Successful Queries: Lexy Cassola and “The Mother Act,” by Heidi Reimer
Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, we’ll look at a query by Heidi Reimer for her book The Mother Act, recently published by Dutton.
Heidi Reimer is a novelist and writing coach. Her writing interrogates the lives of women, usually those bent on breaking free of what they’re given to create what they yearn for. Her front-row seat to the theater world of her debut novel, The Mother Act, began two decades ago when she met and married an actor, and her immersion in motherhood began when she adopted a toddler and discovered she was pregnant on the same day. She has published in Chatelaine, The New Quarterly, Literary Mama, and the anthologies The M Word: Conversations about Motherhood and Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers.
Heidi Reimer (Photo credit: JEMMAN Photography)
The story behind The Mother Act might look uneventful on the outside, but it wasn’t without its unique challenges. As Reimer shares:
The Mother Act was my second novel to make the rounds of publishers without selling. The first landed me my wonderful agent, Arielle Datz at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner, but not a book deal. The second was a stronger novel with a bigger hook, so I was optimistic as Arielle and I worked on the pitch together. The challenge was to capture not only two points of view but a complex time structure that spans decades non-chronologically. I was happy with the result and excited when Arielle went out with it.
And then…nothing. Lexy Cassola at Dutton was among the editors who passed on the manuscript, but she saw enough in it that she told Arielle she’d be willing to read it again if there was a revision. I don’t remember clinging to much hope in that offer. I do remember the dark night of the soul when Arielle told me a few months later that—for the second time—we’d reached the end of the road with our submissions. I’d kept the faith for so long, and I was fortunate to have an agent who continued to believe in the value of my work, but I was starting to feel not only that I might be delusional, but that she might be too.
I’m Canadian, but Arielle is based in New York, so for The Mother Act we’d only submitted to US editors. I asked if she’d be willing to try a few Canadian publishing houses. Sarah Jackson at Random House Canada loved the book and offered a two-book deal. I worked with her on the manuscript for almost a year. On the strength of that new edited draft, Arielle re-sent the pitch to Lexy at Dutton, and the book found its US home.
Original Query
Sadie Jones, fiery TV star and controversial feminist figure, never wanted to be a mother. No one feels this truth more deeply than Judith Jones-Linnen, the daughter she left behind. Jude grew up touring with her father’s Shakespeare company, rehearsing for each sporadic visit from her famous mother and sneaking reads of the script that launched Sadie’s career: a scathing depiction of maternal ambivalence written when Jude was two, called The Mother Act.
Now Jude is 25 and a talented actor in her own right, and she and Sadie have fallen out—painfully and publicly. On a January evening in New York, gripped with panic and fighting the urge to bolt, Jude takes her seat at the front of a packed theater. In her dressing room, Sadie prepares to step onstage for the premiere of Mother/Daughter, sequel to The Mother Act—only this time, her show purports to depict Jude’s side, too. Over the course of this single opening night, Sadie accounts for her choices while Jude relives the damage in the countdown to their first meeting since their estrangement.
Reminiscent of Trust Exercise in its exploration of where roleplaying and real life clash, The Mother Act asks: Is it possible to be a dedicated artist and a dedicated mother, and what are the costs of each?
Heidi Reimer’s short stories and essays have appeared in Chatelaine, The New Quarterly, Little Fiction, and Literary Mama, and in the anthologies The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood (Goose Lane), Body & Soul: Creative Nonfiction for Skeptics and Seekers (Caitlin Press) and Outcrops: Northeastern Ontario Short Stories (Scrivener).
Check out Heidi Reimer’s The Mother Act here:
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What Cassola liked about the query:
Mother-daughter relationships—essential, broadly relatable—endlessly fascinate me. But, for obvious reasons, this is a dynamic oft-written about, so when reviewing a pitch, I search for a standout factor—the answer to the question, why this mother-daughter story? As soon as I read that Heidi Reimer’s The Mother Act—a novel about two actresses—is told within the framework of a play, I was immediately intrigued. I loved the idea of content and structure playing on one another in this clever way. I was additionally drawn in by the fact that this was just as much a story about daughterhood as it was about motherhood, with both perspectives getting equal weight.
On a more practical level, as soon as I read a pitch, I start thinking about the audience, and whether the agent’s and author’s vision for who the right reader is matches my own. In this case, Heidi’s literary agent, Arielle Datz, mentioned Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise as a like title. I loved Trust Exercise, so that caught my attention simply as a fan, but more importantly, when my own read matched that comparison, I knew we viewed the novel in a similar way.
And the gorgeous pages did the rest! Heidi’s writing is incredibly stylish, wry, and lean, and from the beginning I knew this was a completely singular novel—both in its narrative form and in its uncompromising look at the implications of becoming a mother. After another round of edits that Heidi did to make sure the ambitious structure really clicked into place, I knew I had to publish it. I am so proud to have worked on this gem of a novel, which is just as fun to read as it is smart, and I can’t wait to see readers fall in love with it—and find much to discuss in its rich pages.
*****
Lexy Cassola (Photo credit: Marc Goldberg Photography)
Lexy Cassola is a Senior Editor at Zando acquiring literary/upmarket book club fiction, suspense, mystery, and horror. Across genres she is seeking smart, deeply relatable, character-driven stories from a variety of perspectives that are just as propulsive as they are thought-provoking. Prior to joining Zando, Lexy spent six years at Dutton/Penguin Random House, where her list included GMA Buzz Pick A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch; Women’s Prize for Fiction longlister And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott; Our Little World by Karen Winn, Unleashed by Cai Emmons, The Mother Act by Heidi Reimer, The Faculty Lounge by Jennifer Mathieu, Where Are You, Echo Blue? by Hayley Krischer, and Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier.
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