How an unforgettable character led to Reese Witherspoon’s debut novel

Reese Witherspoon’s first novel for adults began with the kind of inspiration veteran fiction writers know well — a character who wouldn’t leave her alone.

A military doctor who ends up performing plastic surgery for mysterious clients.

“I had never had an idea for a character in my whole life. She was sort of living in my head, and once that happens I knew I was going to have to do something about it,” Witherspoon said this week as she and co-author Harlan Coben spoke in a conference room at the Apple SoHo store in downtown Manhattan, shortly before their interview for an upcoming podcast, Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club.

“And so I called Harlan.”

The novel, which has just been published, is called “Gone Before Goodbye.” The woman in Witherspoon’s mind became Maggie McCabe, an Army combat surgeon whose professional setbacks lead her to accept a lucrative, but suspicious plastic surgery job that will bring her everywhere from Russia to Dubai and ensnare her in a puzzle of murder, multiple identities and jarring coincidences. “Gone Before Goodbye” began with Witherspoon, but has the kind of layered plot lines and haunting back stories known to Coben’s many readers.

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The careers of the 49-year-old Witherspoon and 63-year-old Coben have run parallel for decades — she’s the Oscar-winning actor and producer whose credits include “Walk the Line,” “Legally Blonde” and “The Morning Show” and he’s the million-selling author of such crime stories as “Tell No One,” “Fool Me Once” and “No Second Chance.” But their interests have also overlapped. Beyond her influential book club, Witherspoon is one of Hollywood’s most prominent champions of reading and literacy, while Coben has seen many of his books adapted for film and television.

Witherspoon says the two met at a conference about nine years ago and that she has long been a fan of his work. Once she decided to take on a novel, she contacted Coben, who had never worked with a co-author.

“I was wary of the idea of collaborating. I’m just not that guy,” he said. “But when she told me the idea and started talking about private doctors illegally going over and doing surgeries for very wealthy people and then something going wrong. And that’s kind of in my alley — but not. And I loved it. It’s like when you have an idea, there’s like hooks in your brain, you know, and all these ideas kind of rushed through.”

Maggie McCabe might seem like a fine and challenging role for an actor like — Reese Witherspoon. And “Gone Before Goodbye” has clear cinematic scope, with its mix of exotic locales, narrow escapes and deadly confrontations. But no rights have been sold and the authors both say they want the book to be enjoyed as a book — for now. Coben explained that they worked under a few ground rules — no writers besides themselves, and no thinking beyond the project at hand.

“The biggest kiss of death, despite how many adaptations I’ve had of my own books, is to write a novel thinking, ‘Ooh, this is going to make a really good movie.’”

During their recent interview, Witherspoon and Coben also talked about their collaborative process, Witherspoon’s family background and what they learned from each other.

How did the writing process for this work? You were sending each other drafts?

WITHERSPOON: Constant communication. Text messages.

COBEN: Emails. We met in person once every 2 or 3 weeks, I guess.

WITHERSPOON: We’d sit for hours, kind of just beating out the story, making sure we understood each character’s backstory so that we could mine it for future plot lines. It was really interesting, the construction process.

COBEN: I warned her that novels like a sausage. You might like the final taste. You probably don’t want to see how it was made. So we really got into the weeds with that.

Do you (Witherspoon) feel like you now know enough that you could write a novel yourself?

WITHERSPOON:I know what I don’t know. And I think, you know, partnering with a master who’s done it for more than 10,000 hours and has 37 or 38 books, there’s a reason I wanted to work with somebody who is so incredibly skilled at it because he actually had the patience to let me into his process.

I felt very confident in my mastery of building a character. I felt as confident about this character as I do Tracy Flick (from “Election”), or Elle Woods (from “Legally Blonde”). To me, this character so clear and the fact that we built this together and he showed me how you can construct a world around a character, it really was an education for me.

What was the biggest adjustment for you (Coben) about working with another writer?

COBEN: Reese took over part of the part of my brain that sometimes talks to myself. I would talk to Reese instead. I would tease her because sometimes when we were speaking, because of her acting background, her ability to create character, I could almost see her becoming Maggie. Her voice would change a little. I would think to myself, “I’ve really got to mine her now because it’s like I’m talking to the actual character and she is in the room.

Was there an incident that inspired the book?

WITHERSPOON: Not really. I got a lot of inspiration from my dad, who was a military surgeon, my mom’s a military nurse. So they would talk about their surgeries at night. And my dad worked right after Vietnam. So he was seeing soldiers coming back from Vietnam. He was, you know, seeing patients after a lot of conflicts. And he would come home and tell us really vivid stories about surgeries, trauma surgeries and things he had seen.

I have a real reverence for people who serve in the military and who are also in the medical community. And, I’m also really fascinated by what drives a person to want to be that person.

COBEN: She’s a novelist (now), like it or not.

Is it going to be lonely for you (Coben) the next time you write a book by yourself?

COBEN: Yes it is. It’s going to be strange.

WITHERSPOON: Aww, I’ll be here. Just call a friend.

COBEN: I’ll just call Reese. ‘Honey, I need help.’