{"id":306998,"date":"2025-10-16T03:11:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T03:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/306998\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T03:11:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T03:11:14","slug":"reese-witherspoons-debut-novel-explores-a-military-doctors-mysterious-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/306998\/","title":{"rendered":"Reese Witherspoon’s debut novel explores a military doctor’s mysterious journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Reese Witherspoon\u2019s<\/a> first novel for adults began with the kind of inspiration veteran fiction writers know well \u2014 a character who wouldn\u2019t leave her alone.<\/p>\n

A military doctor who ends up performing plastic surgery for mysterious clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never had an idea for a character in my whole life. She was sort of living in my head, and once that happens I knew I was going to have to do something about it,\u201d Witherspoon said this week as she and co-author Harlan Coben<\/a> spoke in a conference room at the Apple SoHo store in downtown Manhattan, shortly before their interview for an upcoming podcast, Bookmarked by Reese\u2019s Book Club.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so I called Harlan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The novel,<\/a> which has just been published, is called \u201cGone Before Goodbye.\u201d The woman in Witherspoon\u2019s mind became Maggie McCabe, an Army combat surgeon whose professional setbacks lead her to accept a lucrative, but suspicious plastic surgery job that will bring her everywhere from Russia to Dubai and ensnare her in a puzzle of murder, multiple identities and jarring coincidences. \u201cGone Before Goodbye\u201d began with Witherspoon, but has the kind of layered plot lines and haunting back stories known to Coben\u2019s many readers.<\/p>\n

The careers of the 49-year-old Witherspoon and 63-year-old Coben have run parallel for decades \u2014 she\u2019s the Oscar-winning actor and producer whose credits include \u201cWalk the Line,\u201d \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d and \u201cThe Morning Show\u201d and he\u2019s the million-selling author of such crime stories as \u201cTell No One,\u201d \u201cFool Me Once\u201d and \u201cNo Second Chance.\u201d But their interests have also overlapped. Beyond her influential book club, Witherspoon is one of Hollywood\u2019s most prominent champions of reading and literacy, while Coben has seen many of his books adapted for film and television.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Reese<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Witherspoon says the two met at a conference about nine years ago and that she has long been a fan of his work. Once she decided to take on a novel, she contacted Coben, who had never worked with a co-author. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was wary of the idea of collaborating. I\u2019m just not that guy,\u201d he said. \u201cBut when she told me the idea and started talking about private doctors illegally going over and doing surgeries for very wealthy people and then something going wrong. And that\u2019s kind of in my alley \u2014 but not. And I loved it. It\u2019s like when you have an idea, there\u2019s like hooks in your brain, you know, and all these ideas kind of rushed through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maggie McCabe might seem like a fine and challenging role for an actor like \u2014 Reese Witherspoon. And \u201cGone Before Goodbye\u201d has clear cinematic scope, with its mix of exotic locales, narrow escapes and deadly confrontations. But no rights have been sold and the authors both say they want the book to be enjoyed as a book \u2014 for now. Coben explained that they worked under a few ground rules \u2014 no writers besides themselves, and no thinking beyond the project at hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest kiss of death, despite how many adaptations I\u2019ve had of my own books, is to write a novel thinking, \u2018Ooh, this is going to make a really good movie.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

During their recent interview, Witherspoon and Coben also talked about their collaborative process, Witherspoon\u2019s family background and what they learned from each other.<\/p>\n

Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.<\/p>\n

AP: How did the writing process for this work? You were sending each other drafts? <\/p>\n

WITHERSPOON: Constant communication. Text messages. <\/p>\n

COBEN: Emails. We met in person once every 2 or 3 weeks, I guess.<\/p>\n

WITHERSPOON: We\u2019d sit for hours, kind of just beating out the story, making sure we understood each character\u2019s backstory so that we could mine it for future plot lines. It was really interesting, the construction process.<\/p>\n

COBEN: I warned her that novels like a sausage. You might like the final taste. You probably don\u2019t want to see how it was made. So we really got into the weeds with that. <\/p>\n

AP: Do you (Witherspoon) feel like you now know enough that you could write a novel yourself?<\/p>\n

WITHERSPOON:I know what I don\u2019t know. And I think, you know, partnering with a master who\u2019s done it for more than 10,000 hours and has 37 or 38 books, there\u2019s a reason I wanted to work with somebody who is so incredibly skilled at it because he actually had the patience to let me into his process.<\/p>\n

I felt very confident in my mastery of building a character. I felt as confident about this character as I do Tracy Flick (from \u201cElection\u201d), or Elle Woods (from \u201cLegally Blonde\u201d). To me, this character so clear and the fact that we built this together and he showed me how you can construct a world around a character, it really was an education for me.<\/p>\n

AP: What was the biggest adjustment for you (Coben) about working with another writer?<\/p>\n

COBEN: Reese took over part of the part of my brain that sometimes talks to myself. I would talk to Reese instead. I would tease her because sometimes when we were speaking, because of her acting background, her ability to create character, I could almost see her becoming Maggie. Her voice would change a little. I would think to myself, \u201cI\u2019ve really got to mine her now because it\u2019s like I\u2019m talking to the actual character and she is in the room.<\/p>\n

AP: Was there an incident that inspired the book? <\/p>\n

WITHERSPOON: Not really. I got a lot of inspiration from my dad, who was a military surgeon, my mom\u2019s a military nurse. So they would talk about their surgeries at night. And my dad worked right after Vietnam. So he was seeing soldiers coming back from Vietnam. He was, you know, seeing patients after a lot of conflicts. And he would come home and tell us really vivid stories about surgeries, trauma surgeries and things he had seen.<\/p>\n

I have a real reverence for people who serve in the military and who are also in the medical community. And, I\u2019m also really fascinated by what drives a person to want to be that person.<\/p>\n

COBEN: She\u2019s a novelist (now), like it or not.<\/p>\n

AP: Is it going to be lonely for you (Coben) the next time you write a book by yourself?<\/p>\n

COBEN: Yes it is. It\u2019s going to be strange. <\/p>\n

WITHERSPOON: Aww, I\u2019ll be here. Just call a friend.<\/p>\n

COBEN: I\u2019ll just call Reese. \u2018Honey, I need help.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Reese Witherspoon\u2019s first novel for adults began with the kind of inspiration veteran fiction…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":306999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[36029,185,74676,171,3607,57,155396,1165,155395,5249,405,403,30940,47641,155397,61,67,132,68,15336],"class_list":{"0":"post-306998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-books-and-literature","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-elle-woods","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-fiction","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-harlan-coben","15":"tag-lifestyle","16":"tag-maggie-mccabe","17":"tag-manhattan","18":"tag-new-york","19":"tag-new-york-city","20":"tag-reese-witherspoon","21":"tag-surgery","22":"tag-tracy-flick","23":"tag-u-s-news","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-vietnam"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}