The Night We Lost Him

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. Consider the quotes about architecture that open each section of the book. How are they connected to one another? How do they inform each part of the novel?

2. In the Prologue, Liam Noone keeps “playing the moments back on an unforgiving loop: the moments he is trying to return to, to relive. The first moment at eighteen, then at twenty and twenty-six and thirty-seven and forty-five. Fifty-eight. Sixty-one. Sixty-eight.” (page 3) The years of each of the novel’s flashbacks coincide with these moments Liam recalls. How does that enhance the importance of these flashbacks?

3. How would you describe the relationship dynamic between Nora and Sam? Consider how Nora and Sam’s past and present interactions shape their investigation into their father’s death.

4. What role does the setting of Carpinteria, California, play in the narrative? How do the locations like Windbreak, Ditmas Park, and other key settings influence the story?

5. The character of Liam Samuel Noone is full of complexity. What are your thoughts on his life choices and their impact on his family? Unpack Liam’s motivations and how his actions reverberate through the lives of two of his children, Nora and Sam.

6. The novel frequently shifts between past and present. How does this narrative structure affect your understanding of the story? How do the flashbacks to Liam’s past contribute to the unfolding mystery?

7. Themes of grief and love often intersect throughout The Night We Lost Him. How do different characters cope with these emotions? Can you identify with any of the characters’ different means of coping? Discuss the varying ways in which characters like Nora, Sam, and others process their grief.

8. Cece Salinger is a pivotal character in the story. What do you think about her relationship with Liam and her influence on the plot? Discuss Cece’s motivations and her impact on the events surrounding Liam’s death.

9. In the novel, Liam recalls Cory saying: “Fidelity is who you tell your stories to.” (page 130) What do you think she means by this? How does this idea speak to the different relationships in the novel?

10. The reverberations of Cory’s true identity can be felt by every character in the novel. How did this long-kept secret shape the characters and their actions? Have you ever experienced the effects of family secrets? Consider the roles of inherited secrets and their long-term effects on family members.

11. Were you familiar with neuroarchitecture before reading about Nora’s profession? How does this career influence her approach to solving the mystery? Discuss how Nora’s skills and perspectives as an architect play into her investigation.

12. In a flashback, Cory recalls a writer once saying that his stories are “a love letter to one person.” (page 229) Do you think this is true? Do you think The Night We Lost Him is a love letter from Nora to her father? Share your thoughts surrounding the fates of the characters. What do you think is next for Nora?

Enhance Your Book Club

Character Map: Create a character map detailing the relationships and connections among all the key characters. Highlight the evolution of these relationships throughout the story.

Setting Sketch: Draw or sketch the setting of Windbreak based on the descriptions in the book. Discuss how the physical environment reflects the themes and emotions in the story.

Dig In!: Try making Nora’s favorite lettuce and tomato sandwich, using “thick tomato slices on griddled rustic bread, crisp romaine lettuce, mayonnaise, and flaky salt.”

Travel Virtually!: Since the central California coast plays such a big part in the book, consider “traveling” to Santa Barbara virtually by visiting https://santabarbaraca.com/itinerary/virtual-tours-of-santa-barbara/

Learn More about Laura! Visit Laura Dave’s website (www.lauradave.com) and follow her on Instagram at @lauradaveauthor

Author Q&A

Congratulations on publishing The Night We Lost Him! I’m hoping you can tell me more about the book’s origins. Why were you interested in telling this story? You’ve said in the past there’s usually a question that begins each of your books—what was the question guiding this one?

Thank you! I’m so excited for The Night We Lost Him to make its way into the world. I’ve been thinking about Liam and Cory’s story for many years, but it concretized for me when I read about a succession battle at a well-known children’s book publisher. I don’t want to be more specific than that in case anyone is coming to this conversation before they’ve finished the novel.

But I will say that, as with The Last Thing He Told Me, I found inspiration from this real-world event—and it helped solidify how I approached the question that I wanted to explore in the novel. That question centers around the idea of what it means to show up for someone. More specifically, what does it mean to be the witness to someone’s life? I love the idea that, if we are lucky, we each have a person who sees all of us—who reminds us who we most want to be. Who refuses to allow us to stray from who we most soulfully are. But what does it mean if, despite that level of openness, you have things keeping you apart? This tension is where the novel began for me.

What was your writing process for this book? Did it differ at all from the process of writing your previous books?

Like with my previous novels, I knew the initial question driving the emotional through line of the book. But each novel has different requirements based on where the story needs to go, so it’s always a different writing experience. With The Night We Lost Him, it was exciting to me to weave through the narrative a fifty-year-long relationship—and how this relationship tied to Liam’s untimely death.

I also liked juggling the myriad ways Liam’s past influenced Nora’s present and future. As I delved deeper into the novel, this led to secondary questions I wanted to explore: How was Nora going to move toward understanding what had been kept from her? How could that understanding help her to rise up from the most painful of circumstances to become the hero of her own life?

From the California coast to Brooklyn, the sense of place and detailed setting in the novel feel like characters unto themselves. What inspired you to write about these locations, and how did they factor into the story’s, or the characters’, development?

In all of my novels, I like to write about places that are off the beaten path in some way. I’m interested in the paradox of a tight-knit community often being the very place where you can find anonymity. And I really like to excavate what these small towns require of their inhabitants. I find that it puts characters on their toes in surprising ways.

In The Night We Lost Him, I also wanted to dive into the way coastal California and residential Brooklyn spoke to each other. In terms of geography and topography, they couldn’t be more opposite. But there is the heartbeat of connectiveness in both places that pull at Nora and Liam—and that ultimately helps highlight the ways Nora is more similar to her father than she thinks.

Did you always know how the mystery at the heart of the novel would resolve itself? How did you balance writing the dual storylines, between past and present?

I never know a novel’s ending while I’m working on the first draft. I approach writing as a process of discovery: a way of leaning into what could happen, what didn’t happen, and what should happen, to be the truest to my characters. It usually takes several drafts of homing in before I figure out what the ending will look like.

In this process of writing (and re-writing) The Night We Lost Him, I found the balance between the dual storylines and how I wanted them to respond to each other. That’s when the fun part really came in. I loved slipping Easter eggs into the flashbacks that Nora would find sometime in the present. It’s a way for Nora to have a conversation with her father that she never got to have before she lost him—and to explore an idea that is central to the novel: that grief isn’t the opposite of love, but rather proof of love’s continuation. Proof that love, in its many special forms, is never lost.

5.Do you have any favorite or nostalgic meals, like Jack’s strawberry pizza or the lettuce and tomato sandwiches?

Both of those meals have actually been staples in my home. My mother made a version of the lettuce and tomato sandwich for me while I was growing up. My mother’s sandwich had cheese on it as well and, while it may sound simple, something about the crisp lettuce and the salty cheese and jammy tomato—It was so delicious. Every bite was perfect. I enjoyed paying homage to that and the nostalgia that goes with our favorite childhood foods.

The strawberry pizza is an offshoot of a recipe created by Jeremy Fox, a wonderful California chef. Shortly after my husband and I met, we had Chef Fox’s strawberry pizza at his (then) restaurant in Northern California. To this day, it is one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. Most Sunday nights, you can find me re-creating the cheesy, gooey, savory pie for family and friends.

6.Many of your novels incorporate professions not often explored in fiction. In The Night We Lost Him, it’s neuroarchitecture; in The Last Thing He Told Me, it was wood turning; and in Eight Hundred Grapes, it was biodynamic winemaking. Do you have a secret career aspiration for one of these occupations? What about them inspires you to include them in your writing?

I aim to imbue my main characters with a singular way of seeing the world. In the case of Nora, she is drawn to neuroarchitecture because it’s a more holistic way of approaching building design. It’s an art form that requires patience, an exacting nature, perseverance, attention to detail, expansiveness. And a startling amount of empathy.

All of those characteristics serve Nora well when she is faced with the mystery she needs to solve in order to figure out what happened to her father and, ultimately, get herself to a better place.

In terms of whether I have secret career aspirations, I would love to be an architect. And a woodturner (The Last Thing He Told Me). And a vintner (Eight Hundred Grapes). It’s one of the great joys of writing—to dip into these other lives that you could imagine living.

7.You explore the concept of loyalty throughout the novel and in your previous books. Tell us a little about how this became a central theme in the story. What does loyalty mean to you?

As Liam recalls Cory telling him in The Night We Lost Him, “Fidelity is who you tell your stories to.” I think, on the simplest level, Cory is talking about loyalty. I’m intrigued by this idea that loyalty is about who we really let in—the special person (or people) to whom we reveal ourselves. The people to whom we pay careful attention—allowing them the safety of being who they really are.