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"  A plaguing hunger and a purring Kenmore refrigerator monopolize Mary Gooch&amp;#039;s 43-year-old existence. Her &amp;quot;obeast&amp;quot; consumes her conscious moments and has paralyzed her 25-year marriage. In her third novel, The Wife&amp;#039;s Tale (Little, Brown), Lori Lansens revisits the small Ontario town of Leaford (also the setting of her first two, Rush Home Road and The Girls) and finds a seemingly content Mary tipping the scale at 302 pounds and finding a fresh note from her coward husband, Jimmy Gooch, who deposited $25,000 into their joint account before disappearing on the eve of their silver anniversary. Armed with a never-before-used cellphone, debit card, passport, and gumption, Mary boards a jet plane for the first time and sets out south across the U.S. border in hopes of bringing her husband back. Before Mary&amp;#039;s trip abroad, &amp;quot;Jimmy Gooch was like a vital organ whose function was mysterious but without which, she believed, she would perish.&amp;quot; When she touches down, her quest turns into a personal adventure of unmasking her nagging addiction and constant worry and becoming a Mary Gooch who is fulfilled, accomplished, and balanced. Women living similar stories will most likely not hop on a plane to California for a little self-discovery, but that doesn&amp;#039;t make Mary&amp;#039;s journey any less inspiring or heartwarming. Lansens proves that sometimes you have to leave the only place you&amp;#039;ve ever known in order to find yourself, and she convinces us that under the appropriate conditions, people can find the courage to change. Lansens&amp;#039; lyrical flashbacks expose the true heartbreak and misery behind Mary&amp;#039;s childhood struggles with weight, food, and self-esteem. Gooch&amp;#039;s sudden departure seems unexplainably cruel, yet without it Mary never would have had the impetus to leave her stymied situation.  I spoke with Lansens about The Wife&amp;#039;s Tale, obesity, the iPad, what it means to be a method writer, and the likelihood that she&amp;#039;ll one day write a follow-up titled The Husband&amp;#039;s Tale. ELLE:  All three of your novels are set in the small Canadian town of Leaford. What keeps pulling you back there?  Lori Lansens:  This fictional Baldoon County has been the setting for my three novels. It&amp;#039;s where I grew up. Chatham is a pocket of southwestern Ontario across the border from Detroit. It&amp;#039;s unique because the people there have a sort of identity crisis in that our influences are largely American. When I grew up, all of our news, weather, and sports came from America. The people where I grew up rooted for American teams as opposed to Canadian teams. I&amp;#039;m fascinated by this hybrid personality. This is Caamerica, as my daughter calls it. She&amp;#039;s seven and actually calls herself Caamerican. She&amp;#039;s Canadian but we live here now, and she feels very American. In setting this latest story there, I saw this character Mary Gooch there as I was finishing up writing The Girls. And as characters do, she just called to me, like, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m next.&amp;quot; I have had, like most women, a lifelong preoccupation with my weight. My first published short story was a love story between an elderly man and a very young morbidity obese woman. I&amp;#039;m in my mid-40s and Mary Gooch is in her mid-40s. This is a time when we are standing on this precipice, looking at the first act and wondering about the second act. When the curtain comes up again, how is it going to be different? With Mary, I wanted to tell about a woman who changed entirely by taking very small steps. Mary does not finish this story slender. That&amp;#039;s not the point at all. It&amp;#039;s not about what Mary loses but about what Mary gains\u2014which is a shift in perspective and, most important, an appreciation for this body that can climb a hill and travel to a different place and experience pleasure outside of food.  ELLE: In future novels, do you plan to use Leaford as your setting?  LL: These three books represent a kind of trilogy to me. Rush Home Road is about leaving home. The Girls is about being at home. And The Wife&amp;#039;s Tale is about leaving home and making shifts and changes. Now that I live in Southern California, my current world certainly speaks to me, and I sense that my next book will have a more American and southerly setting. But that&amp;#039;s certainly not to say I won&amp;#039;t be back to Leaford.  ELLE: I read that you have a friend who was skeptical that you, as a slender writer, could tell the story of a middle-aged obese woman. What about Mary captivated you? Why do you think you had to tell her story? LL:  I&amp;#039;ve been captivated by the Mary Gooches of the world for as long as I can remember. I&amp;#039;m not alone in having obese people in my circle and in my family. I have loved morbidly obese people, and I don&amp;#039;t approach obesity with revulsion or judgment but with empathy and compassion. I&amp;#039;m searching for a truth in Mary. I wanted to tell her story in a way that wasn&amp;#039;t about Mary hating her fat. She even talks about finding beauty in the poetry of her contours. It&amp;#039;s not so much that she hates her fat, it&amp;#039;s that she hates the way that her life has been restricted by this morbid obesity. She hates the fact that she has this constant anxiety about what will happen to her physically and medically because of it. And the revulsion she assumes people feel when they look at her, which isn&amp;#039;t always the case. So I wanted to tell her story and concentrate on the thing that she really wants to get a handle on and wants to eradicate, which is her &amp;quot;obeast,&amp;quot; her hunger.  ELLE:  America&amp;#039;s obesity rates are soaring. Why do you think we have such an issue in the U.S.? LL:  The world&amp;#039;s waistlines are expanding, but it&amp;#039;s an epidemic of a larger issue in terms of our bounty having become our burden. This book is all about finding balance and perspective. We know that diets don&amp;#039;t work. I was recently listening to a woman who had been morbidly obese. She had lost 200 pounds. She saw her eating habits as an addiction. She doesn&amp;#039;t say she started out addicted, but she became addicted to the sugary junk food and processed foods. Now that she&amp;#039;s made this lifestyle choice and has found balance in her life, she treats those kinds of foods as an alcoholic would liquor. She simply doesn&amp;#039;t touch them. Which is fascinating. I&amp;#039;m sure more research will be done to find out what triggers this kind of addiction. It&amp;#039;s a very complicated issue, and there is much discussion still to be had about body image and fat acceptance. In this case, with a morbidly obese woman whose life is a misery because of her obesity, I don&amp;#039;t think that anyone would say she should accept that.   ELLE: Our culture is obsessed with wanting the perfect body and achieving the ideal weight. How do you think this obsession is affecting our society?   LL:  We know it&amp;#039;s causing a shift in the way girls view their bodies. We&amp;#039;re seeing anorexia in younger girls. We&amp;#039;re seeing this obsession with the slender silhouette. This doesn&amp;#039;t always cross culture boundaries, though. Evidence tells us that black and Latina woman are more accepting of curves, and that&amp;#039;s a good thing.  ELLE:  You once worked in a drugstore. Why did you decide that Mary was going to work in her local drugstore?  LL:  The drugstore is a wonderful place to see all manner of ailments. So I loved the idea that Mary worked in a place where she sees sick people, where she can meet old people.   ELLE: Mary experiences some serious hair transformations. It&amp;#039;s said that when women have traumatic experiences, they often chop off their hair.   LL: It becomes an outward symbol of making a change. Her final statement, her final hair shift is really symbolic of making this cut with the past.  ELLE:  Mary is not religious. She seems to &amp;quot;wish to God&amp;quot; more than &amp;quot;pray to God&amp;quot; and to want God to be female. Why? LL: The question of God is a large subtext in the book. I think this symbolizes a larger hunger. We&amp;#039;re seeing a decline in religion in North America but, I hope, a rise in individual spirituality. Whatever that means to people. What Mary is searching for is strength. When we talk about God, I think what most of us mean is some greater thing, some higher power that can help us access our own strength or give us strength. The hunger Mary feels she fills with food, but as the story progresses she has more time to ponder the existence of God because she is not preoccupied with food. I think she thinks of God as female because she has a certain feminist bent that she has never allowed herself to explore, and she senses innately that there is some kind of God within her.  ELLE: Twenty-five grand wouldn&amp;#039;t really last all that long in California. What made you decide that Gooch would leave her with that amount in their joint account?  LL:  Winning the lottery is winning the lottery. It&amp;#039;s highly unlikely and very unusual. Gooch, as we know, has been scratching tickets for most of their marriage, and he has some gambling tendencies that Mary doesn&amp;#039;t know the full extent of. The story is told from Mary&amp;#039;s point-of-view, so we don&amp;#039;t really know the whole story about that. Twenty-five thousand dollars felt like exactly the right amount for Gooch to win rather than a million. I didn&amp;#039;t want to give either Mary or Gooch enough money to live on for the rest of their lives. This little bit of money symbolizes enough to give an opportunity to make a change. ELLE: Do you feel like you connected with Mary because you both were outsiders finding your way? LL:  Definitely. People have asked me what attracts me to the characters I write about\u2014the elderly black woman in Rush Home Road, the conjoined twins in The Girls, and this morbidly obese woman in The Wife&amp;#039;s Tale. I think that because I&amp;#039;ve always wanted to be a writer, there&amp;#039;s some degree of standing outside the general circle and observing. When you stand outside, you look around and find that the people you&amp;#039;re with live on the fringes. ELLE:  Toward the end of the book, I found myself wanting to hear Gooch&amp;#039;s side of the story Do you think you&amp;#039;ll ever write The Husband&amp;#039;s Tale?  LL: I have been asked that frequently, and I think it&amp;#039;s because this story is told from Mary&amp;#039;s point of view. She&amp;#039;s at a point in her life where she doesn&amp;#039;t want to blame anyone else for who and what she has become. She&amp;#039;s probably gone easy on Gooch. There probably is another side of the story. However, the book I&amp;#039;m currently working on is something different.  ELLE:  Your favorite scene in The Wife&amp;#039;s Tale? LL: The ending. Mary changes in increments, so it may not feel like a defining moment for everyone, but it was for me in my journey with Mary.  ELLE:  You describe yourself as a method writer. Can you tell us more about how the characters take over when you&amp;#039;re writing? LL: I either embody the characters, or they embody me. I definitely feel that I grow another skin. I must say that during the first half of writing The Wife&amp;#039;s Tale I developed some very poor health. I was in the emergency room twice with heart palpitations and panic attacks. As one of my actor friends pointed out: your body doesn&amp;#039;t know that you&amp;#039;re making art. You think about struggle and challenge and you imagine yourself weighing 302 pounds and being restricted and in despair. Your body doesn&amp;#039;t know that that&amp;#039;s not the case. I found the journey with Mary very interesting. I know it&amp;#039;s not the same for all writers, but I have heard other writers describe the experience that way.  ELLE:  You&amp;#039;ve said that you&amp;#039;re &amp;quot;drawn to people on the fringes.&amp;quot; Do your characters just come to you, or have their stories been with you for a long time and you&amp;#039;re just now giving them a voice? LL:  So far, all of these characters have been with me for a long time. Rush Home Road was a story that I&amp;#039;d been thinking about for 15 years, and so much of it was drawn from folklore or imaginings about the history of where I grew up. With The Girls, the idea of conjoined twins had been something I had thought about for some time before I realized I had a personal jumping-off point, which was the connection with my two young babies. I joked that I had a baby on my hip, my breast, or my lap for four years and that&amp;#039;s what brought me to this question: How do I take this to the edge to explore the nature of identity, love, and connection? And with Mary, this character has been with me for as long as I can remember both in my daily musings and my imagination. ELLE: I noticed that there are four different book covers for The Wife&amp;#039;s Tale in different countries Why not use the same cover for this novel everywhere?  LL: The question is how does one sell it in a marketplace. Foreign publishers will sometimes change the title and the image. I am fascinated to see how other artistic people interpret the novel for their market. I would say the American cover is my favorite because it&amp;#039;s symbolic of a woman who is poised and balanced, which is what the book is all about. The Australian cover is very interesting. In the book she eats chocolate, not the cupcakes shown on the cover. I think they felt the cupcake was really symbolic of being able to take a bite out of life and find pleasure in the bite. And again, we know we&amp;#039;re looking to find the pleasure in food as opposed to making food the demon that has us by the throat.  ELLE:  Do you have plans to write a screenplay for any of these novels? LL:  There is always talk and interest in the three novels as films. I was asked to write the screenplay for Rush Home Road and then decided it wasn&amp;#039;t for me. They feel complete to me. If someone were to make a movie out of one of these three books or all three of them, I would be happy and very interested to see how another artist might interpret them for another medium.   ELLE: Are you working on your fourth novel?  LL: Because I live in California now, I find my musings really being centered in this world. I have a young family, and I have for many years been brewing this family story. That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;m working on now, but I can&amp;#039;t tell you more. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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