CL Pauwels at Large

Next up in my exploration of the theme of family in my novels (namely the broken, dysfunctional, non-traditional ones) is sibling rivalry.

In Forty & Out, I introduced Jadz’s older sister Betty, who nurses an inexplicable grudge against Jadz. No matter how much Jadz does to bail out her once-close sib, Betty takes it as her due and snubs Jadz repeatedly. Eventually we find out why (I didn’t even know why when I started writing the story…gotta love character revelations), but their relationship never really recovers.

Burned Bridges, #2 in my “Toledo Trilogy,” has siblings of a different ilk. Elizabeth is the older sister of Reggie, the man whose death starts off the story. They grew up largely apart because of – here we go again: divorce! – and as details of their contentious relationship emerge, Elizabeth’s suspect status grows. No spoilers here, though!

Number 3 in the series, Unwelcome Ties, takes unhealthy sibling relationships a step further with Sophia and her misplaced devotion to older brother Gleadus. The book’s protagonist, Toni (Jadz is an important side character in this prequel), is caught in a multi-layered deception that upends everything she ever believed about her life when Sophia appears.

Why can’t I let sibs in my books share the be-all/end-all BFF/besties status I see trumpeted so often on social media? Maybe because it’s something I’ve never experienced.

All five of my sibs are halves, three of whom I was raised with. My only full-blooded sib, Mom and Dad’s second child – a son, died after only a few days. I have no proof, but I think that tragedy probably helped push them into divorce.

Because they split when I was maybe 3 years old, I never really knew my father until I was an adult, when his parents made sure we met up again. They’d also made sure I met Dad’s other estranged child, a half-brother of mine we’ll call K, when he visited them on his 18th birthday, but I didn’t hear from him again for years.

By the time Dad married wife #5 (his current, and last, with more time together than the other four combined), he and I were close, and I heard he’d reconnected with K. Hubby and I took our kids to Pennsylvania for the wedding (the second one of Dad’s we’d attended), and K’s family was there, too. It was an interesting reunion. Dad wanted – still wants – us all to be one big happy family. The jury’s still out on that one.

But shortly after the wedding, Dad announced he and the new wife were moving from Pennsylvania (8 hours away from me) to Florida (15 hours away)…and just down the road from K. Jealousy, feelings of abandonment, sibling rivalry no one else saw but me – all those unfamiliar and unexpected feelings hit in full force. That was 25+ years ago, and it still twinges now and again. It resurfaced a bit 15 years ago when another, previously unknown, son of Dad’s found us both on social media. M’s story is for another time!

Oddly enough, in all my novels, it’s the older sib who’s the problem child, the instigator, the one who holds the younger sib at a distance. Yet here I am, the oldest of my hybrid lot. Wonder what that says about me?

How about you? Are your sibs BFFs, or rivals, or somewhere in between? And did that change as you got older? Or (if you’re my age) when parents die?

Or maybe, like the MC in my coming-soon next novel, you’re an only child. Of course in that book, Fatál’s mother died giving birth so she was raised by her grandmother and estranged from her father – until the story begins. I still can’t seem to write those traditional, intact, family units!