Patti Callahan on Graham Greene, Mary Kay Andrews, and Women Who Run With Wolves

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.

This week, we spoke to the author of Surviving Savannah, Patti Callahan.

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Book Marks: First book you remember loving?

Patti Callahan: Narnia Chronicles. It’s the first time I felt like a book actually transported me out of my own life and world and into another. 

BM: Favorite re-read?

PC: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. I find something new in this book every single time I read it. 

BM: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with?

PC: Becoming Mrs. Lewis with A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis. Mrs. Lewis is the extraordinary woman named Joy Davidman, who was once C. S. Lewis’ wife. When she tragically passed, he wrote A Grief Observed about his own mourning. 

BM: A book that blew your mind?

PC: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

BM: Last book you read?

PC: The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

BM: A book that made you cry?

PC: Beach Music by Pat Conroy 

BM: What book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to?

PC: We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker. I’ve been nearly an evangelist for this book. Everything about it blew me away. 

BM: A book that actually made you laugh out loud?

PC: Anything by Mary Kay Andrews.

BM: What’s one book you wish you had read during your teenage years?

PC: Women Who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. This also falls under my category of re-reads! I have an old marked up paperback that my daughter has now: I love the passing down of books that change us. 

BM: Favorite book to give as a gift?

PC: Anam Cara by John O’Donohue. There isn’t another like it. 

BM: Classic book on your To Be Read pile?

PC: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

BM: What’s a book with a really great sex scene?

PC: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?

PC: Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn

BM: Favorite book of the 21st century?

PC: Ian McEwan’s Atonement. 

BM: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?

PC: Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

BM: Book(s) you’re reading right now?

PC: Finally, late to the party, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and What Happened to the Bennetts by Lisa Scottoline

BM: Favorite children’s book?

PC: The Secret Garden

BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?

PC: The Lost Queen by Signe Pike, and a long ago love of mine, Peachtree Road by Anne Rivers Siddons.

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Patti Callahan is the New York Times, USA TODAY, and Globe and Mail bestselling novelist of fifteen novels, including Once Upon a Wardrobe, Becoming Mrs. Lewis and Surviving Savannah. A recipient of the Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year, the Christy Book of the Year, and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year, Patti is the cofounder and cohost of the popular web series and podcast Friends & Fiction.

Patti Callahan’s Surviving Savannah is out now in paperback from Berkley

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