The Girl in White Gloves with Author Kerri Maher

Grace knows what people see. She’s the Cinderella story. An icon of glamor and elegance frozen in dazzling Technicolor. The picture of perfection. The girl in the white gloves. A woman in living color.

Ever since I saw my first Grace Kelly movie (To Catch a Thief) I’ve counted Grace as one of my style icons. She always looked so classic, stylish and graceful. As a longtime fan, I was so excited when Kerri Maher released, The Girl in White Gloves, a historical fiction novel that gives us a glimpse into Grace’s life away from the silver screen.

In this interview, Kerri shares when her interest in Grace Kelly began, how she captured Grace’s essence, and a sneak peek at her next novel.

When did your interest in Grace Kelly first begin?

My mother was a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, and two of her favorites were Rear Window and To Catch a Thief, both of which starred Grace Kelly opposite two of the most bellowed starts of Gold Age Hollywood, James Stewart, and Cary Grant. I watched those two movies very early in my life, and then many times after.  As a result, I was always intrigued by Grace Kelly and the whole glamorous world of 1950’s movies.

What was the first Grace Kelly film you ever saw growing up?

Can’t quite remember if it was Rear Window or To Catch a Thief.

Your first historical fiction novel, The Kennedy Debutante focused on the Kennedy’s while your second novel revolves around the life of the iconic Grace Kelly. What drew you to the historical fiction genre?

Given how much I’ve always loved history— I was even an art history minor in college because I loved how that discipline brought so many historical elements to bear on the interpretation of paintings—it’s amazing to me how long it took me to write in this genre.  Researching and writing The Kennedy Debutante lit up parts of my brain that hadn’t been lit up since college.

Fast-forwarding nearly 20 from my undergrad years, I was in a new-mothers book club where we read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson, and their courtship and years in Paris.  I thought, WOW, what a great idea for a novel, and what a beautifully executed novel.  At the time, I didn’t have a subject of my own in mind, but I filed it away in my mind under “good to know,” thinking maybe I could do that someday.  So when Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy presented herself to me as a subject, I thought back to The Paris Wife and thought…maybe I could write a novel like that.

When did you first decide to write a book based on Grace Kelly’s life away from the silver screen?

When I was finished with The Kennedy Debutante, I wanted to write a novel about an interesting woman who’d lived a little bit after Kick, in the ’50s.  I thought of Grace very quickly because of my mom and my own history with her movies, and because Grace is such an icon of fashion and womanhood, even now, 38 years after her death.  We’re still comparing celebrities on the red carpet, and brides, to her; we’re still watching her movies.

But before I started researching her, I didn’t really know much about her.  I had some sense that she’d made a handful of movies in the 1950s, but not later—and I wondered why.  I also knew she was an American woman who’d married a prince in Europe—and I wondered what it must have been like for her to make that transition.  And with those questions, my novelist’s brain kicked in and I thought, maybe she’d be a good subject for a novel!  Then, the more I learned, the more interesting she became.

How much research did you do into Grace’s life and what are some of the books/movies you use to research and capture Grace’s voice and essence?

Well, once I had the green light from my publisher to write a novel about her, the very first thing I did was watch (or re-watch) all of her movies.  Believe it or not, there are only 11 of them!  All of these movies were essential to me.  As were the interviews she did: it was hard to find letters and other primary sources.  I relied on my comparing and contrasting of several biographies and memoirs like that of Judith Balaban Quine, one of her bridesmaids.

Many of us only know about the glamorous side of Grace’s life, but The Girl in White Gloves delves into the reality of Grace’s life once she married Prince Rainier of Monaco. What was the hardest scene to write?

That’s such a good question, and it’s really hard to answer.  In one way, the scenes with Alfred Hitchcock were hard to write – he’s a well-known celebrity in his own right, and a genius auteur, so I felt shy about putting my inadequate words in his mouth.  In other ways, it was hard for me to put any words and thoughts into Grace’s own mouth and mind  – but this was a hurdle I’d already cleared when I was writing The Kennedy Debutante.  When I was fretting about the idea of bringing Kick to life—a Kennedy!  JFK’s favorite sister!!—two friends of mine pointed out to me that I was writing MY book.  A novel, not a biography.  When I worry about writing certain scenes, I bring that back to mind.  What I’m writing is a novel, an interpretation of events.

do you feel like Grace regretted marrying into the royal family and all the pressures that came along with it?

Regret is a strong word, and not one I’d necessarily use.  Her life was very complicated, and she made the best decisions she could at every stage of her life, given the tools she had at her disposal, and the context of the world at the moment.  She felt enormous pressure at every stage of her life—to be a good daughter, a good girl, a good woman, a good actress, a good wife, a good mother, a good princess.  I think every woman can relate to the pressures of being “a good [fill in the blank]”.

If you could have met Grace Kelly in real life, what would you have talked to her about?

I think I’d ask her which three movies she wished she’d have made.  She was slated to play Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, for example, but she got married before she had the chance – does she wish she could have played that role?

What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

That Grace Kelly was a real woman with a beating heart and blood in her veins.

Can you give us a sneak peek at your next book?

Yes!  I’m turning my eyes to literary “royalty” in Paris in the 1920s, in a novel about Sylvia Beach, the American woman who opened the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore in 1919, which was the home of the Lost Generation—Hemingway, Pound, Joyce, Fitzgerald, “and company”…  And in 1922, at great risk, she published the very first edition of James Joyce’s masterpiece ULYSSES, after it had been banned and convicted of obscenity in NYC in 1921.

Pick up your copy of The Girl in White Gloves.