E711 - Reyna Marder Gentin - Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away, A Mother Daughter Story and a Book Tour

EPISODE 711 - Reyna Marder Gentin - Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away, A Mother Daughter Story and a Book Tour

This episode explores how former criminal appellate attorney turned novelist Reyna Marder Gentin reinvented her life and writing, and how law, empathy, and complex family relationships shape her fiction. It offers an honest look at creative risk, persistence, and the emotional truths behind her stories.

From Courtroom to Creative Writing
Reyna begins by describing life in Westchester County, just north of Manhattan, and her long career as a criminal appellate attorney. For more than two decades she represented people convicted of serious crimes, trying to secure reduced sentences or second chances. Over time, though, she hit an emotional wall: she felt increasingly unable to understand the human backstories behind acts that appeared undeniably “evil,” especially because appeals work limits lawyers to the trial record rather than the full complexity of a person’s life. That disconnect pushed her to leave the law and follow an unexpected path into memoir and fiction writing.

Learning to See Stories Differently
Reyna explains that appellate work trained her to see every situation from multiple angles, always asking “what if” and searching for alternate interpretations. That habit now drives her fiction; when she reaches a pivotal scene, she challenges her first instincts and explores how events might unfold differently, always seeking the emotional hook that draws readers in. She talks about the importance of crafting empathy on the page, just as she once tried to do for judges, and how her sense of an “ideal reader” has evolved.

Patience, Persistence, and the Reality of Publishing
Reyna is candid about the gap between writing classes and real-world publishing. Not everyone will finish a book, and even completed manuscripts may never be published.

Her Books, Characters, and Themes
Reyna walks through her body of work and the life experiences that inspired it. Her debut, Unreasonable Doubts, draws on her public defender background and follows a young lawyer losing faith in her work who becomes emotionally entangled with a client. Her middle grade novel centers on an eighth-grade girl with undiagnosed dyslexia, a hardworking single mom, and a perceptive teacher who finally recognizes the girl’s strengths and learning challenges. Another novel, Both Are True, follows a new family court judge balancing the emotional demands of her courtroom with a complicated romantic relationship.

Her newest book shifts away from law entirely and delves into the fraught, intimate territory of a mother-daughter relationship. Protagonist Jessica Harmon, a stalled thirty-year-old would-be writer, feels stuck in an unfulfilling editing job and blames her famous academic mother, Cynthia, for her inability to launch. When Cynthia wins a lifetime achievement award and invites Jessica on a book tour, buried secrets and a long-ago, life-changing episode from Cynthia’s college years come to light. Reyna explores themes of resentment, love, generational influence, and the search for identity, emphasizing that even when the ending isn’t conventionally “happy,” characters can still arrive where they need to be.

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