When I start­ed writ­ing a nov­el inspired by a true-crime mur­der, I didn’t expect it to lead me to think about for­give­ness. I began real­ly with the oppo­site: a divorce that spi­raled out of con­trol, bru­tal fam­i­ly dys­func­tion, and a sin­is­ter mur­der-for-hire plot.

The news sto­ry first caught my atten­tion because I had a very tan­gen­tial con­nec­tion to the per­son who was mur­dered. I was hor­ri­fied as soon as I heard the news, and went down the rab­bit hole of cov­er­age spring­ing up around it. Ini­tial­ly there was spec­u­la­tion that the mur­dered man — a law pro­fes­sor at Flori­da State — might have been killed by a stu­dent unhap­py with a grade, or by a col­league who dis­agreed with his the­o­ries of con­sti­tu­tion­al law. Then, the arti­cles would go on to note that he had been embroiled in a con­tentious divorce. As soon as I read that, I felt like I had arrived at the story’s beat­ing heart.

For years after this mur­der, I fol­lowed the news as mem­bers of the ex-wife’s fam­i­ly were impli­cat­ed and even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed. I con­sumed every­thing I could: The reg­u­lar cov­er­age in Flori­da news­pa­pers, and all the true-crime YouTube videos that cropped up. Even­tu­al­ly a Date­line spe­cial and a pop­u­lar pod­cast were pro­duced sur­round­ing the mur­der. But I always came away from these dis­sat­is­fied; so much infor­ma­tion about the foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion and the even­tu­al legal pro­ceed­ings was read­i­ly avail­able but I want­ed the human story.

How could this seem­ing­ly ordi­nary fam­i­ly (alleged­ly) have done such a hor­ri­ble thing? How could a divorce esca­late so bad­ly? No Date­line spe­cial could tell me what the fam­i­ly mem­bers thought about as they fell asleep the night before they com­mit­ted this crime, or what they felt when they looked in the mir­ror the next day. What cold-blood­ed cal­cu­la­tions, what ter­ri­ble blind-spots, what haunt­ing dreams, what evis­cer­at­ing regrets cloud­ed their thoughts? No mat­ter how much I googled, I would nev­er gain access to their inner lives, to their souls. 

The only way to come close to an answer was to use this real sto­ry as a spring­board and imag­ine my way inside. I might not have been able to cap­ture what real­ly hap­pened, but in a nov­el, I could go in search of larg­er truths about fam­i­ly love and loy­al­ty, about blind­ing anger and dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion. In order to do so, I need­ed to write from the point of view of the fam­i­ly mem­bers who con­spire to com­mit the mur­der; they might have been the least sym­pa­thet­ic but to under­stand the sto­ry required me to ask what pain did they suf­fer, what excus­es did they con­struct? Most of all, I had to wres­tle with why my char­ac­ters couldn’t soft­en or forgive. 

What made it so trag­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble for them to turn back? 

In some sense, I had to offer my char­ac­ters a kind of for­give­ness, even if they had been so inca­pable of doing that them­selves. Though I knew what they were intend­ing to do, at least at the start of the book, they hadn’t yet done it. I had to treat them as being in pos­ses­sion of a free will where they could still back down. And as much as I abhorred their poten­tial actions, I had to see what made them sym­pa­thet­ic and human. ​“For the dra­ma to deep­en, we must see the lone­li­ness of the mon­ster and the cun­ning of the inno­cent,” the mem­oirist Vivian Gor­nick wrote in her book The Sit­u­a­tion and The Sto­ry, and I thought about this every day as I wrote We Would Nev­er. Could I exca­vate that lone­li­ness? Could I flesh out that pain? 

This kind of empa­thy lies at the heart of writ­ing fic­tion. To write fic­tion is to let go of the need to judge and con­demn. So much of my urge to write stems from the desire to under­stand what it’s like to be some­one else — not the sur­face lay­er but the com­plex­i­ties beneath. Some­times that urge aris­es from a frus­tra­tion with the real world where all too often we are pre­sent­ed with scrubbed, curat­ed facades. This doesn’t mean we will always like what we find, but to inhab­it anoth­er point of view is not to excuse; to imag­ine is not to endorse. Nor is it a zero sum game — to be will­ing to gaze at the lone­li­ness of the mon­ster need not dimin­ish our empa­thy for the vic­tims. But it does put us at risk of see­ing in the mon­ster a sliv­er of human­i­ty, and in doing so, the mon­ster is no longer quite as dis­tant from us. In order to cre­ate relat­able char­ac­ters, I had to let myself see parts of myself in them. What kind of anger might I be capa­ble of? When have I hard­ened myself rather than been will­ing to forgive? 

This kind of imag­i­na­tive empa­thy lies at the heart of for­give­ness more gen­er­al­ly as well. Real for­give­ness — not just per­func­to­ri­ly accept­ing an apol­o­gy — is often a long, mul­ti-lay­ered process, and there are of course things that can­not be so eas­i­ly for­giv­en. But when we are real­ly able to for­give, it requires that same will­ing­ness to look at the larg­er sto­ry, to imag­ine the expe­ri­ence of some­one else, and even in the most painful of moments, be will­ing to see one another’s humanity.