Stuart Brody, 2024 Winner of the Grateful American Book Prize, on the Importance of Secondary Characters

Stuart Brody: Ruth is a very important character to the book because she depicts the struggle. She’s kind of the gut check. In many ways, as often happens in fiction, the main character doesn’t really know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know fully the mission he’s on. A hero who’s a little bit lost, trying to move through the fog of his own psychological limitations needs someone to ground him. And it’s not just the hero, it’s a contemporary. In movies, we often call that the sidekick, but Ruth was not my sidekick in the book. She was very active politically, just as serious, just as committed, but from a different point of view. But their love brought them together. So what Ruth does in that book is even though she’s as committed in a little different direction than the main character, even though she manifests the same kind of drive, determination, ambition in ways that are different, she also really sees his promise and wants to bring that out. So I think you’re really lucky in life when you have a friend who’s as equally committed to you and you’re prospering as they are to themselves. And that’s the aspect of humility as opposed to selfishness. So again, viewers would try to think now about who in their lives are like that, who support you, but make your success equally important to their own. And that’s what love is. So it’s a love story for sure.

Narrator: This author interview was produced through a partnership of the Grateful American Foundation and WETA. For more author interviews, please visit AdLit.org.