I chose my favorites. The pecan butter balls have special meaning because that is my grandmother’s recipe and I remember baking them with her. A girlfriend mentioned that almost all of them contain nuts. I love nuts. I also picked cookies that carry the plot forward. The fortune cookies are an example of this and Allie’s Hanukkah cookies and Ramadan cookies.

You mention that some characters were based on real women from your cookie club. How close are your depictions to your friends and how much of the characterizations came from your imagination?

The acknowledgments detail exactly what I borrowed from my real friends. For example, Marybeth (who is the hostess of the cookie party) does have gorgeous white hair but no daughters. I imagined all the rest.

Is there a character that you yourself particularly identify with in the novel?

I think I’m most like Allie, but my kids laugh when I say that and tell me there are elements of me in all the characters. That makes enormous sense to me because I think the narrative dream is similar to any other dream, and the characters are projections of various aspects of the writer/dreamer’s unconscious. And so we all cannibalize our own lives, fantasies, and interests as we write. I do yoga, for example.

Infidelity is one of the recurring elements in the lives of your characters in The Christmas Cookie Club. How has your own experience, as well as the experience of writing Infidelity: A Love Story, affected your perspective on how marital betrayal affects others?

I’m aware of how very common and how very scarring infidelity is both in my own life and the lives of people I know. Most marriages will struggle with it and it’s implicated in the majority of divorces. I’m aware of what a challenge it presents to the couple and how much the entire family is impacted.

How do you think your writing is affected by your work as a psychotherapist?

I read somewhere that writers and therapists are very similar. The difference is that therapists believe they can help people change. As a therapist I am involved in transformation and am continually impressed with resilience and people’s eagerness for life and happiness. What helps people to have the courage to change and the determination to struggle is a fascinating topic to me. The gift of being a therapist is that we hear and witness lives and histories. We see the elements and the stories that coalesce to form personality. I understand the complications of people’s lives. It seems to me, none of us get out unscathed. All of us have problems at some point, and it’s how we survive, interpret, and deal with them that define us. That struggle, along with my interest in transformation and maintaining joy in life, is a major theme in my books.