Bad Marriage Story

First-time novelist Margaret Klaw knows a thing or two about divorce — she sees it every week in court. A founding partner of BKW Family Law, an all-women law firm in Philadelphia, Pa., Klaw's first book, "Keeping It Civil" was a nonfiction peak inside some of her most fascinating cases in the ever-shifting politics of contemporary family law. In "Every Over Weekend," published this spring by She Writes Press, Klaw turns to fiction to explore the many perspectives in the separation of Lisa and Jake, two forty-something parents caught in a conflict of custody. A member of the well-known Van Doren family of Cornwall, Conn., (her grandparents were critic and biographer Carl Van Doren and book review editor Irita Bradford Van Doren) Klaw will discuss her novel at The Cornwall Memorial Library on Saturday, July 1, at 5 p.m.

Alexander Wilburn: As someone who works in divorce law, what was the process of creating a fictional court case that still felt like it could be a true story?

Margaret Klaw: I've spent so much time in my career working with these kinds of cases that it wasn't hard to think up a scenario that wasn't too unusual. This is a classic case of people who have good intentions, have good will want to split custody with their children, and then events happen, one or the other gets suspicious, anger escalates and everything falls apart. That dynamic is very common. I didn't want to write a horror story in court, I wanted to write about people who are flawed, generally good, and yet things still go south. My feeling is often there is no one true story. Often things depend on people's perspectives. I wanted to write a novel that had not just moral, but factual ambiguity. I think that's what life really is.

AW: I did feel like the theme of the book is that the truth belongs to everyone — every character has their version of events. There isn't a bad guy in your case, it's a story of emotional disagreement.

MK: It's funny you say that because I feel that way too. But even just this weekend I went to a dinner party and one of the guests had just read the books, and she's divorced. She said, "We have to talk about your book! I can't believe that judge, if that happened with my kids I would have been on a plane out of the country!" She hated Jake. I kind of like him, I don't think he's so terrible. But I have met some people with some very strong reactions to him. No one in the book is all bad… or all good.