Christina Clancy’s gripping second novel, Shoulder Season (St. Martins), features a memorable and moving portrait of a time and place in the recent past that will doubtless summon a host of conflicting associations for many readers: Hugh Hefner’s Playboy resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, circa 1981.  The narrative focuses on Sherri Taylor, a recently orphaned nineteen-year-old, who, nearly by happenstance, ends up working as a bunny at the Playboy club.  Soon after she begins her training at the resort, she realizes that her previously understated beauty and femininity confer on her a certain kind of power, especially where men are concerned, and she is plunged directly into a boisterous world of bacchanalian pleasures.

Throughout the novel, Clancy artfully explores and dramatizes the complex tensions animating a number of thematic dichotomies: the innocent and the knowing, the wealthy and the working class, townies and vacationers, men and women.  A few startling secrets also propel the story forward, and chapters set in Palm Springs of 2019 frame those set in 1981, which arguably is the most momentous year of Sherri’s life. The reverberations of 1981 profoundly inform the events of all the years that follow. 

Immersive and painstakingly researched, Shoulder Season is a coming of age novel that balances the high-spirited revelry Sherri takes part in at the Playboy club with the weighty question of how to make peace in the present with the mistakes and losses of the past.  Our histories, of course, are always with us, like it or not, and the way in which Clancy dramatizes Sherri’s journey from sexually awakened teenager to mature, self-possessed woman is a true readerly delight to experience.

Christine Sneed conversed electronically with Christina (Christi) Clancy to discuss writing, and Shoulder Season for The National.

Q: Shoulder Season required extensive research into the Lake Geneva Playboy resort and the myriad details that Bunnies were required to learn while working at the resort. What and/or who were your most valuable sources?

A: I struck gold with one of the first former Bunnies I reached out to, Pam Ellis (they called her Bunny Jojo). I read about her in a news article about a recent Bunny reunion. When I emailed her, she responded right away. I was fortunate that she was more than willing to talk about her time at the resort. Truly, I couldn’t have written this book without her.

Unlike most of the Bunnies who only worked at the resort for a summer or two, Pam was there for four years (long enough to wear the ‘silver anniversary costume’), so she had a lot of memories and well-remembered details to share.

Early on, I wrote a scene where Sherri gets frustrated and tosses her ears in the garbage on her way out the door. I sent the pages to Pam to check for accuracy. She called me right away and said that would never happen, because the ears aren’t a Bunny’s property, and they’d have to pay if they lost them.

She was also great to talk to about the little details, like the way the staff people and the Bunnies didn’t necessarily mix, the stolen furs the Bunnies wore, and the lengths the Bunnies went to to stay thin. Pam had wanted to be a park ranger. Now she lives with her husband on a hobby farm in Lake Geneva, and she runs a fair trade business. She often gives me gifts, like her bowtie, and she makes me loaves of bread.

I spoke to other Bunnies, too, but she was my primary source. I also talked to former patrons, a front desk worker, the couple who ran the ski chalet, the golf pro at the current resort who used to be the pool manager (he had to tell Fleetwood Mac that they couldn’t skinny dip at three o’clock in the morning), and I talked to a Hooters girl to see what it felt like to have patrons ogle you. So many people in the area have memories of the resort; I picked up lots of anecdotes from them along the way. It seems anyone who has ever been there loves to wax nostalgic about that time and that place.

Q: One of the elements that especially leapt out as I read Shoulder Season was the loving narrative eye cast over East Troy, Wisconsin, Sherri’s hometown, which is only a short distance from Lake Geneva.  What are your ties to East Troy?

A: My husband’s family has East Troy roots going back so far that we once found an old map with a section on Lake Beulah called “Clancy Land.” That land would be worth a fortune now, and my mother-in-law likes to joke that it was very Irish of them to let it go.

My husband’s great grandfather and grandfather were former mayors, and they owned the hardware store on the town square that is now a bookstore called InkLink Books My father-in-law recently passed away, and his funeral was filled with references to East Troy. He had an idyllic childhood growing up on Main Street with his entire family. They all had houses next to each other. He lit up when he’d tell stories from his youth, from the girl who was blown up in the pharmacy to a boy named “Hammer Mike,” a kid who visited the hardware store each week, bought a hammer, and threw it into Lake Beulah.

My in-laws had a cabin on Booth Lake that I loved to go to. Shortly after my husband and I were married we bought a little three-season cottage on neighboring Lake Beulah, one of the last old cottages on the lake. Sometimes I wish it had more modern conveniences, but I don’t think I’ll ever change it. You truly feel like you’ve gone back in time when you visit.

Speaking of research, my “Chick Peas” are a group of friends I made in East Troy because they were regulars at events for InkLink Books. Linda, Sue and Barb shared their experiences growing up in East Troy and working at Alpine Valley Music Amphitheater. I thought I knew East Troy pretty well, but I didn’t truly appreciate how special and unique the place was until I heard their stories about keg parties in farm fields, swimming in area lakes, or working at concerts for big name acts all summer.

Lots of their expressions made it into the book, like when Rhonda is described as so small, she fell off a charm bracelet, or the insult ‘you have a great face for radio.’ We laughed so much--and drank a lot of wine. Something I wanted to address in the novel is the way small town life is represented in popular culture, as though it’s backward or limiting. To the contrary, I found that East Troy was a pretty enchanted place to grow up. Not perfect, but fun, and with a tremendous sense of community and a connection to the geography and the history of the place. I wanted Sherri to recognize later in her life that she’d taken that for granted.

Q: You use a frame tale structure in this novel, i.e. the events set in 1981 are framed by ones that occur in 2019. Did you begin writing Shoulder Season with this frame already in place or was an element you added later?

A: I initially wanted to write a Big Chill-style story about a group of friends who have a reunion at a house on Lake Beulah, so already I was thinking about how the past is reconciled with the present. As I was trying to figure out whose house it was and how they ended up in the area, I came up with the idea that someone would have had ties to the old Playboy resort. That’s when I began talking to “Bunny Jojo,” and I became so fascinated with the resort that it took over the whole story.

I thought it was fascinating that former Bunnies, forty-some years later, were still branded by their experience. As I grow older I am continually surprised by how close but also distant the past is, and how the decisions I’d made in my twenties shaped so much of my life. The frame suited the story I was telling, because the novel is about how the fleeting experiences of our youth shape our lives.

Q:  Sherri is only nineteen during the chapters set in 1981, and having recently lost both of her parents to different infirmities, it’s probably an understatement to say she had a less than idyllic adolescence, but she makes up for lost time once she’s hired as a Bunny. Did you ever think as you wrote Shoulder Season that she should be a little less reckless and naive - more like her more experienced Bunny roommate Val - or was your inclination always to show her seizing the day (and er...a few other things)?

A: I wanted Sherri to have a stunted adolescence, maybe because I think we were all more naive in those days before social media and 24-hour news. Also, she’s like a jurist being chosen for a jury because she’s not already biased. People have such incredibly strong, emotional associations with Playboy, and I wanted to strip that away and enter that world through the eyes of someone who hasn’t reconciled what’s good or bad about Hefner’s enterprise. I was so surprised by what I’d learned--that the women could be humiliated but also emboldened by the experience. My impression of Playboy is now incredibly complicated. The resorts were different from the clubs, and the brand went from being high class to tacky over time.

Also, Sherri comes of age but so, too, does the town of East Troy. It goes from being a sheltered farming community to a town with world class musical performers [hosted by concert venue Alpine Valley] and a Playboy resort just down the road. I’m as invested in Sherri’s coming-of-age as the town’s. Place is always incredibly important in my writing.

Q. Lake culture, i.e. summertime cottages and the out-of-towners who flock to places like Lake Beulah, which sits just outside of East Troy and is the location of some of Shoulder Season’s pivotal events, is so lovingly rendered in this novel. Was it the initial spark for this novel or was it the Playboy resort (or some combination of the two)?

A: I don’t know how or why I became so interested in ideas of work and leisure. Both The Second Home (2020) and Shoulder Season feature characters who are very reflexive about the idea of vacation. Sherri is working so hard in a place where other people are relaxing, and her body and good nature are part of the ambiance. That’s an interesting conflict right there.

Plus, Sherri grew up in a place filled with people of greater means who live on lakes--we see how class differences play out--even Lake Beulah is called “Poor Man’s Lake Geneva.” I’m always interested in status and class, maybe because I was raised in a wealthy community by a single parent who didn’t have much money. I grew up thinking that the epitome of wealth was to own a lake cottage or to vacation on Cape Cod. It seems that people who live in vacation communities year round are invested in the history, politics and culture of a place, and, to me, they seem to have a more pure claim to the area.

Q:. You’ve written a number of excellent essays for periodicals such as The Sun and The New York Times (your Modern Love column “Revenge of the Friend” is one of my all-time favorites). Would you say you’re more comfortable writing fiction than nonfiction (or vice-versa)? What do you find to be the biggest challenge(s) in each genre?

A: I used to be much more comfortable writing in shorter forms. I love the craftiness of stories and essays, and it’s easier to have a sense of their structure. The hard part of an essay in particular is that it starts with a certain idea I want to explore, but it’s important to move it beyond the anecdote. I want the reader to see, understand or acknowledge something in a fresh new way. There’s a build-up leading to the envoi, but I often don’t know what that idea is, the “so what.” This sounds sick, but frustration is part of what makes writing fun. I often need to sit on an essay and wait for the bigger concept to come to me. I’m sitting on one right now, in fact. I’ll puzzle over when I’m up at three in the morning or on a run. Short stories are actually the same, but what they are “about” is more tricky. I need to figure out what sort of universal concept or understanding I’m getting at, what nerve I want to poke.

Now that I’ve written two books I don’t have any desire to work on a short story. Maybe the payoff is so much greater with a novel. It’s so much work, and so gangly and hard, but now I’ve connected with a readership so it feels more… real. I’ve had short stories published in journals, but the reception is sometimes so quiet that I wonder if anyone has even read them. I do think I’ll get back to stories, though, but not until I finish my next book.

Q: A career-related question: what is something you’ve learned with the publication of your two novels that you think all authors embarking on their publishing careers should know?

A: The idea of success is super slippery. I truly had no benchmarks. People ask me all the time if my book did well and honestly, I have no idea what that even means. Writers are given scant tools to track sales, and the ones they do have, like Bookscan, are so inaccurate that they only give you a sense of the bare minimum your book has sold. Royalty reports aren’t issued very often, and they’ll include returns, which is super depressing.

Plus, you can’t do much to stir up sales on your own, especially during a pandemic. It’s easy to forget that even one person reading and loving your book counts for success. I just zoomed with a book club last night, and it was thrilling to hear how attentive to details they were, and how much they engaged with the characters. That, to me, is what’s gratifying about having a book in the world.

Q:  Lastly, in both your books, bodies of water and homes in close proximity to them (the Atlantic in The Second Home and of course, Lake Beulah, Lake Geneva, and Booth Lake in Shoulder Season) are of enormous importance to the characters and the plots. I’m curious about what you’re working on now, and if water and leisure play a part - if you don’t mind discussing your current project a little?

A: I’m stuck on my current project. Stuck! At least now I know that’s part of the process. My new book is also on water, on Lake Geneva. I can’t believe there aren’t more books set on that lake--what a history it has, with all the Gilded Age mansions, steamboats, colonies and parties. Also, the world’s largest refracting telescope is at Yerkes Observatory. I love the idea of prominent astronomers spending their summers on the lake.

If there’s one thread that runs through all my books, it’s a preoccupation with work and leisure. Who gets to relax? What’s the right way to vacation? I like juxtaposing vacationers with people whose job it is to create leisure for others, and the resentments and class differences that come with it. You see that with the landscapers and locals in Cape Cod and the patrons of the Playboy resort. My new book is historical fiction and explores a lakeside colony (it creeps me out that people would call themselves “colonists”), and I’m preoccupied with wondering when and how it changed from being privately held. What caused people to give up on it, or cash out?

Christine Sneed is the author of the novels Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts,and the story collections Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry and The Virginity of Famous Men. Her work has been included in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, and New York Times.  She’s been a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, and has received the Grace Paley Prize, Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award, Society of Midland Authors Award, and others.  She lives in Pasadena, CA, and is the faculty director of Northwestern University School of Professional Studies’ graduate creative writing program and also teaches for Regis University's low-residency MFA program.