What if you were given a chance to time-travel back to a pivotal year in your life and make a different decision that would change your future? What if you were given an opportunity for a “do-over,” wherein you were able to appropriate knowledge you now have and take a right instead of a left at that fork in the road? In their new novel “The Year We Turned Forty,” writers Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke explore the desire to return to an essential year in the fictional lives of three women who are best friends just about to turn 50. Published by Washington Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, the book will be released on April 26, and a meet-and-greet with the authors will be held that evening at Warwick’s Books, 7812 Girard Ave., at 7 p.m. Reserved seating is available. Surely time travel does not exist, but in this book, one of the characters, Blair, is a magician who can grant the wish if it is desired. It is with this bit of whimsy that this book, the third from this writing duo who have been friends since high school, really takes off. In agreement, the characters return to the year they marked their 40th birthday to upend key decisions that affected their lives. Fenton and Steinke — employing “magical realism” — move the characters quickly into the action of the first chapter, setting the stage for the story through fantasy. Fenton and Steinke have authored two works, “The Status of All Things” and “Your Perfect Life.” Like (and unlike) the others, the writing in this third installment takes on a lighthearted and somewhat sentimental tone. Though the story is make-believe, the issues Fenton and Steinke raise are meaningful topics that confront real people every day. We sat down with Fenton to talk about how, under the guise of a beach read, she and Steinke tackle contemporary challenges and regrets in a colloquial tone that carries the three best friends to their final conclusions. La Jolla Village News: You and Lisa are about to publish your third book; congratulations. Talk about the brainstorming that was involved in conjuring up the plot for “The Year We Turned Forty.” Liz Fenton: We have been writing together for a long time and made a promise to each other that we would write a book. We’ve been best friends since high school; (we) both grew up in San Diego, and now I live in La Jolla with my husband and two children, and Lisa lives in Chicago with her husband, daughter and two stepkids… needless to say, we are on the phone a lot. The way it usually works is one of us will throw out an idea – for this book, I made the suggestion ‘What if three best friends go back to the year they turn 40 and make different decisions that alter their futures.’ Then Lisa starts to fill that in, and while the three women are fictional and in no part autobiographical, we’re both in our early 40s and feel that when you reach your 40s you really start looking back on your life and decisions thus far that you’ve made. Sometimes, you feel like you should have gone down a different path. What if you had the chance to do that? TS: You make getting published sound so easy. Was it? LF: Gosh, no! With our first two manuscripts, we could not get an agent; nobody wanted us. But I guess we were in the right place at the right time, because Lisa and I had a website for years, www.lisaandliz.com, where we featured authors. One of the editors at Simon & Schuster contacted me and wanted to thank us for giving some attention to her authors. We mentioned that we were working on a manuscript, “Your Perfect Life.” She said send it over, we did, she bought it, guided us to a terrific agent, Elizabeth Weeds, and we were launched. But we put in a lot of time to get there. TS: What kind of regrets do the three women have? And though there is a fantasy element to the plot, are their problems relatable to the real world? LF: Definitely. What do people regret? Having an affair and watching your marriage implode, choosing a career over having children, the nagging doubt you carry around with you as a parent — could I have done a better job, could they have become a better adult: These are the kinds of issues the three women struggle with in the book. Lisa and I try not to fall into regretting things, but I think in people’s daily life, including mine, there are certain obstacles that make us think about what we don’t have instead of focusing on what’s in front of us. That’s so unfortunate. Social media feed into that completely as we overshare, always looking to see what others have going, to compare. Your moment of truth comes when you see how precious your life is right now and come to that realization before it’s too late. TS: The three women in the book are Jessie, Gabriela and Claire. Which character do you think people will connect with most? LF: Definitely Claire. My mom did too. She is my favorite character in the book. Lisa and I write a lot about friendship, and in all three books there’s always a central women’s friendship. Claire is honest but loving; she’s the type of friend who will jump on a plane for you, do anything for you. She’s the kind of friend that everyone should have. Claire went back in time so her friends could have a chance to right some wrongs, but Claire thought her life was OK; she had already made peace with the choices she had made.
