Publishers Marketplace: Danuta Hinc

I am seeking representation for my 92,000-word novel, "For the Wife Who Comes After Me."

After she is faced with yet another of her new husband’s unpredictable and dangerous behaviors, Anna Lato’s college-age son, AJ, convinces her to obtain a protective order and force her husband, Ralph, out of the house. When Ralph leaves the house escorted by a police officer, guilt overtakes Anna for not giving her four-year-long marriage another chance. She tries to “fix her mistake,” but Ralph, who unbeknownst to Anna holds a dark secret, insists on a divorce.

In the beginning of the novel, Anna has already lost not just her name (she is a “she”) but her entire sense of selfhood. As she grapples with her “mistake,” Anna remembers her complex past—her family and being the “other” (Kashubian, ethnic minority). She searches for answers to save her future with Ralph until she discovers documents that reveal his secret. After meeting with Ralph’s previous wife, she realizes why her marriage was destined to fail. By the end of the novel, at great emotional and financial cost, Anna emerges independent, takes back her own life and identity, and finally uses her name—Anna L, Anna Lato.

The story unfolds with two narratives: first person and third person. Modeled on a Catholic confession, the first-person narrative is reminiscent of Anna’s religious upbringing in Poland. Over-empathetic Anna felt responsible for others all her life—from her mother pained by loss, through drunks in the countryside ditches, to finally Ralph, a deeply troubled and emotionally abusive man. The third person narrative of the subplot is reminiscent of the “true witness”—a mirror perspective that in Polish folk tradition chronicles life. The third person narrative is constructed in the present tense to emphasize how the “past is always present” and how it informs people’s behavior, often compromising their personal narratives.

Much like Olga in Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment, Anna struggles with mental anguish after her marriage falls apart. Readers who appreciated The Days of Abandonment will enjoy how my novel looks at the habits and emotionality of deeply empathetic women who stay in abusive relationships because subconsciously they believe that saving others is a form of saving themselves. My novel expands the conversation further by adding Anna’s multilayered “otherness.”

In "In the margins. On the pleasure of Reading and Writing," Ferrante uses a term “smarginatura,” which in English can be translated into “dissolution of borders,” or perhaps, “losing shape.” In Polish the word “smaginatura” can be translated into “krwawic,” which means “bleeding.” Perhaps this is another connection I might have with Ferrante. The woman in my novel “loses herself” to the point that she is not able to see her own image in the mirror. Throughout the novel, she slowly regains her ability to “see herself” again.