelling and for Cherokee storytelling, it said,
there's a lot of origin stories that explain natural phenomena, animals, diseases, healing, plants, balance,
(19:17):
which are stories about harmony with nature, community and self,
cyclical structure, mirrors, natural cycles, not linear plots, community purpose,
humor as teaching animals as teachers, and this was very specific.
But Rabbit the trickster, so clever, greedy, often punished lessons
(19:38):
through humor. Do any of those strike you as something
that showed up.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
In your novel?
Eliana Ramage (19:45):
The first thing that stood out to me is the
word storytelling, And it reminds me of how when I
talked about that period of anxiety of questioning in my
early twenties.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
There was a period where I thought, you know.
Eliana Ramage (20:00):
Do I need to be taking Cherokee traditional stories and
like retelling them in a contemporary manner, which is like
a wonderful thing for anyone to want to do. But again,
like that wasn't my way in, and that that wouldn't
have felt authentic to me and what I cared about.
So I was really really happy about ten years ago
(20:20):
when this show Mohawk Girls came on the air because
it was this really really messy show billed as like
the Mohawk Sex and the City where these Mohawk women
were like having messy relationships and their friendships were falling apart,
and like it was so exciting to me to see
these indigenous women navigating the same world that I was
(20:41):
living in. I also want to say that when you
talked about storytelling, I credit my interest in stories to
my parents in two different ways. It kind of depended
on who was doing the night routine. My mom would
read us books, and when I got older, I would
ask her to like work shop my stories for me.
(21:01):
When I was really young, and that was amazing. My
dad would tell stories of his childhood in the mountains
in Kentucky, and so I kind of was getting constant
input of stories and what they can do and why
they matter.
Danielle Robay (21:16):
So I love asking our guests what they've bookmarked this week.
It can be a weird fact, a fun quote, something
you saved on Instagram, something you texted your best friend
about Eleiana.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
What have you bookmarked this week?
Eliana Ramage (21:29):
I bookmarked the last like six minutes of the audiobook
for Claire Lombardo's Same as it ever was, because I've
been listening to it while driving around and I've already
read it in book form when it came out.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
I loved it the first time.
Eliana Ramage (21:46):
I want to be clear, I loved it the first time,
but the way I emotionally experienced it as a wife
and as a mom as someone who's just like a little, tiny,
tiny bit older than the first time. I just sat
in the car and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed through
the last five minutes and came inside the house and
just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I was so so moved by it.
Eliana Ramage (22:07):
It's just a really really beautiful ending in the way
it holds us in a space of family and a
relationship between two people.
Danielle Robay (22:23):
This book definitely hits intimately at mother daughter relationships. I'm
sure you were mostly finished writing when you gave birth.
Is there anything that you change now that you've been
a mom? Are there any characters that you have more
or less empathy for.
Eliana Ramage (22:39):
I definitely feel more empathy for the mother character now,
but I wouldn't change your story. And part of that,
I think is a reflection of how long it took
to write the book, how long it took to become
a parent. There were many, many years of waiting and
fertility clinics and sort of being in that emotional journey
(23:02):
of becoming a parent before I was a parent. And
that matters because it means that even when I was
writing this book and I felt like I was really
far from becoming a parent. I was still really interested
in what it would mean to be a parent for myself,
and what it would mean for any of these characters,
because it's not just Stef's mom, like any of these
(23:23):
characters to form their families, the ones who choose to
be parents, the ones who don't choose to be parents,
and the ones who choose to be parents in ways
that we might.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Not expect at first.
Danielle Robay (23:34):
I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask
you for some book recks. Are there any Indigenous authors
that inspired you while writing this?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Okay, So there's actually.
Eliana Ramage (23:42):
Two nonfiction books that I think are really really great
companions to this book. One of them is called By
the Fire We Carry, The Generation's long fight for justice
on need of Land. It's by Rebecca Nagle. And if
there are readers who are interested in specifically the history
(24:04):
of removal and what that means for Cherokee Nation, like
specifically Cherokee Nation today, then that's the book for them.
I'm very excited about a book by Joseph Lee, and
it's called Nothing More of This Land, Community, Power, and
the Search for Indigenous Identity. He's a really, really talented
(24:26):
Equina Wampanogue journalist, and what I like about his book
besides just that it's brilliant, there are so many hyper
specific issues of not just like this more symbolic idea
of belonging, but like, what does it literally mean to
be a Cherokee citizen or to be a citizen of
(24:46):
another tribe, or to not be like who belongs who doesn't?
And when I say that, of course, I mean in
terms of a legal identity, a political identity, historical identity.
Those are really really thorny, very interesting to me issues.
And because this book is fiction, the characters are wrestling
with them, but they don't get to go too deep
in a way that would distract from the story. I
(25:07):
feel like, because he is a journalist and he has
the freedom to ask that question of so many different
tribes and so many different indigenous people all around the world,
it's a fascinating deep dive that takes something you might
just be like a little bit interested in, and it
explodes it to make it much more complicated.
Danielle Robay (25:26):
You've mentioned belonging so much in both of our conversations.
What about belonging is at the heart or at the
forefront of your mind. I think it's like the center
how I understand, like the universe, and how I understand
people and what we're doing here. Can I tell you
(25:47):
a story about my grandfather which is like a little context, Yeah,
of course I would love that. So my grandfather on
my mother's side was born in nineteen oh seven, and
that's significant because before that point he would have been
born in what was Indian territory, but the nation was denationalized,
(26:10):
and so when he was born, he was born an
American citizen and not a Cherokee Nation citizen. It was
like Cherokee Nation in that sense of what it was
was gone. So from there he ended up roaming the Southeast,
living in all these different places for work. He was
in Europe for World War two, transporting young men, like
(26:33):
very young men, to the front lines and coming back
and just doing that. So he lived this life not
where he was from, and he never forgot. It's not
just that he never forgot Cherokee Nation, it's that it
was central to his understanding of himself. And when he
had three daughters, it was central to their understanding because
(26:55):
that was something that mattered to him. And he made
it very clear that he wanted to share that with them.
So he died in the nineteen seventies, and he died
within a few months, I think, right before Chokee Nation
was reconstituted again. It's not like the nation was dead
like as a political entity. It was reconstituted, and that
means that what I now understand is he lived his
(27:17):
life within this what we could think of as a
last generation, Like his whole life was in this gap
of history where your political identity has been taken away,
and for him specifically, he was today the majority of
Chraoke Nation citizens don't live in northeastern Oklahoma. He was
not living at home and he never went back. What
(27:37):
that speaks to for me when I think about belonging
is how enduring it is to belong to your people,
belong to your home. Your home doesn't have to be
the same place forever.
Eliana Ramage (27:50):
People began in the southeastern US, and now you know
the government is in northeastern Oklahoma. I feel primarily moved
when I think about his life and how much that
mattered to him, how he was able to pass that
down to the generation and then passed it down to
me because outside forces and this is definitely not just
(28:10):
a Cherokee story. Like outside forces can try to convince
a people that they are not this or that that
doesn't matter, like now you're American. But for so many
of us, we went to continue our stories. We went
to pass down what matters to us.
Danielle Robay (28:27):
Okay, now it's time to turn things up a notch.
We are doing the speed read. So here's how it works.
We're going to put sixty seconds on the clock and
we're going to see just how many rapid fire literary
questions you can get through.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Okay, are you ready? Okay, let's go three?
Eliana Ramage (28:43):
Two?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
What is one literary trope you would ban forever? It
was all just a dream?
Danielle Robay (28:49):
The Desert Island author? Who are you reading for the
rest of your life?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Highly read? You have ten minutes at a bookstore. Where
are you going first? Just released fiction?
Danielle Robay (28:58):
What's a book that you give most often before the
MNGO ripens by F Y J.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Korean? What fictional character do you secretly think you're most like?
Eliana Ramage (29:08):
Ooh, okay in this book, I think I can be Adella,
but I want to be a Nadia.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
What's the first book you stayed up all night to finish?
Danielle Robay (29:16):
I think Ella Enchanted? Do you ever peak at the
last page. First, No, what's a book you wish you'd written?
Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld. Oh, that's a great one, Ellie, Anna,
that's it. Thank you so so much, thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
It's just a huge honor to be here.
Danielle Robay (29:39):
Okay, friends, Before we wrap today's episode, I'm bringing back
our monthly audiobook recommendation segment brought to you by Apple Books,
called Turn Up the Story. Apple Books editors are always
reading and listening so they can bring you the best
new books every single month, including brilliant new voices. This month,
Apple Books editors are spotlighting Little Movements by Lauren Morrow.
(30:04):
This gorgeously written debut novel is about navigating the intersection
between life, creativity, and expectations. Lifelong dancer Layla has recently
discovered her love of choreography, so when she wins a
position at Briar House, a Vermont artist residency program, she's
overjoyed and overwhelmed. Lauren Morrow elegantly explores the conflicts that
(30:26):
come with Layla's once in a lifetime gift, from scandals
within the program to the strain it puts on her marriage.
Not to mention Briar House's all white administration, assuming that
Layla's dance performance will directly reflect quote the black experience
without even asking her. Marrow's vivid descriptions of the dances
capture the artistry of movements so strikingly it's almost like
(30:47):
each piece plays out before your eyes as you're listening.
There's so much to feel and discuss in this gem
of a novel, it's sure to be a book club favorite.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
For a limited time.
Danielle Robay (30:58):
You can get the audiobook of The Little Movements for
just nine ninety nine only on Apple Books. And if
you're curious about what Inspiredmorrow to write this tenderhearted debut,
you'll find that too. Head to Apple dot co slash
Debut Listens to listen in and while you're there, don't
miss the full collection of debut audio books that the
Apple Books editors love, all chosen with bookmarked listeners in mind.
(31:26):
And if you want a little bit more from us,
come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's book
Club on Instagram, serving up books, vibes and behind.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
The scenes magic.
Danielle Robay (31:35):
And I'm at Danielle Robe rob a y Come say
hi and df me And if you want to go
nineties on us call us. Okay, our phone line is open,
so call now at one five zero one two nine,
one three three seven nine. That's one five oh one
two nine, one three three seven nine. Share your literary
(31:58):
hot takes, recommendations, questions about the monthly pick, or let
us know what you think about the episode you just heard,
and who knows, you might just hear yourself in our
next episode, So don't be shy, give us a ring,
and of course, make sure to follow Bookmarked by Reese's
book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
(32:19):
you get your shows until then via in the next chapter.
Bookmarked is a production of Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcast.
It's executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and me Danielle Robe.
Production is by Acast Creative Studios. Our producers are Maddy Foley,
Brittany Martinez, Sarah Schlede, and Darbi Masters. Our production assistant
(32:42):
is Avery Loftis. Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder are the
executive producers for Acast Creative Studios.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Maureen Polo and Reese.
Danielle Robay (32:50):
Witherspoon are the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwa,
Kristin Perla Kelly Turner and Ashley Rappaport our associate producers
for Reese's Book Club. Ali Perry and Lauren Hansen are
the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books.
Hey, Bookmarked listeners.
Before we dive into today's conversation, I have some really
exciting news to share. It is almost time for the
gathering of the brightest female founders, thinkers, writers and creatives
(00:22):
at Shinaway.
Shine Away is more than an event.
It's a two day celebration of connection, creativity, and the
power of women's stories. I've been lucky enough to go
since its inception, so this is our third year, and
this year's programming invites you to step into a world
of joy and depth and discovery, surrounded by voices that
(00:46):
are shaping culture and truly shifting conversations. Talent announcements are
now live and we have an amazing author lineup for
you. You can check them out on Reese's book Clubs Instagram.
But I just want to highlight a for you.
We're going to have Rainbow Rob Temby Lock and Bookmarked
guest Reagan Reward. If you're looking for a little bit
(01:07):
of inspo outside of your favorite authors, get ready to
be amazed by panels like Morning Show star Karen Pittman,
empowerment speaker Chelsea Goodin, Founder Lizzie Mathis.
I'm personally so excited for so many women.
Mariska Hargate, Chrissy Teagan, Jen Hatmaker, Yvonne Orgy and how
about Maelon Ackerman and Britney Snow did any of you
(01:30):
watch Hunting Wives? Okay, tickets are selling so fast, so
buy yours now.
Eliana Ramage (01:37):
Hi.
Danielle Robay (01:38):
I'm Danielle Robe and welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's book Club.
So earlier this month, we checked in with Ellianna Ramage,
the author behind the September Reese's Book Club pick, on
her very first pub day. I'm so excited to be
back with Elliana today to get into all the juicy
deats of her novel, To the Moon and Back. This
(01:59):
family saga takes us across the decades, across states, and
even into outer space. And I'd asked questions that all
of us have wrestled with. It's home, a place, or
a person. How do you look towards the future while
carrying your past? And what price are you willing to
pay for achieving your goals? We're getting into all of
that and more. You know you're in the right place,
(02:22):
So let's turn the page with Ellie on a Rammage.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Ellie Anna, welcome back to the club. Thank you exciting
to be back.
Danielle Robay (02:33):
Well, we're excited to have you back because when I
spoke to you, I think it was basically the end
of summer. Now it's fall, it's back to school season,
and I heard you're obsessed with school supplies.
Eliana Ramage (02:44):
Yes, it's the best part of all, Like even as
a non student who's not even getting school supplies in the.
Fall, like the school supplies are in the air.
Danielle Robay (02:52):
I have PTSD from going school supplies shopping, and my
mom would never let me get new stuff. She was
big into reach using, which in hindsight I appreciate, but
at the time I really wanted new folders.
The green one for science in the new stickers.
Anyways, when I heard you were obsessed with school supplies,
(03:13):
I knew I had to ask you about the school
supply that you are still obsessed with as an adult,
because I will never get over gel pens.
Eliana Ramage (03:21):
Ooh, that one's so much more fun. Okay.
So I am obsessed with colored index cards that you
can cut into tiny little pieces for storyboarding, and so
each one of them will represent a different thread, whether
it's like a chapter or a novel.
Or story like whatever it is.
(03:42):
When you see like the pink slivered index card, you
know that you're tracking.
Danielle Robay (03:46):
Like the love story aspect of the book, I like
that you color code everything that's so teacher of you.
So if you had to boil to the moon and
back down into keywords, I think it would be sapphic,
indigenous family, saga in space. So out of all those threads, family, identity, queerness,
(04:10):
the cosmos, what felt the most natural and the most
you to write, what parts poured out of you. I'm
torn between family and queerness. And the reason I'm torn
is because in this book they're like the same thing.
And what I mean by that is that we have.
Eliana Ramage (04:27):
A pretty central love story in this book between Stephan
Della and I don't think that that's the most LGBT
aspect of the book. I think it's the way this
book it understands family what it understands family to be.
I think that when I was writing it, I was
not out when I started it, and I was when
I finished it. And one of the biggest things I
(04:49):
learned in that process was how good the queer community
is at thinking about family. And again, when I say that,
like that could mean talking through thinking through the decision
to not have children, or to have children in this
way or in that way, or to think through what
is chosen family mean to you? Do you want to
(05:10):
be like a really really involved aunt, Like there's so
many there's such an openness and an intentionality to creating
and really nurturing those connections. That sort of was always
key to the relationships in this book.
Danielle Robay (05:27):
Were there any threads that were difficult to work through?
I spent the longest time thinking through and trying out
different versions for where to take the love story, because
with these two characters, we have two characters who meet
when they're very young. They really need each other, and
(05:48):
sometimes that's good, sometimes that's not good. Sometimes we get
through that, sometimes we don't.
Eliana Ramage (05:53):
And particularly for Della, she had such a hard start
in her early childhood with this tested adoption case and
all the ways that her story was told for her,
I just felt like if there was one character I
needed to do right by, it was just sort of
like shepherd Della to some kind of place where whatever
(06:14):
happened with her, like whatever she felt in the moment,
if we fast forward her way into the future, A
much older version of her.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I wanted her to feel at peace with.
Eliana Ramage (06:22):
The direction which she decided to take her life.
Danielle Robay (06:26):
One of the things I was thinking about reading this
is that the amount of research that you must have
done about space seems like a huge undertaking.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
It's famously infinite.
Danielle Robay (06:40):
But I am curious what that process looked like for you.
Where did you even begin?
Eliana Ramage (06:46):
Where I started was thinking that I needed to learn
everything there is to know about space, and that's like
such a classic place where people will struggle is feeling like, oh,
I can't write this. I can't give space to what
I really need to give space to, which is the
relationships and the connections between these characters until I am
an astrophysicist. So I had a few solutions. One is
(07:11):
I told myself that I wasn't allowed to go deep
with a particular setting or a particular aspect of space
or even science until the story first arrived in a
place where I needed it too. So, for example, I
learned a lot about this Mars simulation project, but I
(07:33):
didn't know I was going to need to learn about
it until the story took itself to the Mars simulation project.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
I also read the memoirs.
Eliana Ramage (07:42):
Of astronauts, but I was surprised by how extra helpful
it was to read the memoirs of scientists.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Oh interesting, Yeah, there's one I really loved.
Eliana Ramage (07:50):
Called lab Girl, And I realized that astronauts they don't
spend that many hours of their lives in space. They're
primarily scientists, so I wanted to learn more about that.
And then the last thing that I'll say is that
I really really leaned on other people. I had a
biologist who read the bio parts from college, and there
(08:14):
was an astrophysicist who was kind enough to correct my mistakes.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Who did you write to the Moon and back?
Eliana Ramage (08:21):
For? When I set out to write it, I was
writing what I wanted to hear at the time, So
I thought it was going to be a really fast
and simple and straightforward story of ambition, Like you want
to write a book and you're like twenty and you
write it. So that was like the original intention, and
(08:46):
it wasn't that at all, And I'm really really glad
it wasn't, because as I got farther in the story
and life got more complicated, in the book just expanded
more and more and more outwards. When that happened, I
came to think of it more as like I'm writing
to my younger self, to my past self. I'm writing
(09:10):
kind of a reassurance that those feelings of uncertainty are okay.
So I eventually it got to the point a few
years in where I was like, anything in this book
has to feel true to my past self, and it
has to feel true to whoever I am as i'm
writing it. But now that I know how much we
(09:30):
all change and that that change continues, I can't ask
myself to write it towards a future self because I
don't know what the future is going to look like.
Like if I read this in ten years and some
of the ideas, like if they no longer feel true
to me, then I'm telling myself like, that's I want
that to feel like a good thing.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Is there a part of.
Danielle Robay (09:50):
You that wrote this story for a person or a
young girl who felt exactly the way you did, And
if so, what did you want them to take from
the story. So the answer to the first question is yes,
maybe not at first, because at first I was so
full of just ambition, just excitement about like do this
(10:12):
project get it done? That it was like a slow
unraveling of a story of discovery for staff and for myself.
And then your second question was what would I want
them to take from it? I hope that reader would
be left with the feeling of what it means to
belong and all the different versions of connection between people
(10:36):
that make a family, and what that looks like. In
this story, we see that in so many different ways.
We have mother and daughter stories, we have chosen family
and tribal nation, and again that expands outwards. That's like
a never ending thing, that connection we feel to one another.
So my main thing.
Eliana Ramage (10:55):
I hope is that a reader would understand themselves as
part of a greater whole, as an individual who shaped
by connection, and that with that feeling like understanding themselves
as part of humanity, as this group that's always been
shaped by connection, they would feel pushed to act on behalf.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Of future generations.
Danielle Robay (11:22):
So Steph is your protagonist, and she makes some messy
choices Eliyana sometimes some really bad ones, and you kind
of want to reach through the page and just like
yell at her sometimes even but somehow you're still rooting
for her, And I'm wondering how you pulled that off.
How do you write a character who's infuriating.
Eliana Ramage (11:42):
And lovable I secondly infuriating. It was important to me
that even if I didn't agree with her, I wanted
to understand her. I want to just understand all of
the characters in this book across different parts of their lives.
With Steph, it helped me to understand her as someone
who was searching for her place, and she was searching
(12:04):
for her place as a Cherokee person and as a
queer person who didn't have models for what that would
look like to become an adult who's a queer adult,
a Cherokeean adult, or like an astronaut.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
One place that that became really.
Eliana Ramage (12:22):
Clear to me was the scene early ish in the
book where Steph is a kid and she auditions for
this school play that's like written by the children, and
it's a really really like melodramatic kind of insane play
about the trail of years. Of course, no boys audition,
(12:43):
and she gets to play the husband of her.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Big crush, who's a girl.
Eliana Ramage (12:48):
So she and her big crush are like in love
on stage and they're kissing behind the curtain after the play,
and she's so happy. But what sticks out to me
and what really hit me after I had written that scene,
was that the only way Stuff was able to live
out that identity at that point in her life was
(13:10):
through this queer future that was set in an imagined past.
I think that got me thinking about how stories can
carry us across generations. It got me thinking about how
heritage can be a lifeline, and what Steph was trying
to do in that moment. Sometimes she does it successfully
over the course of her life. Sometimes she really really
doesn't is to write herself into a story that includes her.
Danielle Robay (13:35):
There's a quote early on in the book where Steph
dreams of how nice it would be to quote be
an astronaut, to be myself without the weight of everything
that came before. And that idea of wanting to be
weightless is so alluring. And yet there's this tension in
the book because Steph would actually benefit from some grounding.
Anyone reading this is going to think about their own
(13:58):
familial complication. Why can't we escape family drama?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
We can't, We really can't. But it makes literature. I know.
Danielle Robay (14:09):
It's like a universal tie in. We can all connect
to it in some way. Do you have any idea
of why you think we're drawn to them? I think
of like Succession, every TV show that has family drama
at the center of it really makes an impact on culture.
I completely agree, you know, whether it's it's books or
(14:30):
TV or movies, those are the stories that I'm drawn to.
And even in real life, I wouldn't love to hear
like a friend of a friend's like, what's going on
with your family? I need to hear these stories, even
if I'm not involved. Part of what's interesting to me
was this idea that with Stephan her mother, for example,
(14:50):
they are trying so hard to love each other, they
share so much, and at the end of the day,
when it comes to their maybe similar core values and
then take that next step with them, they're moving in
two different directions. That tension was really interesting to me.
More interesting, of course, than if two strangers disagreed. Well,
I want to dive into the tension between the two sisters.
(15:13):
So Steph and Kayla really embody this duality of experience
when it comes to connecting with your culture. Kayla embraces
it and Steph wants to run from it. Yes, so
you were a Cherokee woman who grew up in Nashville
and not on the reservation in Oklahoma. What was it
like growing up indigenous in Tennessee.
Eliana Ramage (15:32):
So this is something that I didn't appreciate until I
grew up. And I grew up, I mean until I
left home I went to college. I didn't realize even
though like, definitely we were not living around other Cherokee people.
They're just in terms of like Native people in general.
I was at a school with sixteen hundred kids and
there were three Native students, So like, even though that
(15:55):
was the environment, that Cherokee identity was really really nurtured
for me in a way that like I didn't have
to think about it. It was like I lived in
a house where not even just Cherokee identity, our family,
My parents were intentional about storytelling, about sharing so much
(16:18):
about our family and where we had come from on
both sides, and that gave me this foundation that was
wonderful and kind of opened my eyes once I left
that house to the idea that now you know what's next,
like now I'm in charge of my own identity moving forward,
(16:41):
and I sort of appreciated the gift afterwards.
Danielle Robay (16:43):
Well, when we spoke last month, you talked about how
you were sharing the language with your seven month old
daughter who's now eight months old. So it sounds like
you're trying to sort of plant the same seeds I am.
Eliana Ramage (16:59):
And what was unexpected for me is how much the
journey of this book correlates with that journey of different
waves of how I think through Cherokee identity for myself.
So I talked about the childhood and I talked about
when I got to college. What I didn't say is
when I said what next, there was a bit of anxiety,
(17:21):
like what is it going to look like or what
is it supposed to look like for me to now
like go forth in my adulthood as a Cherokee person.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Some of the ways I was asking myself.
Eliana Ramage (17:31):
That were inauthentic, like the anxiety that maybe I needed
to learn how to wave baskets when like, that's never
been a way that I connect.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
But I will say that it wasn't a.
Eliana Ramage (17:42):
Ridiculous question, because when we ask ourselves things like that,
then it makes us hone in on what does really matter.
And that was when I started getting more interested in
learning the again, like very little of the language that
has come to mean something to me. And as a writer,
my way in was exploring these different characters and saying
(18:04):
to myself, like, if I have all of these different
Cherokee women and I'm in my early twenties and I
just give them space to see where they take that
and how they show up in the world. That ended
up giving me a lot of these different possibilities. And
so I was surprised in a good way when the
(18:24):
baby was born to realize very quickly I had a
lot more understanding for the mom character, for how what
she was trying to pass along wasn't confining but enriching,
and that if I want my daughter to feel free
like these characters, to take who she is and you know,
go forth wherever that takes her, hopefully not mars, I
(18:47):
first need to provide what I can of that foundation.
Danielle Robay (18:51):
So I was looking up the hallmarks of Cherokee storytelling
to see if there were sort of any touchstones that
I could recognize between your novel and like sort of
these hallmarks of indigenous storytelling and for Cherokee storytelling, it said,
there's a lot of origin stories that explain natural phenomena, animals, diseases, healing, plants, balance,
(19:17):
which are stories about harmony with nature, community and self,
cyclical structure, mirrors, natural cycles, not linear plots, community purpose,
humor as teaching animals as teachers, and this was very specific.
But Rabbit the trickster, so clever, greedy, often punished lessons
(19:38):
through humor. Do any of those strike you as something
that showed up.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
In your novel?
Eliana Ramage (19:45):
The first thing that stood out to me is the
word storytelling, And it reminds me of how when I
talked about that period of anxiety of questioning in my
early twenties.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
There was a period where I thought, you know.
Eliana Ramage (20:00):
Do I need to be taking Cherokee traditional stories and
like retelling them in a contemporary manner, which is like
a wonderful thing for anyone to want to do. But again,
like that wasn't my way in, and that that wouldn't
have felt authentic to me and what I cared about.
So I was really really happy about ten years ago
(20:20):
when this show Mohawk Girls came on the air because
it was this really really messy show billed as like
the Mohawk Sex and the City where these Mohawk women
were like having messy relationships and their friendships were falling apart,
and like it was so exciting to me to see
these indigenous women navigating the same world that I was
(20:41):
living in. I also want to say that when you
talked about storytelling, I credit my interest in stories to
my parents in two different ways. It kind of depended
on who was doing the night routine. My mom would
read us books, and when I got older, I would
ask her to like work shop my stories for me.
(21:01):
When I was really young, and that was amazing. My
dad would tell stories of his childhood in the mountains
in Kentucky, and so I kind of was getting constant
input of stories and what they can do and why
they matter.
Danielle Robay (21:16):
So I love asking our guests what they've bookmarked this week.
It can be a weird fact, a fun quote, something
you saved on Instagram, something you texted your best friend
about Eleiana.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
What have you bookmarked this week?
Eliana Ramage (21:29):
I bookmarked the last like six minutes of the audiobook
for Claire Lombardo's Same as it ever was, because I've
been listening to it while driving around and I've already
read it in book form when it came out.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
I loved it the first time.
Eliana Ramage (21:46):
I want to be clear, I loved it the first time,
but the way I emotionally experienced it as a wife
and as a mom as someone who's just like a little, tiny,
tiny bit older than the first time. I just sat
in the car and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed through
the last five minutes and came inside the house and
just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I was so so moved by it.
Eliana Ramage (22:07):
It's just a really really beautiful ending in the way
it holds us in a space of family and a
relationship between two people.
Danielle Robay (22:23):
This book definitely hits intimately at mother daughter relationships. I'm
sure you were mostly finished writing when you gave birth.
Is there anything that you change now that you've been
a mom? Are there any characters that you have more
or less empathy for.
Eliana Ramage (22:39):
I definitely feel more empathy for the mother character now,
but I wouldn't change your story. And part of that,
I think is a reflection of how long it took
to write the book, how long it took to become
a parent. There were many, many years of waiting and
fertility clinics and sort of being in that emotional journey
(23:02):
of becoming a parent before I was a parent. And
that matters because it means that even when I was
writing this book and I felt like I was really
far from becoming a parent. I was still really interested
in what it would mean to be a parent for myself,
and what it would mean for any of these characters,
because it's not just Stef's mom, like any of these
(23:23):
characters to form their families, the ones who choose to
be parents, the ones who don't choose to be parents,
and the ones who choose to be parents in ways
that we might.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Not expect at first.
Danielle Robay (23:34):
I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask
you for some book recks. Are there any Indigenous authors
that inspired you while writing this?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Okay, So there's actually.
Eliana Ramage (23:42):
Two nonfiction books that I think are really really great
companions to this book. One of them is called By
the Fire We Carry, The Generation's long fight for justice
on need of Land. It's by Rebecca Nagle. And if
there are readers who are interested in specifically the history
(24:04):
of removal and what that means for Cherokee Nation, like
specifically Cherokee Nation today, then that's the book for them.
I'm very excited about a book by Joseph Lee, and
it's called Nothing More of This Land, Community, Power, and
the Search for Indigenous Identity. He's a really, really talented
(24:26):
Equina Wampanogue journalist, and what I like about his book
besides just that it's brilliant, there are so many hyper
specific issues of not just like this more symbolic idea
of belonging, but like, what does it literally mean to
be a Cherokee citizen or to be a citizen of
(24:46):
another tribe, or to not be like who belongs who doesn't?
And when I say that, of course, I mean in
terms of a legal identity, a political identity, historical identity.
Those are really really thorny, very interesting to me issues.
And because this book is fiction, the characters are wrestling
with them, but they don't get to go too deep
in a way that would distract from the story. I
(25:07):
feel like, because he is a journalist and he has
the freedom to ask that question of so many different
tribes and so many different indigenous people all around the world,
it's a fascinating deep dive that takes something you might
just be like a little bit interested in, and it
explodes it to make it much more complicated.
Danielle Robay (25:26):
You've mentioned belonging so much in both of our conversations.
What about belonging is at the heart or at the
forefront of your mind. I think it's like the center
how I understand, like the universe, and how I understand
people and what we're doing here. Can I tell you
(25:47):
a story about my grandfather which is like a little context, Yeah,
of course I would love that. So my grandfather on
my mother's side was born in nineteen oh seven, and
that's significant because before that point he would have been
born in what was Indian territory, but the nation was denationalized,
(26:10):
and so when he was born, he was born an
American citizen and not a Cherokee Nation citizen. It was
like Cherokee Nation in that sense of what it was
was gone. So from there he ended up roaming the Southeast,
living in all these different places for work. He was
in Europe for World War two, transporting young men, like
(26:33):
very young men, to the front lines and coming back
and just doing that. So he lived this life not
where he was from, and he never forgot. It's not
just that he never forgot Cherokee Nation, it's that it
was central to his understanding of himself. And when he
had three daughters, it was central to their understanding because
(26:55):
that was something that mattered to him. And he made
it very clear that he wanted to share that with them.
So he died in the nineteen seventies, and he died
within a few months, I think, right before Chokee Nation
was reconstituted again. It's not like the nation was dead
like as a political entity. It was reconstituted, and that
means that what I now understand is he lived his
(27:17):
life within this what we could think of as a
last generation, Like his whole life was in this gap
of history where your political identity has been taken away,
and for him specifically, he was today the majority of
Chraoke Nation citizens don't live in northeastern Oklahoma. He was
not living at home and he never went back. What
(27:37):
that speaks to for me when I think about belonging
is how enduring it is to belong to your people,
belong to your home. Your home doesn't have to be
the same place forever.
Eliana Ramage (27:50):
People began in the southeastern US, and now you know
the government is in northeastern Oklahoma. I feel primarily moved
when I think about his life and how much that
mattered to him, how he was able to pass that
down to the generation and then passed it down to
me because outside forces and this is definitely not just
(28:10):
a Cherokee story. Like outside forces can try to convince
a people that they are not this or that that
doesn't matter, like now you're American. But for so many
of us, we went to continue our stories. We went
to pass down what matters to us.
Danielle Robay (28:27):
Okay, now it's time to turn things up a notch.
We are doing the speed read. So here's how it works.
We're going to put sixty seconds on the clock and
we're going to see just how many rapid fire literary
questions you can get through.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Okay, are you ready? Okay, let's go three?
Eliana Ramage (28:43):
Two?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
What is one literary trope you would ban forever? It
was all just a dream?
Danielle Robay (28:49):
The Desert Island author? Who are you reading for the
rest of your life?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Highly read? You have ten minutes at a bookstore. Where
are you going first? Just released fiction?
Danielle Robay (28:58):
What's a book that you give most often before the
MNGO ripens by F Y J.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Korean? What fictional character do you secretly think you're most like?
Eliana Ramage (29:08):
Ooh, okay in this book, I think I can be Adella,
but I want to be a Nadia.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
What's the first book you stayed up all night to finish?
Danielle Robay (29:16):
I think Ella Enchanted? Do you ever peak at the
last page. First, No, what's a book you wish you'd written?
Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld. Oh, that's a great one, Ellie, Anna,
that's it. Thank you so so much, thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
It's just a huge honor to be here.
Danielle Robay (29:39):
Okay, friends, Before we wrap today's episode, I'm bringing back
our monthly audiobook recommendation segment brought to you by Apple Books,
called Turn Up the Story. Apple Books editors are always
reading and listening so they can bring you the best
new books every single month, including brilliant new voices. This month,
Apple Books editors are spotlighting Little Movements by Lauren Morrow.
(30:04):
This gorgeously written debut novel is about navigating the intersection
between life, creativity, and expectations. Lifelong dancer Layla has recently
discovered her love of choreography, so when she wins a
position at Briar House, a Vermont artist residency program, she's
overjoyed and overwhelmed. Lauren Morrow elegantly explores the conflicts that
(30:26):
come with Layla's once in a lifetime gift, from scandals
within the program to the strain it puts on her marriage.
Not to mention Briar House's all white administration, assuming that
Layla's dance performance will directly reflect quote the black experience
without even asking her. Marrow's vivid descriptions of the dances
capture the artistry of movements so strikingly it's almost like
(30:47):
each piece plays out before your eyes as you're listening.
There's so much to feel and discuss in this gem
of a novel, it's sure to be a book club favorite.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
For a limited time.
Danielle Robay (30:58):
You can get the audiobook of The Little Movements for
just nine ninety nine only on Apple Books. And if
you're curious about what Inspiredmorrow to write this tenderhearted debut,
you'll find that too. Head to Apple dot co slash
Debut Listens to listen in and while you're there, don't
miss the full collection of debut audio books that the
Apple Books editors love, all chosen with bookmarked listeners in mind.
(31:26):
And if you want a little bit more from us,
come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's book
Club on Instagram, serving up books, vibes and behind.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
The scenes magic.
Danielle Robay (31:35):
And I'm at Danielle Robe rob a y Come say
hi and df me And if you want to go
nineties on us call us. Okay, our phone line is open,
so call now at one five zero one two nine,
one three three seven nine. That's one five oh one
two nine, one three three seven nine. Share your literary
(31:58):
hot takes, recommendations, questions about the monthly pick, or let
us know what you think about the episode you just heard,
and who knows, you might just hear yourself in our
next episode, So don't be shy, give us a ring,
and of course, make sure to follow Bookmarked by Reese's
book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
(32:19):
you get your shows until then via in the next chapter.
Bookmarked is a production of Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcast.
It's executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and me Danielle Robe.
Production is by Acast Creative Studios. Our producers are Maddy Foley,
Brittany Martinez, Sarah Schlede, and Darbi Masters. Our production assistant
(32:42):
is Avery Loftis. Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder are the
executive producers for Acast Creative Studios.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Maureen Polo and Reese.
Danielle Robay (32:50):
Witherspoon are the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwa,
Kristin Perla Kelly Turner and Ashley Rappaport our associate producers
for Reese's Book Club. Ali Perry and Lauren Hansen are
the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
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