I recently had the pleasure of chatting with and interviewing Therese Walsh, author of the just released novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy. Therese brings to life identical twin sisters, Maeve and Moira Leahy, in her debut novel that's part family drama, suspense, and mystery with a little bit of mystical and romance thrown in.

When the novel begins, we learn that Maeve is a twinless twin, having lost her twin sister one November.  Through flashbacks we learn the circumstances of what happened to the twins at the same time that Maeve embarks on a mysterious adventure involving an ancient artifact.  The artifact is a special wavy dagger called a keris which reminds Maeve of the precious time she spent playing dress up as a child with her twin.  As you read on, the plot unfolds with exciting twists and turns along the way and highlights the amazing bond shared between identical twins.   It's a mesmerizing tale about twin sisters, life, love, and loss.  I just finished reading it and I loved it.   

1.  The story centers around the love of identical twin sisters, Maeve and Moira Leahy.  Why did you choose to write your first novel about twins?

TW: This is the truth. I didn’t plan to write this book about twins. The story was originally a love story of a different kind—between Maeve and her friend, Noel. Moira just appeared on the page of Maeve’s story one day and titled her world on its axis. I rewrote the book in order to do the story of these sisters justice.

2.  You really captured the feelings, bonds and experiences between identical twins.  Do you have a personal or family connection to twins?  If not, what kind of research did you do to help understand the special connection of twins, especially identical twins?

TW: There are no twins in my family, and I’ve never had a personal connection to twins—before now, that is. After Moira appeared, I wrote about the twin connection using a layman’s knowledge. It wasn’t until after I began rewriting the story with Maeve and Moira at its center that I did some heavy-duty research; I wanted the twin story steeped in realism, especially to counter the mythical parts of the tale.

I purchased several books, but the one I came to rely on the most was Susan Kohl’s slim, straightforward Twin Stories: Their Mysterious and Unique Bond [DUB note: currently out of print]. Kohl’s book is a collection of experiences, written by twins. The first-hand accounts supported the direction I’d taken with the story (e.g. “This is just special, like soul to soul…”) but offered new possibilities as well—separation anxiety, personality differences, competitiveness, struggling with uniqueness, echoing thoughts, twin language, mistaken identities, and intuition during disasters.

The section on the death of a twin was particularly poignant, and included things like the pain of looking in the mirror after a loss (“If I combed my hair, I would see her in the mirror. If I talked to people, I would hear her voice…everything reminded me of her.”). I never would’ve considered that level of detail on my own, but of course it made sense—how painful it would be to have a constant reminder of such a profound loss and never be able to escape it because there it was, in your own mirror. So Maeve cut her hair, and she bleached her red strands until they were nearly white. She became a colorless person. And she avoided mirrors.

3.  Did you enjoy writing about identical twins and the “twin experience?” 

TW: I not only enjoyed writing this book; I felt I had to write this book. Maeve and Moira became very real to me.

4.  Are the terms “blocking” and “Trying Twin” that are used in the book real “twins terms” or were they words you created for the story?

TW: They were both invented. I’d read somewhere—perhaps Kohl’s book—that twins who lost touch with one another had “lesser” bonds, so I began to think of the bond as something like a tangible thread; if it could change through lack of attention, maybe it could be changed by purposeful attention—the intention to sever the bond or block it. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the creation of that device—“blocking”—became central to the story.

“Trying Twin” was the term Maeve and Moira’s mother, Abby Leahy, used when referring to the secret language of her young daughters. I had such sympathy with Abby throughout the book. Though she wasn’t a warm-and-fuzzy personality, she did want the best for her girls. She felt left out because of their special connection; they seemed to need one another more than they needed her, and that hurt her.

5.  Moira and Maeve’s mother says that she thinks their names sound too much like “twin names” even though that wasn’t her intention when naming the twins.  Why did you select these names for the main characters of the book?  Why was it important to you to have both names start with the letter M?

TW: I wish I could say I’d thought about the conflict over names between Abby and her husband, Jack, when plotting the book, but I wasn’t that clever. I chose the name Maeve for simple reasons: I liked it, and it had the Irish vibe I wanted. I don’t recall where I found Moira’s name after realizing Maeve had a twin. I do have a book of baby names, and Moira is listed there. It could be that I did the stereotypical thing and chose something that sounded similar to Maeve. Interestingly, I learned later that Moira means “fate,” which is something I hadn’t realized when choosing her name.

6.  When the book begins, we learn that Maeve is now a twinless twin, can you tell us a little bit about how Maeve handles her grief of losing her twin?

TW: Maeve applies what she knows about “blocking” to her grief. Instead of sinking into it and moving through the normal stages of sorrow, she shuts it off. She doesn’t think about her sister, she doesn’t look in the mirror, she doesn’t play her music (she and her sister had planned to tour Europe as musicians, once upon a time). But “blocking” in this way, damming her emotions like that, is harmful to her. She has trouble connecting with others and even being alone with her thoughts. At the beginning of the story, she is a workaholic without many meaningful ties to others. Obviously, this is a woman with a long way to go toward healing, but that’s a good thing for a novel—you’re able to root for her as she takes the steps needed to recover, shed her shadow life, and become self-actualized.

7.  Any plans for a second novel? 

TW: Yes, I’m writing about a blind woman who treks across West Virginia in search of the end of her dead mother’s story, and along the way teaches others how to see the world. The Last Will of Moira Leahy has always been so difficult to describe, so I wanted the second book to be describable in one easy sentence. Will there be twins in this story? Hmm, there may be!