Mainly, though, she writes about the trials and tribulations of love. That strikes me as sad. It's the one thing that is guaranteed to happen to an ordinary person. That and death. In her writing, Shreve draws heavily on her own experiences and the true circumstances of others, as well as her imagination, for her novels.
Resistance is based upon an incident during World War II in a small Belgian town.
The Pilot's Wife begins with an exchange that Shreve overheard at a party between an airline pilot and another guest. New England and the sea are also critical themes in Shreve's works. I could be a writer for the rest of my life and not exhaust the descriptions of it. Writing is a solitary, and often lonely, pursuit. I remember when I was a journalist that particular feeling of energy when dealing with editors and copyeditors and from interviewing other people.