{"id":47402,"date":"2025-11-08T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T08:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=47402"},"modified":"2026-06-04T10:11:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T10:11:12","slug":"widowed-my-husband-is-the-hero-of-my-next-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/widowed-my-husband-is-the-hero-of-my-next-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: My Husband Is the Hero of My Next Book"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Widowed:<\/a>
Widowed: My husband is the hero of my next book. Here, with his toddler daughter Christina. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jon is the hero of my next book.<\/p>\n

I’ve been working on it for some time. It’s a collection of the columns I wrote for the Oakland Tribune back in the 20th century, when Peter and Christina were little kids and Jon and I were a two-paycheck couple trying to make it all work.<\/p>\n

When I was in the throes of writing those columns, between 1987 and 1992, I thought of myself as the driving force in the liberated drama that was our family. I was a pioneering woman, after all, a second wave feminist who hoped to — intended to — have it all: husband, children and a meaningful career.<\/p>\n

Widowed: My Husband Is the Hero of My Next Book<\/strong><\/h5>\n

But a few years ago, when my Tribune editor friend, Lisa Wrenn, and I began putting those columns into a book and I read them with a fresh eye, I realized that the hero of the book — the hero of my journey as a liberated woman wanting it all — was Jon.<\/p>\n

These past few weeks, I’ve been writing footnotes to some of those columns. And in one of them, I’m pointing out that it was Jon’s generous, fun-loving, liberated<\/em> personality that made the life I wanted possible.<\/p>\n

It was Jon who, uncomplaining, shared the housekeeping and child care duties. It was Jon who supported my writing career, once going so far as to cheer me on when I accused him — in print — of male chauvinism.<\/p>\n

The book is pretty much done. Lisa will give it another read. Then I’ll send it off to agents and publishers. If it finds a publishing home, I’ll take some credit and pass some on to Jon.<\/p>\n

More about the writing life at\u00a0“Noah Lukeman on the Colon, That Most Majestic of Punctuation Marks.”<\/a>\u00a0 More about Jon at “Widowed: A Love Letter Arrived From Jon This Week.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"widowed<\/a><\/p>\n

My husband is the hero of my next book. I wanted it all — family and career. And Jon made it possible. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,14],"tags":[134,34,148,229,29,1576,2853,3057,575],"class_list":["post-47402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","category-widowed","tag-books","tag-dont-miss","tag-feminism","tag-feminist-men","tag-jon","tag-publishing","tag-trib-book","tag-wanting-it-all","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48437,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47402\/revisions\/48437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}