26 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 8, 2021

That question is part of the inspiration for

Weiner’s new novel, That Summer, due out from

her longtime publisher Atria on May 11. The

book begins with one woman receiving emails

meant for another woman with a very similar

email address. Eventually an effusive “SORRY!!!”

arrives, then they have a follow-up conversation

and an IRL drinks date in New York City.

The two women are both named Diana, though

one goes by Daisy. One lives on Cape Cod, the

other in Main Line Philadelphia—and, it turns

out, they really like each other. But there’s more

than an email coincidence at work, and far greater

stakes, including a painful secret that must be

revealed so each of them can become whole.

“I was thinking about ‘the road not taken’

and ‘the grass is always greener,’ ” Weiner says,

“and women with kids looking at single friends

and being like, ‘Oh, man, does she have the

life,’ and single friends looking at married

friends and being like, ‘Oh, I want what she has.’ ”

That Summer goes on to tackle #MeToo, with

one of the main characters in search of a reckoning

after a sexual assault during her youth and the

other needing to confront truths she’s been obliv-

ious to for far too long.

Initial pieces of That Summer were written in

2018, as Brett Kavanaugh was being questioned

by the Senate Judiciary Committee over allega-

tions of sexual assault. During those hearings,

Weiner—who is now 50 and is married to the

writer Bill Syken—was struck by the appearance

of the future Supreme Court justice’s wife, Ashley

Estes Kavanaugh. “She looked glassy, like glaze,”

she recalls. “Like a bomb has just gone off and your

ears are still ringing. I just wondered, ‘Okay, some-

body married this guy and had kids with him. This

man has daughters and he coaches their basketball

team. So what’s it like to be Mrs. Brett Kavanaugh?’

I thought about what a wife like that would see and

what she would choose to look away from.”

The author credits her own daughters—

Jennifer Weiner’s new novel tackles

#MeToo and women’s ability to

see—and save—one another

BY JEN DOLL

T

here are other Jennifer Weiners in the world, and I will some-

times get their emails,” the author Jennifer Weiner confesses

by Zoom from her home in Philadelphia. “It happened last

night actually. I always feel so terrible. Because it’s such a

terrible name. It’s like, I mean... Weiner”—pronounced

like whiner, she emphasizes. “I’m always just like, who are these poor

other women?”

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