Mara Williams's "The Truth Is in the Detours"

Mara Williams drafted her first novel in third grade on a spiral notebook—a love story about a golden retriever and the stray dog who admired her from beyond the picket fence. Now she writes about strong, messy women finding their way in the world. Williams has a BA in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, takes creative writing from Stanford Continuing Studies, and actively engages in writing groups and critique circles. Williams’s novel The Second Chance Playlist was a winner of the 2024 Emily Contest. When not writing or reading, Williams can be found enjoying California’s beaches, redwoods, and trails with her husband, three kids, and disobedient dog.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Truth Is in the Detours:

I don’t typically imagine actors while I’m drafting my books. I’ve never had a cast at the outset, simply because I visualize the characters as their own, individual people and have a hard time substituting an actor in their place. However, I do picture scenes, landscapes, gestures, and action like cinema, so I am constantly visualizing the book in my head. The Truth Is in the Detours centers around Ophelia, a pink-haired thirty-something virtual assistant whose life is a disaster, and Beau, a successful, uptight academic whose life isn’t as perfect as he’s pretending. I find these two characters incredibly hard to cast, simply because they feel like real people to me. But the book also has a large cast of side characters, who would be incredibly fun to imagine with veteran or character actors. This exercise has confirmed how far Hollywood still needs to go to diversify. When searching to fill a diverse cast of characters with big name actors, the options are more limited.

Scene: Road trip along the West Coast, beginning in San Diego, traveling into the southern California desert, the central and northern coast, and up into southern Oregon.

Ophelia Dahl: Amanda Seyfried. With her ability to shift between comedy and drama seamlessly, she would make a perfect Phe. I could see her playing sassy, prickly, and vulnerable equally well. Also, there’s a long-running Mean Girls joke in the book, and it would be hilarious to cast one of the original “Plastics” in the role as a nudge nudge wink wink to the audience.

Beau Augustine: Alex Tarrant is a dead ringer for Beau. Put some black-framed glasses on him, and he passes for his doppelganger.

Cherry Stewart: Ophelia’s best friend from high school has a sweet veneer with a darker core that Lily Collins could play so well.

Natasha Bridgewater: Natasha is a sharp-tongued woman filled with regret and self-loathing who confesses to lifelong secret. I think Jean Smart would play this role perfectly.

Jeremiah Abernathy lives in nowhere town California and manages the fairgrounds. His emotional scene would let Sam Elliott shine.

Carlos and Serena Navarro, Beau’s college friends, could be played by Tyler Posey and Diane Guerrero. I could see their comedic back and forth working well in the roles.

Mary Johnson: The role is brief but pivotal, and I believe Michelle Pfeiffer would be a perfect match for the part.

Visit Mara Williams's website.

Q&A with Mara Williams.

The Page 69 Test: The Truth Is in the Detours.

--Marshal Zeringue