When journalist Margie Zable Fisher’s mother was on her deathbed, she promised Rona S. Zable that she would do everything possible to publish her novel about empowered women and meaningful second acts.
Not only were mother and daughter extremely close-knit, but they also shared a love of writing and were voracious readers of books. They had been on Rona’s 20-year journey to write The Cabernet Club, a book about second acts, upending your life and living on a budget, friendship, family, and discovery. Along the way, a loving daughter cements her mom’s lasting legacy.
The Cabernet Club is a coming-of-age story of a retiree that offers a hopeful and positive message about aging. There are moments of laugh-aloud humor and other passages that may leave the reader with tears dripping down her face.
Our heroine, Debbie Gordon, leaves her life in New England behind and has six months (based on an agreement with her helicopter daughter) to create the life of her dreams in a wacky budget condo community in South Florida. With great wit, grit, and help from new friends (Maria and Fran), she discovers the road to happiness.
In her humorous and often poignant second act, Rona moved from her home in New Bedford, Massachusetts, south of Boston, to South Florida—similar to her character, Debbie, a long-divorced legal secretary who retired to a fictitious community called Palmetto Pointe in South Florida.
The other pivotal character is Debbie’s loving yet overprotective daughter, Lori, who bears some similarities to Margie. The fast-paced book filled with familiar characters is also about grief, female friendships, overcoming adversity at every age, and raising a glass to our unique gifts and talents at every phase of our lives.
While not a helicopter daughter, Margie put her successful writing career on pause for a year to get the book published and cement her mother’s literary legacy.
“My mom and I had a dream that The Cabernet Club would be made into a TV series,” Margie says. “We described the book as a cross between Schitt’s Creek and The Golden Girls. Many people who’ve read it say they can absolutely see this as a TV series, so I am hopeful that will take place and continue this legacy.”
The following is an exclusive Q and A with journalist and novelist Margie Zable Fisher:
What was the first title of this book?
Margie Zable Fisher: When my mom first started writing the book some 22 years ago, it was called Prozac Winter, and it was not light-hearted at all. It was about women living up north, and it was kind of a downer, which is kind of surprising because all of her published Young Adult books had some humor in them.
So, how did the book initially take shape?
My mom attended a writer’s group in Florida that met at a local library, and she changed the whole thing, and it became kind of fun and funny about a new retiree who had moved to Florida, which is what she did, even though, you know, the book is fiction, right?
Do you see a lot of you and your mom in the characters of Debbie and Lori?
Lori is the helicopter daughter, so that part is quite different.
I think I was talking more about them always saying, “Be safe, and I love you,” and having this close relationship.
Yes, we always said, “Be safe and I love you,” at the end of our phone conversations. That is something we always did, and that my husband and daughter and I do now as well. Mom and I had so many fun and funny conversations. She was my best audience, and she had the best sense of humor. She got me, and we got each other. So yes, we had that kind of relationship.
I imagine this is quite the celebration and pride in getting this book published, launching it, and meeting fans in person and on social media. There’s got to be a bittersweet element because she’s not here.
Yes. It’s 100% bittersweet. We just marked the second anniversary of her death (February 21, 2023). And my book launch party is two days after that. So, it’s still pretty fresh. Not that grief has a timeline, but two years is still pretty early, and it’s impossible to forget because I’m talking about the book. So, the grief is constantly coming up. Because, you know, on the other hand, I know she’s happy, and this would be what she wanted, and it makes her happy, and she’s smiling, but I so wish she was here to celebrate it with me.
I suffered the loss of my mom four years ago, as well as other friends and family members, and I always thought that the sad stuff was gonna hurt the stuff that would be harder. It’s the happy stuff that really gets to you.
Gosh, you know what? That is so true, because not just that, and you may have experienced this too, but my mother was my biggest cheerleader, and I want to tell her about the book, and I do, but it’s one-sided. I want to have a conversation with her. I miss the conversations.
How far along was the book when your mom died, when she left it to you?
She had a full first draft, but I knew that something was missing. In her Writer’s Group, when she would read her material aloud, they used to love her really funny scenes. My mom liked having an audience, and so she kept writing really funny scenes.
The storyline is about a coming-of-age retired woman, which was solid, but I knew it needed some work on the central conflict, certain plot lines, and some character development. I had never written fiction before, though, so I hired a developmental editor. She did a great job of pointing out everything I needed to fix, but she didn’t tell me exactly how to change it, so I had to learn how to do that on my own.
By the end of three months, the timeline I gave myself, I learned about novel structure, conflict, writing strong scenes, character development, and dialogue. I added 20,000 words, changed the book’s timeline, added some plot lines, created a strong central conflict, new characters, romance, and more.
After this experience, is there going to be a Margie Fisher novel coming out anytime soon?
Well, it’s funny. I thought it was one and done because I did my project, right? But I fell in love with the characters, as a lot of people have, and I actually have briefly plotted out the second and third books. So, I plan to do a series.
I have to know, when it comes to mean bosses, did your mom have one that was so hateful like in the book?
My mom had some tough bosses, and so did I. I did change Debbie’s job during my edits, and made her boss meaner, based on some of my experiences and some things I’ve seen.
Were the situations the same, like the woman who tries to get Debbie fired for refusing to give her a discount on a beach pass?
Let me tell you, I’ve lived in South Florida for almost 30 years, and I’ve seen everything. Most of this stuff has a kernel of truth in it. Okay, it may not have been exactly like that, but I wouldn’t bet against the fact that something like that has actually happened.
What do you think your mom would have thought of the finished book? And why?
I think she would have been tickled that I included a romance. I think she would have been happy I kept her ending. We had struggled so hard on where to start the book. I mean, we had talked about this over the years, and it was difficult. So I changed the opening. That’s brand new, so I hope she would be okay with it. I don’t think I changed anything enough that it would upset her, but I updated and modernized a lot of things.
I think Mom would recognize that some things needed to be changed to play out like in the present day. Like, when she initially wrote it, there was no texting. There weren’t current-day rising prices. I think she would have been happy that I did this because she was so happy that I finally embarked on this kind of writing.
How did finishing your mom’s book help with the grief over losing her?
I feel like I was fortunate that I had a project to do because I was so grief-stricken. We were so close. We were like mind-melded. I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have this project. I feel like it was almost a gift to me, that I had something that I put 12 hours a day in. I would often wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and head to my computer. In hindsight, it was a lot of work, and I had so much to learn, but I think it was actually a gift.
Talk about the life lessons and the importance of female friendships. I love the never too late to start a vibrant second act?
Yes, and the club motto is: Why can’t the rest of your life be the best of your life? I think there are a couple of lessons here, this was true of my mother. My mother had been divorced since I was a baby. She had a few relationships along the way but never remarried. Her friends were everything to her, and she was a good friend. My mom was charming and was a strong proponent of all the friendship stuff. And she was the ringleader. She would be the one who would say, “Let’s do stuff.” She imparted to me the whole idea of the importance of friendships and being independent.
So, I think she’s glad that I’m carrying the torch of empowered aging. Life begins at 50, it doesn’t end, even with all the things that go with it, even with all the drama and the annoyances. They are all a part of life and aging, and you can still have a great life even on a budget.
I know it’s fiction, but did you and or your mom have people in your life like the besties that she met?
I get that all the time. People are like, “I’m so jealous.” I want to know who these women are. I want to be friends with them, and I would say they’re an amalgamation of different people. They’re not perfect. The key is that they were there for each other in whatever way they could be.
How difficult was it to get a publisher?
Nearly impossible. My mom had her novels published with major publishers in the 80s and 90s, but that was 30-something years ago, and they were middle-grade and Young Adult books. I tried reaching out to her former agent and got nothing. It’s also difficult to get interest in an older protagonist, so that made it tricky. Then I found a home in Sibylline Press, a press that publishes books for women over 50. It was perfect for exactly what we believed in: Women Helping Women over 50. So, it worked out really well.
Where did the final title, The Cabernet Club, come from?
Over the years, we went back and forth. We had three or four different titles, and finally, I had gone with a different one. Then, at the 11th hour at my publisher, where they had accepted the old title, I said, “You know what this needs to be? The Cabernet Club. It just feels right. And they agreed.
Was this your mom’s wine of choice?
Yes. Every Sunday for the past couple of years before she passed, we would have Sunday dinner together, and we would always open a bottle of Cabernet and have a toast to all of us, and she loved her Cabernet. I do, too.
Have you talked to anybody about optioning your book for a movie or TV show?
That was our dream, for it to be a TV series. Because I might have told you we consider it a cross between Schitt’s Creek and the Golden Girls, if they were on a budget, that’s how we always described it. I’m just hoping the universe or someone will come through because that would really be amazing.
Everybody wants to leave a legacy, so talk about your mom’s legacy as a writer, mother, grandmother, and role model.
Okay, so she was just delighted that she had a pretty decent daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law. She was so happy. She had a good life. I had told her over the years that I felt this book was her legacy because it spoke to empowered aging. And I said, There’s not a lot of fiction with older protagonists, especially retirees like Debbie. And the ones that you see sometimes, they’re kind of like wealthy and unrealistic. And you know, that wasn’t the life that my mother experienced.
We were always talking about how my mom had managed to live a wonderful life, even without a lot of money. So, I felt that this novel was a gift to the world because it shows people dealing with real issues in a light-hearted way, because you don’t want to hammer these issues down to people too seriously, or they won’t want to listen.
There are a lot of struggles people have, especially as they age, but there are ways to overcome them. Even when you don’t have a lot of money, when you might have health issues, and you might have relationship issues, it’s all part of life, but you can still have a great life over 50. Putting that message into the world through a novel is a terrific legacy, don’t you think?
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About the Authors
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, co-author Rona S. Zable (age 88 at the time of her death in 2023) published three YA novels with Bantam Doubleday Dell and one middle-grade novel with Troll Press. She later worked for 20 years as editor of SeniorScope, the largest senior publication in New England. Her daughter and co-author Margie Zable Fisher (age 58) is a former publicist and current writer and editor with publication credits in the New York Times, AARP, Fortune, Next Avenue, and numerous others.