Hi, I'm Zivie Owens, and I am the host of this podcast. Moms don't have time to read books.

I am also a newly minted USA Today bestselling author of the novel, Blank.

I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company, reading retreats, a bookstore, and more.

Learn more at zivimedia.com or follow me on social at Zivie Owens or join the community at

Zivie Readers.

Rowan Beard is the author of The Diverses, a novel.

Rowan is a fiction writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in the

Canyon Review, the Southern Review, and the Common, among others. She is the recipient of the

Plow Shire's Emerging Rider Award, and her work has been nominated for a push cart. She has received

scholarships from the Breadloaf Riders Conference and Story Studio, and she currently works at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

This is her first novel. Welcome, Rowan. Thank you so much for coming on moms don't have time to read

books to discuss the divorcees. Thank you so much for having me. And also, before we get started,

I just wanted to say congratulations on blank. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. That's very sweet of you. Yeah, of course. It's so funny, I've been doing this podcast for, I guess, six years now. And where I, you know, the idea that anyone would come on congratulating me in the beginning seems so ludicrous. So it's just, you know, have to take a moment to be like, wow, that's, that's cool. Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, my gosh, of course. Point road, which, you know, as an author, I'm excited to hear more about your road. But anyway, start by telling everybody what the divorce is about, please. Yeah, of course. So the divorce is, it's set in 1951, and it's about this sheltered young woman named Lois Saunders who journeys to one of Reno's famous divorce ranches to separate from her husband. And while there, she becomes obsessed with this mysterious, glamorous fellow guest named Greer, who both offers Lois a new life, but also threatens the

freedom that she really craves. So I could not believe as a divorcee. Well, I'm married now.

Am I still a divorcee? I was. It's a good question. Are you always a former divorcee? Former

divorcee, ex-divorce. Ex-divorce. The idea that there was a time when I would have had to, you know, be whisked off and, like,

have to go horseback riding every day just to, like, get through it.

You know what I mean?

Like, all of that and, like, live with a couple other women and just be completely sequestered,

like a shameful, terrible thing, you know, is wild.

So did this really happen?

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