Questions for Kristin Hannah (TRUE COLORS)
It’s probably safe to say that sisters have complicatedrelationships, and TRUE COLORS the familial bond between three very different women. How do you create such complex,realistic female relationships?
The creation of characters is really kind of a magical process. It begins with a basic understanding of what kind of person the plot demands. For me, plot andcharacterization are inextricably bound; there isn’t onewithout the other. Therefore, I create the two in tandem, at roughly the same time. So I begin with a basic personality type. Then, scene by scene, the layering begins. In each draft of the novel, I find myself coming a little bit closerto the truth of each character. Past history, current goals, life lessons, family and friends, career—all of these inform the creation of a character and when added together, theycombine to develop a person who seems real enough to be yourown best friend.
Each sister has such a distinct personality—Winona the one with something to prove, Aurora the peacekeeper, Vivi Ann therebellious beauty. Did you have an easier time writing one ofthe sisters more than another?
Absolutely. Vivi Ann was one of those rare characters who was fully developed and “right” almost from the first draft. Winona, on the other hand, was perhaps one of my mostdifficult characterizations. The answer as to why, Ibelieve, can be found in the purity of Vivi Ann’s heart andthe complexity of Winona’s. Vivi Ann is a passionate, empathetic woman who follows her heart and tries to be what people expect of her. Winona is a woman who has a lot of layers, a lot of anger and pain, and a lot of jealousy—none of which she can express. So the real trick with Winona was to allow her to be unlikeable throughout the course of the novel and yet to—hopefully—make her choices both believable and understandable.
In TRUE COLORS, we get to see the sisters’ lives play out across different decades. Why did you decide to approach telling their story in this way?
I chose to use time as an element in this novel because there’s always a lot of water under any family’s bridge. The Grey family thinks of themselves as happy and well adjustedand close, but the truth is that there have been cracks in the foundation of this family for years. And Dallas Raintree’s unexpected arrival is only one of the factors thatprecipitate their downfall. I really wanted to show a familythat was unaware of the crisis it was in until it was too late, and for that, I needed to get a little elbow room—a little history.
Win, Aurora, and Vivi Ann tend to hide their true feelings,even from each other, while struggling with their individualflaws. How did you strike a balance between creatinglikeable characters and giving them relatable shortcomings?
I have never been one of those authors who demand likeable characters. I think what’s more important is believable,honest characters whom you understand. Winona is not verylikeable for a good part of the story, but I think the reader understands her, and even empathizes with her. She is a verydamaged character who truly doesn’t see her own shortcomingsuntil it is too late. That’s what makes her road to redemption so powerful. Really, the very same traits and character “flaws” that made her betray Vivi Ann will alsomake redemption possible. She is who she is throughout thenovel and I think that makes her both interesting andunderstandable. After all, who doesn’t want to believe that a terrible betrayal can be both forgiven and undone? And what is the point of being a family if forgiveness isn’tpossible?
Over the course of the novel, the Grey sisters realize theymay not even fully understand the people they are closest to.What inspired this family dynamic?
The best expression of this point is the sisters’ differingopinions of their father. Obviously, they all grew up in thesame house, experiencing the same events, and yet each womanhas a distinct perception of the man who is their father. To Winona, he’s cold and demanding and cruel; to Aurora, he’s alost cause; to Vivi Ann, he’s a man suffering his grief andloss in silence, who loves his children even though he never says so. Each woman sees a piece of him but none understands the whole. I’ve always been fascinated by perception. We can each see the same moment, the same person, entirelydifferently; our opinions are often dependent on our worldview. And unbeknownst to the Greys, these differingperceptions led directly to the fault lines that formedbeneath their once solid family.
Prejudice definitely shapes the arc of Vivi Ann’s life, andyou approach it with a raw realism. Was this a difficulttopic to explore in writing?
Yes, it was extremely difficult. Obviously, the ignorance and fear that lie beneath prejudice is both disturbing andoffensive, and I often found myself wanting to pull backbecause of my own personal beliefs, but I knew that prejudice was an integral part of this story. It had to be. It’s a sad truth that eyewitness testimony is often tainted—even unknowingly—by preconceptions and racial bias, and that’s apoint I deeply wanted to make in this book.
Forgiveness and atonement are themes the Grey family struggles with over the course of the novel. How do the ways they handle these topics illustrate the strength of their family bond?
The Grey family has always imagined itself to be unbreakable.After the loss of their mother, the sisters became even closer. They have always forgiven each other easily and putaside their differences. Until now.
One of the things we see in this story is the birth of a new, tenuous forgiveness, a crystalline version of it wherecharacters pretend to have feelings they don’t quite own.Vivi Ann tries to forgive Winona, pretends to, but it’s never quite genuine, and Winona wants to believe that she did theright thing and forgive herself, but she can’t quite managesuch a fiction. For years, the two sisters survive in anuneasy, dishonest détente. It isn’t until Winona reaches for atonement that true forgiveness can occur—from either side. I guess that’s because forgiveness sometimes comes with aprice tag of real change.
Because so much of the story takes place around the Greyfamily ranch, it becomes almost another character in thefamily’s saga, representing different things for each sister.Why does setting play such an important role?
The sisters’ connection to the family ranch is anotherexpression of their different personalities. Each has been taught that this land is their birthright, that it is thefamily’s most valuable and important possession. Vivi Ann has always believed this; Winona never has. Over the course of the terrible events that unfold, each will see how theywere wrong, and how they were right, in assessing theimportance of place to family. For Vivi Ann and Dallas, most of all, Water’s Edge Ranch is more than simply a chunkof land. It’s an ideal, the dream of family yet to be, athing worth fighting for, and the minute Vivi Ann stopsfighting for her birthright, she’s lost more than she imagined. Ironically, it is Winona who must pick up thebattle and fight for something—and someone—she never believed in at all, and only then does she have a chance to trulyunderstand how the land her great grandfather homesteaded has defined their family and given them all the strong roots theyneeded to survive.
