The Boy In The Photo
Nicole Trope
Grand Central Publishing
June 22nd, 2021
The Boy In The Photo by Nicole Trope is a suspenseful read. This Australian author makes her US debut and does it with a bang. She takes readers on an emotional roller coaster involving love, hurt, heartbreak, and joy.
The story is told in two parts: six years ago, and six years later. Megan Kade divorced her abusive husband, Greg Stanthorpe. Intending to get Megan back or to hurt her he kidnaps their son and goes off the grid.
Six years later the boy, Daniel, appears at a New South Wales police station, reporting that his dad died in a fire. Daniel is distant, volatile, and in some ways resistant to Megan. He believes all the horror stories told to him by his father. The flashbacks of how both Megan and Daniel feel in the six-year gap emphasizes their grief and apprehension.
This emotionally harrowing story has many twists and turns. It is so heart wrenching for both Megan and Daniel and the reader as well. People should make sure they have some time because they will not want to put this book down.
Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for the story?
Nicole Trope: The idea started with a story on the news about a woman who was fighting to get her children back from Lebanon. He ex-husband had taken them to visit his family and refused to come home. She ended up hiring an organization who specializes in grabbing your child away from the abducting spouse and returning them to you. The plan failed and she was left distraught. The courts in Lebanon were of no help because the country is not part of the Hague Convention on child abduction. I wondered how long it would be until she was able to see her children again and how they would turn out if they ever returned to Australia. They had been taken from one culture into another and were still very young. I tried to imagine how their father would have explained that they were never going to see their mother again and I realized that he must have only had his own interests at heart.
EC: How would you describe Greg, the ex-husband, besides pure evil with no redeeming qualities?
NT: He a narcissist in the most classic sense. He is self -absorbed and can only see the world and those in it in relation to him and how they affect him. He lacks empathy and the ability to see anyone else’s point of view. His own pain is obvious to him but not the pain suffered by his wife and child. They only exist in relation to him and his needs. Control is a big part of who he is as well. When Megan and Greg first met, he was charming and lovely. Narcissists make you feel you are the center of their world and only when things get difficult do you realize that the only people, they really love are themselves.
EC: It is inconceivable that anyone who loves their child would act like him. Please describe his lies:
NT: Inconceivable but not something that is not played out in family courts across the world. Greg planned to take his child from the moment he realized his hold over Megan was gone. To facilitate that he began a campaign of lies against Megan, telling Daniel that the divorce was her choice, that he was the victim, and that she had stopped loving him.
EC: Life can be shattered in an instant?
NT: We see that every day. A car accident, a diagnosis, a lost baby, a missing child. I’ve always seen life as somewhat precarious. The idea that you can grow a child inside you, carry it to term, and give birth to a healthy baby seems simple and yet it’s a miracle. Keeping your child safe in today’s world sometimes feels impossible. When Megan realizes that Daniel is gone, that he’s been taken by his father, her whole world shifts.
EC: How would you describe Daniel-then and now?
NT: Daniel was a sweet little boy, adored by his mother and just an ordinary six-year-old. At twelve he is confused, distant, aggressive, and filled with uncertainty at his place in the world. He struggles with trusting his mother after everything he has been told.
EC: Please discuss parental alienation?
NT: Parental alienation is a term used when one parent turns their child against the other parent. As in the book, it’s mostly a subtle form of abuse because the parent doing the alienating would not simply say, ‘I hate your mother she’s awful.’ What is done is a consistent breaking down of the child’s faith in the other parent. ‘Your mother could have called you today, but she didn’t want to. I would let you do this but your mother wouldn’t. No one loves you like I do. Your mother is too busy with work to talk to you. You make your mother angry.’
EC: What about parental abduction?
NT: Parental abduction is when one parent steals a child from another parent. It’s kidnapping but I’m sure that in some cases the child may not even know it’s happening. It’s a form of abuse and control over the other person in the relationship. It’s a way to make a former partner pay for hurting you by using the child as a pawn. Men or women who are abusive and controlling often use their children as pawns when the relationship breaks down. The child is seen as something to own rather than a person with any rights. Greg took away what Megan loves most, Daniel, to cause her pain.
EC: How would you describe Megan?
NT: I would say she’s someone who’s been to hell and back and survived. She is sensitive, quiet, and artistic. She can never really be sure that her son is alive until he walks into the police station six years after his abduction. She exists in this terrible limbo where she struggles to move or change her life. I think she only forces herself to go on living in the hope that he will one day return and then like any grief she finds a place to put it so that she can begin to live a life again. I admire her resilience. It takes her a long time to find a way to be in the world without her son.
EC: Please compare the past and present relationship between Megan and Daniel?
NT: To a six-year-old his mother is his whole world. That’s what Megan was to Daniel and when Greg took him away, he took away Daniels’s security and sense of self. When Daniel returns, he has been told over and again that his mother did not love him as she said she did. He was young enough to believe his father. Megan has not had the six years of growing in between. Her love for him is still as strong. In the novel she is really struggling with who he is now. He’s a very different person who’s had six years of experience away from her, now almost a teenager. Daniel wants her to know him, and she wants to know him as well but it’s a distance that they struggle to breach. They are like complete strangers.
EC: Greg manipulated Daniel?
NT: As Daniel grew up, he found himself in remote situations. He was kept from attending school and was always told not to question. Having raised teenagers when they have questions besides going to their parent they ask friends, teachers, and go on the Internet. These were all denied to Daniel because Greg isolated him. Daniel had the same relationship with Greg as Megan did. They wanted to appease him, feared his anger, and did not want to do anything wrong.
EC: While married Megan was also manipulated by Greg?
NT: Greg took away Megan’s identity as a person. There is a scene in the book where she is afraid to order a glass of wine. Her brother asks her ‘what happened.’ She does not even really know. It starts out as tiny compromises, which she felt were not big deals until eventually everything adds up.
EC: In the book there is a quote, “Before her divorce she had lived in a house she didn’t like, driven a car she hated…But everything she did had seemingly been her choice because Greg had always said, ‘Whatever will make you happy…’ That Greg’s version of love was only about suffocating control.” Please explain
NT: I think that there has always been a dispute about levels of domestic abuse. A bruise can be seen, but abuse exists in many more forms than that. In Australia, coercive control has only just been recognized by law as abuse. Sometimes control is a slow breaking down of your own opinions until you’re not sure who you are any more. What starts out as love and compromise can eventually become very one sided. That’s what happened with Megan and Greg. Before she met him, she never questioned her own opinion on things but by the time she left him, she wasn’t even sure who she was anymore. If someone criticizes your choices often enough and you’re sure that they love you-it’s easy to believe they must only be doing it to help you-not hurt you. That’s how it begins and soon you’re making choices on things that are not really what you want but you’re keeping the peace and the other person happy.
EC: Are you a runner and how did running play a role in the story?
NT: I used to run but now I ride the bike at gym. I don’t know how I would get through life without the kind of intense exercise that raises your heart rate to a point where your mind stills. It’s a way to center yourself and when Megan finds it, it’s symbolic of her journey back to life and towards acceptance that Daniel will return to her when he’s an adult.
EC: A heads up about your next book?
NT: Home Sweet Home comes out on August 6th. It begins with a delivery driver, trying to deliver a computer to a house in the suburbs. The owner of the house answers the door but then tells him she can’t open the door. The way she says it alerts this particular man, a man with a difficult past, to something being wrong inside the house. At the same time the next-door neighbors grow concerned for the family inside. It takes place over the course of just seven hours, but it is another example of how a life can change in an instant, The world shifts and who you were when the sun rose is not the same person as who you are when the sun sets.
THANK YOU!!
