In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Samantha Browning Shea’s novel Marrow is a riveting and profound debut.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Shea debuts with a spellbinding tale of magic and motherhood centered on 30-something hopeful mother Oona… it has plenty to say about what it means to be a mother and it delivers a shocking twist. This potent concoction gets the job done.”
In her own words, here is Samantha Browning Shea’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Marrow:
The elevator pitch for my novel is that it’s about fertility and magic, but to expand on that, MARROW follows Oona, a woman who was cast out of her mother’s coven and who returns home years later in a last-ditch effort to become a mother – and, maybe, to finally claim the magic that is her birthright. It’s a book about power, longing, and the impossible choices women face. While music doesn’t play a large role in Oona’s life, it does play an important role in mine, and there are many songs that I will forever associate with the process of writing MARROW. For this playlist, I thought it might be fun to talk about some of those songs.
“Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be)” – Sly and the Family Stone
I played this song on loop during the months I was going through infertility treatments, which also happened to be when I started writing MARROW. I’ve never liked the tidy emotional math of reframing pain as a “life lesson.” It feels like a way of sanding down the edges of suffering until its palatable, Pinterest-affirmation-ready. Still, if I’m honest, I’ve spent most of my life trying to get better at relinquishing control, or at least loosening my grip on the outcomes I once thought I could will into existence. Infertility, and the strange public vulnerability of publishing a novel, have both given me the opportunity to learn that “lesson” and I like to think that my grip on the wheel of life has relaxed over the past five years. But if I ever catch myself white knuckling it, I put on this song. It doesn’t fix anything, exactly, but it helps me loosen my hold.
“The Mystic’s Dream” – Loreena McKennitt
I spent a lot of time revising MARROW – first with my agent, Marya Spence, and then with my editors, Gaby Mongelli and Kate Dresser, but the one part I never touched was the opening. I wrote those first pages with this song playing in the background. The music is eerie and evocative. While it played, Marrow came into focus with startling clarity – less like invention, more like recollection. A scene I wasn’t dreaming up so much as remembering.
“Speak Plainly, Diana” – Joe Pug
I didn’t base Oona’ s husband, Jacob, on my husband – something that should come as a relief to him and to our family members. But he did help shape the character, indirectly, by introducing me to this song. Adam discovered Joe Pug back in college in Chicago, and when we started dating, he pulled me into that fandom gently but persistently vis concerts, playlists, the usual slow-burn of conversation. I’ve always loved this song in particular for the way the narrator feels both deeply romantic and, frankly, a little exasperating. There’s longing, yes, but also a kind of emotional opacity that complicates the whole thing. Whenever I got stuck trying to understand Jacob – his tenderness, his stubbornness, his blind spots – I’d return to this track. Somehow, it always helped me find him again.
“It’s a Shame About Him” – Jesse Winchester
My dad was diagnosed with dementia – Alzheimers, we think – in 2017. He never got the chance to read MARROW, but we talked about it while he was still himself: the story, my hopes for it, his disbelief at how obscenely long it takes to actually write and publish a novel. Over the five years it took me to finish the book, two things happened that reshaped everything in my life: I became a mother, and, in many ways, I lost my father. Jesse Winchester was one of his favorite artists – he was a person who truly loved music, who trusted it to say things that were otherwise unsayable – and this song has always reminded me of him. I’ve returned to it often over the years. In the quiet hours, missing him and writing this book – it has been a kind of companion.
“Mother Knows Best” from Tangled – Donna Murphy
Right before my oldest daughter was born, I received my first round of editorial notes from my agent, Marya. Her biggest suggestion was to “turn up the volume” on everything witchy about the novel – make it stranger, darker, spookier. I agreed immediately, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it in a way that felt grounded. A few weeks later, I was driving around with my newborn in the backseat, half-exhausted, half-euphoric, streaming some Disney playlist just to keep her calm, and this song came on. Suddenly, it clicked. I saw it clearly: the tension between Oona and her mother, Ursula, needed to be the novel’s center of gravity. Like Rapunzel and her so-called mother, their conflict had to be specific and loaded. In MARROW, that fight revolves around power – Ursula insists Oona hasn’t inherited any, that she’ll never be a witch. Oona refuses to believe her. That dynamic – maternal, manipulative, mythic – was there all along. I just hadn’t turned it up loud enough yet.
“Life is a Highway” – Rascal Flatts
This is my oldest daughter’s favorite song in the world. She’s Lightning McQueen’s biggest fan, and as a result, this track has been on near constant rotation in our house for years. I heard it while rewriting MARROW’S epilogue, while debating cover options, while cutting open the first box of galleys. It was even playing in the background when I read my first review – an odd, disorienting full-circle moment. This song is relentless, upbeat, a little absurd – and somehow it’s become the unofficial soundtrack of this entire chapter of my life.
Samantha Browning Shea is an author and the vice president of Georges Borchardt, Inc. literary agency. A graduate of Colgate University, Samantha lives in Connecticut with her husband and their two daughters. Marrow is her debut novel.