About the Book
Mara isn’t a slut; she just can’t find what she wants. She wants to forget her mother’s death, her father’s hypocrisy, and the plane crash that follows her. As a child she couldn’t understand why the grass never got cut, and now as she gropes her way through university life, all those weeds, those dandelions, have stayed with her, haunting her dreams.
She can’t see a way out of her dark hole until she gets hit by a car on an Ottawa street and starts spending time with Jack, the guy behind the wheel. Kind, thoughtful, and a virgin – he’s the last person she’d ever expected to fall for.
As she opens up to Jack, the wounds she’d been trying to ignore surface, and she’s forced to finally choose between running from or facing the past that’s been haunting her all her life. Through nights out looking for release to the ultimate event that forces her to face herself, Mara finally learns the truth about dandelions.
Author Interview
What are the main themes of your book?
The main theme of The Truth about Dandelions is control. Who controls your life? Who controls who you become? How much can you separate yourself from your childhood? Mara, in the novel, has had a terribly tragic past and she feels as if her life is completely out of her control. At the same time, she’s terrified of taking control, lest she get hurt.
Another theme I explore is homelessness, or rather symbolic homelessness, of feeling as if you have no base, nothing to tether you to life. Labelling and naming plays quite a strong role in the book as well. Do we label things as a means of defining them, or as a means of differentiating them from ourselves? And finally, the relationship between religion and morality plays a huge role in the novel. If you love to question religion and morality, this is the book for you.
Who or what inspired your story?
I’ve always wondered where confidence comes from. Do we get it from our parents, from friends, from our actions, or is it more inherent? I’ve always been interested in the give and take that many women feel when they receive sexual attention from men. I think everyone has known girls who developed early on and got all kinds of attention from boys, and then never learned how to become confident in their own skin. I wanted to explore this issue.
What do you like best about your primary characters?
I love her ability to grow and learn, and to overcome her past. She makes some pretty horrible decisions in spite of the fact that in some ways, she’s a very intelligent young woman.
With Jack, the secondary character in the novel, I love his principles, and the fact that he sticks to them even though it might be easier in the short run to toss them aside.
What are their worst peculiarities?
Mara’s a mess, mainly because she’s afraid of being hurt and abandoned as she was as a child. It isn’t that she doesn’t know what could make her happy; it’s that she’s afraid it might not make her happy, and then she’ll have nothing, not even hope. She’s pathetically chicken to take a chance.
How does your main character evolve?
She learns that she has to make decisions that will benefit not only her, but the people close to her.
What’s the principal message you want to send to your audience?
1. That people can change.
2. I want them to ask themselves how much of their sense of morality comes from external forces (like religion or parenting) and how much of it comes from within. I want them to question their own beliefs on morality. Is it true that it’s only a sin if you think it’s a sin, or are their universal morals?
What’s the nicest thing anyone has said about your book?
I have some great reviews from book reviewers, but I think the nicest (and most gushing) might be from a Goodreads Reader who said it was “a brilliant piece of literature.”
“LOVE this book!!! Couldn’t put it down! This book is the reason I fell in love with reading. It was so well written, awesome character development. I don’t have a bad thing to say about it. You MUST grab this book and read it! You will fall in love with like I have! You evokes you the reader to use your mind and delve into deep thoughts about love and life. It is a brilliant piece of literature.” Krystal Marlein rated it 5 of 5 stars
The Truth About Dandelions on Goodreads
Where can we purchase it?
Most places online. The purchasing links are below. (If you live in South Western Ontario, you can also find it in local stores.)
Createspace
Smashwords
Amazon
Wolf on Water
About Hayley Linfield
Hayley Linfield is a fiction writer living in South-Western Ontario. Her works have been published in a variety of media, from Reader’s Digest to the Globe and Mail and a wide variety of anthologies, magazines and ezines. She was the 2012 winner of the Alice Munro Short Story Competition and her first full length work, The Truth about Dandelions (a coming-of-age New Adult fiction novel) was released last year and has received nothing but great reviews.
To learn more visit Hayley on her website and follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.
Cover and author photo by David Morris Photography.
