Alumni Advisory Council

Nurse and Writer Extraordinaire 

The Art of Keeping Secrets, a novel by Patti Callahan Henry, “brings to mind such authors as Pat Conroy, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Dorothea Benton Frank—against whom Henry stacks up admirably… Southern fiction at its best,” said a review by St. John Flynn, host of NPR’s Cover to Cover. Flynn and a host of other reviewers are talking about the author, Patti Callahan Henry, an Auburn University School of Nursing alumna, is a New York Times best-selling author of fifteen novels. 

Henry’s metamorphosis from a bookworm as a youngster to a celebrated novelist as an adult took her through a journey that passed through Auburn, Alabama. Her road to writing took a different route than most other novelists. Henry found the power of storytelling while growing up in Philadelphia. After the family moved to South Florida when she was an adolescent, she found sanctuary in libraries and began her journey into understanding the power of story to navigate confusing times in life. 

Henry always wanted to be a pediatric nurse from the moment she decided to enroll at Auburn University’s nursing school. She started work at Egleston Children’s Hospital run by Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta soon after her graduation in 1986. After graduate school at Georgia State University, Henry became a pediatric clinical nurse specialist at Shepherd Spinal Center until the birth of her first child in 1993. She took up writing as a full-time profession when she became a mom to her three children. According to Henry, she never thought of creative writing as a “job,” but as a way to reach into her own life and connect with others.  

Q & A with Patti Callahan Henry 

How was student life in Auburn?  

It was life changing. Being a student there not only opened my eyes to the southern culture and life but introduced me to lifelong friends. I grabbed my student days by the handful—I was in a sorority (Phi Mu), a fraternity little sister, and a Tigerette. The nursing school taught me more than can be expressed. I do believe that the four years I spent at Auburn helped shape the rest of my life. It was and continues to be the most formative period of my life. 

When you were a student in Auburn, did you ever think writing would feature in your life?  

I never once considered writing when I was a student. I was singly focused on a nursing career, a goal I’d had since I was a young child; I never wavered.  When I was in my mid-thirties, I started to feel a deep and hidden urge to write a novel. I wanted to honor what had nourished me all my life—the power of story. My career as a nurse and my years of education prepared me for more than just being a nurse. 

I believe that nursing is one of the very best careers to have if you are going to have writing as a second life. As a nurse, my glimpse into the human drama, and into the lives of so many people, prepared me to dive into the lives of my characters. The empathy and the knowledge we gain as nurses prepare us for more than just a career in nursing—it prepares us for a life. 

As a nurse, what prompted your interest in studying head injuries?  

It was my fascination with how our mind works—most specifically memory. The brain is such an unknown frontier. In 1991, when I was studying, closed head injuries were beginning to be understood, and rules and laws about helmets were just coming into favor. I wanted to influence that by showing how helmets and protective gear decreased head injury. 

Nursing and writing inhabit disparate worlds of thought. How did you decide to become a writer? 

Both are about family, stories, and the inner secrets of our lives. My thesis and my work focused on head injuries. It was there that my fascination, awe, and also a healthy fear about the fragility of memories, began. Story helps make sense of the senseless, and can provide meaning in tragedy. Stories are our family legends, our beliefs, and our myths. 

I believe that writing is a “calling.” I was always an avid reader, so writing was a natural outgrowth of that love of story. I was enchanted by mythology and how we use story to navigate our lives. My first novel was received well enough to prompt me to write a second. I didn’t write my first novel while I was a full time nurse. I started when my children were five, three and one years old—so at that time I was a full time mom. 

I read about your involvement in the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement, I was struck by the use of “lantern” as a metaphor. How do you use this metaphor in your stories? 

John O’Donohue—my favorite Irish poet and philosopher—talks about how questions are a lantern to guide our way. I also love the imagery because it reminds me of Florence Nightingale and her lantern. But I have always used questions as a way to start my stories, to navigate where the story is going and how. I use them like a touchstone. The Favorite Daughter is the only novel where the focus is on a true medical condition. It centers on a family that must either come together or fall apart (or both) over an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. But I wasn’t so much trying to teach a lesson about Alzheimer’s as I was attempting to explore our relationship with memory and how it guides our life. 

In her writing, Henry seeks to highlight both the need for scientific research for prevention and cure and the importance of story-telling. The value of clarity in disseminating information that she learned from her thesis writing, and her affinity for story-telling helped her venture into a world of fiction writing. 

Patti Callahan Henry resides in both Alabama and South Carolina with her family. Her novels, The Favorite Daughter (Contemporary Southern Fiction), and The Perfect Love Song (A Christmas Holiday novella), were both released in 2019. Her most recent historical fiction (written under the name Patti Callahan), BECOMING MRS. LEWIS—The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis is now a USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly, and The Globe and Mail bestseller.