People Who Knew me

First Chapter

People who know me think I’m dead.

The words rolled around the back of my throat, like clothes in a slow spin cycle. I’d just hailed a taxi, settled into my seat, its seams split to reveal yellow foam beneath. The cab smelled like pine. I expected to see one of those air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror, but there wasn’t one.

The cabbie’s name was Angel Rivera. According to the identification badge on the dashboard, that is. He was forty-something, with a gold chain around his neck and a faded sticker of the Puerto Rican flag on his glove compartment. He looked straight ahead, didn’t dare make eye contact with me via the mirror. A week before, planes flew into buildings and people died. The ones left behind—me, Angel Rivera, all of us— responded by either embracing everyone or trusting no one.

I trusted no one.

“Newark Airport, please,” I said. He didn’t respond, just nodded and navigated his way to the Henry Hudson Parkway, my road out of everything.

I had my purse under one arm, an overnight bag under the other. To Angel Rivera, I must have looked like a woman committed to her career, flying off to a business meeting in Philadelphia or D.C. or Boston or some other place requiring just an overnight bag. Maybe he resented the tight bun on top of my head, the height of my heels, the obvious expense of my blouse and perfectly fitting skirt—the same blouse and skirt I’d worn the day before those buildings fell. He didn’t want to be there, driving around someone like me. He wanted to be home with the family I pictured him to have—a few kids and a wife who cleaned apartments or waited tables or worked as a nanny for women like me, overnight-bag-carrying women who left their loved ones for big-city meetings. He wanted to hold that family close because we’d all learned a week before that anything could happen.

There was none of the usual traffic leading to the Holland Tunnel. We drove right in. I closed my eyes, like I used to as a kid, making wishes in the darkness. As I said good-bye to New York, my only wish was for everyone I left behind to forget me.

Forgiveness was too much to ask for.

Light filled the cab as we exited the tunnel. I opened my purse and counted the cash discreetly. I’d cut up all my credit cards and my ATM card, flushed the bits down the toilet. I kept my driver’s license. I’d need it as identification to get on the plane. There was no way around that. Renting a car would have required ID, too. I’d briefly considered stealing a car, but was sure I’d screw that up. I’d end up in jail, begging the cops to keep me there forever instead of calling my confused husband to bail me out. They’d write me up as a mental case, which I probably was. So I decided to fly, to be one of the brave few to board a plane so soon after what had happened. The uniformed guys at the security gate would be on higher alert than ever before, but my ID wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Nobody would be checking for an Emily Morris catching a flight from New Jersey to California. Emily Morris was dead.

I stared out the window as we took the Pulsaki Skyway over the Passaic and Hackensack rivers. I grew up there—in Jersey. My mom still lived in Irvington. I’d never see those rivers, or her, again. Even though we weren’t close, my mom and I, the finality of it all should have brought me to tears. But I just sat tight-lipped and unblinking. I was already becoming a different person, a colder person.

I’d cried over so many smaller things before. I’d cried at the sight of dead dogs on the side of the road, their fur fluttering in wind generated by passing cars. I’d cried when that gymnast busted her knee in the 1996 summer Olympics. I’d cried when I sold my first car, a run-down 1985 Honda Civic. The tears weren’t for the vehicle itself, but for the memories associated with it—driving out to Coney Island during the summer before college, stuffing all my belongings in the hatchback for the move to the dorms at NYU, kissing the guy who would become my husband in the front seat after seeing City Slickers in a second-run theater with sticky floors from spilled sodas. He didn’t have a car. That’s why he drove mine.

But I couldn’t cry in Angel Rivera’s cab. I’d cried all my tears in the days leading up to the decision to leave. Tears for love lost when the buildings fell, tears for necessary choices, and tears for me—because, after all, I had died.

PEOPLE WHO KNEW ME. Copyright 2016 by Kimberly Hooper. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. St. Martin’s Press.

Book Club

If you are interested in an author appearance (via phone, Skype, or in person) at your book club meeting, please email KimHooperWrites@gmail.com. 

The questions below may help fuel your discussion of People Who Knew Me.  

  1. Emily does not have a close relationship with her mother. How do you think her upbringing shapes her character and relationships? How does it influence the way she mothers Claire?
  2. Do you think the failure of Emily and Drew’s marriage is due to innate incompatibilities or life circumstances? Would they have stayed together if Drew’s mother had not fallen ill?
  3. Do you think Emily and Gabe have a true love, or is the relationship more of an escape for Emily?
  4. How do you think Emily and Drew could have better handled the challenge of caregiving?
  5. Do you see Emily’s decision to flee New York after 9/11 as impulsive? Or does it just become the unexpected final part of an escape she’s been contemplating for some time?
  6. Do you see Emily as cowardly, courageous, or simply human?
  7. The title of the book, PEOPLE WHO KNEW ME, references the life Connie left behind in New York. How do those people “follow” Connie to California?
  8. In California, Connie vows to keep people at arm’s length. How does she succeed at this? How does she fail, in spite of herself?
  9. What were your feelings when learning the true identity of Claire’s father?
  10. Connie’s cancer diagnosis prompts her to tell Claire about Drew. She says she would have told Claire at some point in the future. Do you believe her, or do you think she never would have revisited the past if given the choice?
  11. How do you envision Claire’s future relationship with Drew?
  12. Do you think Drew has (or will) forgive Connie? What would you do if you were him?
  13. What do you think will become of Connie? What about her relationship with Paul?

 

Reviews

"Kim Hooper’s debut novel, People Who Knew Me, is not about the terrible events of 9/11 and how people reacted to them. It is instead a close and affecting study of how the choices we make, both the altruistic and the most selfish equally, expose life’s tragic truths... Refreshingly raw and honest, People Who Knew Me invites us deep into the world of degenerative illness. Ms. Hooper captures the intimate details with edgy, dark humor... Written as a series of interwoven flashbacks, People Who Knew Me has a sharp edge of emotional trauma and disappointment. It is very easy to love Emily—she is like any of us, struggling to make the best decisions she can. Ms. Hooper reminds us that control is an illusion, that the past offers no pardons and the choices we make, in turn, make us."

―Jessica Lakso, Wall Street Journal

"Hooper's debut novel poses the evocative question, have you ever thought about what it would be like to start your life over? Emily Morris answers that question in the most extreme way possible. On 9/11, while the U.S. is experiencing its first wave of mass terror as the World Trade Towers collapse, Emily, who would have died if she had gone to work that day, makes the rash decision to let her family assume that she was killed so that she can disappear from her life for good. However, as she learns, such a selfish, desperate act rarely leaves the actor truly free, especially when there is a child involved. Readers will ponder Emily's difficult situation and often disturbing choices as they are glued to this compulsively readable tale. Hooper does not shy away from human nature's less attractive qualities but rather engages with them head on, asking ever more demanding questions: what must one sacrifice in a marriage? What does it take to care for someone who is chronically ill? What does it mean to love yourself?"

―Alison D. Spanner, Booklist

"“Emily Morris married her college sweetheart, Drew. Like many young couples, they planned to live on love while they both went to graduate school. But life does not always turn out as planned. As they struggle with their professional lives and with Drew’s sick mother, their relationship becomes strained. Connie Prynne is a single mother living in California who has just received a devastating diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer. With death as a probable outcome, Connie realizes she needs to stop hiding. For Connie is Emily. A pregnant Emily had planned to leave Drew, but then her lover died in the September 11 attacks. Since Emily worked in the World Trade Center, everyone thought she had died, too, and she lets them believe that lie. VERDICT While Emily’s choices may seem selfish to some, the author does a great job of making them believable in this debut. Emily is a flawed, relatable character. The structure of the book—alternating between Emily in the past and Connie in the present—helps readers see how the protagonist has grown. Warmly recommended for women’s fiction fans."

―Lynnanne Pearson, Library Journal

"Kim Hooper’s People Who Knew Me begins with a terrific, engaging and suspenseful first chapter, setting up the key questions in the book: Why does Emily Morris flee her life in New York to become Connie Prynne in California? And what will the consequences of her action be? Throughout this very readable debut novel, Hooper keeps up the tension and the pacing, teasing the reader as she reveals more and more details about Emily/Connie’s life before her decision to disappear, leaving friends and family to believe that she died when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11. Then Hooper creates a new challenge in her protagonist’s life fourteen years later in California: Connie is diagnosed with a potentially terminal disease, and must decide whether to tell her teenage daughter Claire the truth about her New York father, or let Claire continue to believe that he died in a car accident. Two diseases, Parkinson’s and breast cancer, are central to the plot and character development in People Who Knew Me' Hooper’s searingly honest depiction of the challenges faced by those with these illnesses—and their caregivers—can make for uncomfortable reading at times. On the other hand, it is rare that a novelist is brave enough to provide such realistic scenarios, which makes the difficulties of her protagonist believable and ensures a thought-provoking read. Hooper is clearly a writer who wants to tell it like it is... Not everyone will agree with the choices that Connie makes, but I’m sure everyone will want to find out what happens to her and her daughter, and will read to the end of this compelling book."

―Lynette Brasfield, Stu News Laguna

"Kim Hooper's stunning debut novel sucks you in from the first page and doesn't let you go. Part portrait of a marriage, part suspenseful ‘what would you do?’, People Who Knew Me will leave readers reeling―and yearning for more."

―Colleen Oakley, author of Before I Go and Close Enough to Touch

"Would you take the chance to disappear from a disastrous life? In People Who Knew Me, Kim Hooper deftly explores the consequences of such a drastic decision―and the risky revelation, down the line, that your past self might offer some salvation after all."

―Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, author of Bittersweet

“Kim Hooper skillfully portrays a courageous woman facing a grave diagnosis, who must confront her difficult past for the sake of her teenage daughter. Absorbing, riveting and utterly realistic, this heartfelt debut novel had me turning the pages late into the night. People Who Knew Me is a perfect book club read.”

―AJ Banner, author of The Twilight Wife and The Good Neighbor

"Kim Hooper's People Who Knew Me hooked me with its first sentence, and from there this excellent debut novel threw surprise after surprise my way. And all of it is anchored by Hooper's spot-on depiction of a relationship between a mother and the daughter she'd do anything for. This one will touch your heart as you turn the pages faster and faster."

―David Bell, author of Somebody's Daughter and Since She Went Away