The Stories We Tell

Patti Callahan Henry's eleventh novel, The Stories We Tell (2014) follows Eve and Cooper Morrison, a “power couple” in Savannah, Georgia, whose life together is thrown for a loop after Cooper and Eve's sister, Willa, get into a car accident. Callahan Henry worked formerly as a pediatric nurse, but now writes full time, and her books have appeared on many bestseller lists, including Publisher's Weekly, The New York Times, and USA Today.

Eve Morrison's life, from the outside, is enviable, even fairytale-like. The well-to-do preacher's daughter was courted early by the dashing Cooper Morrison, a local boy from a wealthy family. Things between them progressed quickly as if fate were on their side. Theirs, the entire town noted, was the kind of young romance about which movies are made. Two decades later, it still sparkles—though perhaps not quite as brightly as before. Eve and Cooper have moved into the former home of Cooper's parents. Eve is now a potent Savannah businesswoman, the owner of a letterpress called Fine Line Ink, while Cooper runs a successful digital magazine. They have a teenage daughter, Gwen.

Nevertheless, things are less idyllic than they seem. The stress of running their respective businesses has strained Eve and Cooper's relationship. Gwen has grown into an increasingly unruly, sullen adolescent, whose outbursts have become more pronounced with time. Also, Eve's sister, Willa, who has recently struggled with alcohol addiction, has moved into the power couple's pool house while she tries to get back on her feet. The setup is awkward, as Willa and Cooper don't get along well.



Things change one night when Eve receives a knock on the door from a policeman who notifies her that Cooper and Willa have been in a terrible car accident. They have both been hospitalized. She goes to wake Gwen, so she can accompany Eve to the hospital, but finds her daughter missing—the rebellious teen has snuck out again. Shaken, Eve speeds to the hospital, where she finds Cooper badly scratched and bruised, but conscious and coherent. Her sister is not doing nearly as well; Eve learns that Willa has suffered brain damage in the accident. Eve questions Cooper about the night's events, and his explanation, which involves an intoxicated Willa crashing the car, although plausible, somehow doesn't seem to add up—in part because the idea of Willa and Cooper out together seems unlikely, given their rocky relationship. When Willa comes to, she is unable to either corroborate or contradict Cooper's telling of events because she has little memory left of the night and none of the crash. Eve convinces herself that she's being paranoid, and considers that, after a lifetime together, there is no reason Cooper would have to lie to her.

Eve finally decides to leave the accident in the past, trying instead to deal with how it has affected her present. She begins to receive mysterious anonymous letters in the mail that hint that she has been lied to about what happened that night. Eve also receives a call from a local reporter, who questions her about an unexplained dead body found near the scene of the accident. Willa, meanwhile, suffers from strange and frightening dreams that seem to involve forgotten details from the night of the accident, although neither she nor Eve can say with certainty how accurate these recollections are.

Amidst all the chaos that has ensued since the accident, including the strain it has put on Eve's relationship with her husband, Eve finds solace in her work and two closest friends, Max and Francine. Each struggles to support Eve while harboring doubts of their own about the official account of the accident. Again, Eve finds herself doubting her instincts, this time about her true feelings for Max. When the truth about the accident finally comes out, Eve learns that Cooper has never been the perfect husband she desperately wanted him to be—he has even stolen money out of her account. She decides it's time to take her love life in a new (if for the readers entirely expected) direction.



The Stories We Tell falls into the loose category of what is often derisively called “chick lit,” a romance novel-adjacent genre characterized by melodramatic plot arcs, fraught interpersonal relationships, and romantic finales. Such works, generically, can be distinguished from more typical romance novels because they do not revolve solely around the development of a single romantic relationship. The Stories We Tell, in fact, follows the dissolution of a romance that is just one of several concurrent family dramas.
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