Nicola Kraus, THE BEST WE COULD HOPE FOR
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.4 • 602 Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zibby interviews #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicola Kraus about THE BEST WE COULD HOPE FOR, a sweeping novel spanning from 1943 to 2014 about a broken family and the women who knit together the remains. Nicola explains how her book traces the ripple effects of choices, trauma, privilege, and parenting through several generations of one family, and then touches on themes of race, motherhood, sibling bonds, healing, and even the transformative power of EMDR therapy. Finally, she shares her writing journey, her memories of growing up on the Upper East Side, and how her personal experiences shaped this book’s emotional core.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive |
| 0:24.0 | look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't |
| 0:29.3 | have to. |
| 0:30.3 | Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. |
| 0:36.2 | For more information, go to zibbmedia.com and follow me on Instagram |
| 0:40.2 | at Zibby Owens. Nicola Krause is the author of the best we could hope for, a novel. |
| 0:49.1 | Nicola co-authored The Nanny Diaries, the International No. 1 bestseller and movie starring Scarlett Johansson |
| 0:56.1 | and Alicia Keys. Nicola has contributed to the London Times, The New York Times, Red Book, |
| 1:01.7 | glamour, and town and country. In 2015, she co-founded the creative consulting firm, |
| 1:06.7 | The Finished Thought, which helps the next generation of aspiring authors find their voice and audience. |
| 1:12.0 | Her first solo novel is the best we could hope for, and Nicola is also a contributor to the |
| 1:17.6 | anthology that I edited called On Being Jewish Now, Reflections from Authors and Advocates, |
| 1:24.3 | which has been on the USA Today bestseller list for over 20 weeks. |
| 1:28.3 | Welcome, Nicola. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked with Zivie to talk about the best we could |
| 1:33.1 | hope for a novel. Congrats. |
| 1:35.6 | Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. |
| 1:37.5 | Oh, it's so great to be with you. Okay, great book. Tell everybody what the best we could hope for is about, |
| 1:43.9 | please. It is a multi-generational |
| 1:46.3 | story that goes from 1943 to 2014 because I wanted to look at the way the choices that baby boomers |
| 1:54.6 | made as parents impacted Gen X and then the way that they live, heal, and parent. So in order to encapsulate all of that, |
| 2:03.8 | I really needed to cover a large span of time, which is why the book took me nine years to write. |
| 2:09.6 | So when you first started it nine years ago, what was the nugget that you were like this? |
... |
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