What is the title of your latest release?
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LORI LOVELY?
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Based on a true story: a beautiful young movie star of Hollywood’s Golden Age gives up her bright career to become a cloistered nun.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I followed the lives of three famous, real-life actresses: humble beginnings in North Carolina, theater school in London, the pageantry of Hollywood, filming in Rome, and a cloistered abbey in Connecticut. I went to all these places while researching and writing Lori Lovely’s story.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Absolutely! In fact, the book is dedicated to one of Lori Lovely’s real-life inspirations Mother Dolores Hart who I have the honor of my life to call a spiritual guide and a friend. We have been in communication for nearly a decade. I joke that I want to be Lori Lovely when I grow up. She’s someone I greatly admire and want to have a cup of tea with… talking all things. I hope readers feel similarly.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Gracious. Courageous. Lovely.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That what the world tells us is success is a lie. Success doesn’t lead to happiness, and happiness is not something we earn. Success, happiness, love, peace: these treasures already exist within us. They’re waiting for us to claim them. I learned that my purpose is not to hoard blessings but to be a conduit to others. Encourage success and happiness; give love and peace. The more you extend into the world the more you are supplied. This also applies to storytelling.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I write and the next morning, go back to edit what I’ve written before I push forward with new writing. At the end, I edit the entire manuscript mercilessly 2-3 times before I give it to my editor… who edits! Then, I revise based on those notes.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Coke Zeros. I know soda products aren’t the healthiest, but the taste makes me feel like a kid again.
Describe your writing space/office!
My desk is up against a window. Mother Nature is a vital part of my wellbeing as a writer and a woman. I need to see the sunlight shifting. I need to see the seasons change. I’ve had the same desk since my twenties when I did my MFA in Creative Writing. It’s whitewashed and chipped, and I think I may have ordered it from Pier 1, but I can’t remember. It’s moved with me from Norfolk, Virginia to El Paso, Texas to Chicago to North Carolina. All my books have been written on this desk so at this point, I could never get a new one. It’s my desk. I write from morning to dark with no music, no TV, no telephone, no sounds in my office. Silence and solitude help me hear the characters best.
Who is an author you admire?
Adriana Trigiani. She has proven herself to not only be a brilliant writer of books that cross genres and generations, but also one of the most compassionate women in publishing today. She champions other writers—genuinely and with all her heart. I’m honored to have her endorsement on Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely? and even more grateful for her friendship.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. My novel Marilla of Green Gables stands as evidence.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
My agent at the time called and said she’d sold my MFA thesis novel The Time it Snowed in Puerto Rico to editor Shaye Areheart at Random House in a two-book deal. I was in my El Paso kitchen on a landline phone corded to the wall and literally sat down on the tiled floor and wept with the cord tangled round me. It was a seminal moment, and I’m grateful I had it before Instagram and TikTok were a thing. There was no live feed or selfie or any documentation. It simply was. I got to live, breathe, and feel it fully in the present without thinking about who and how I was going to share it with.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I don’t have a favorite genre because I don’t pay much attention to genres. I love a good story. Period.
What’s your favorite movie?
This is a crazy hard question. I couldn’t pick one so I’ll give my favorite movies during the writing of Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely?
Romeo and Juliet starring Olivia Hussey, 1968
Romeo + Juliet starring Claire Danes, 1996
Where the Boys Are starring Dolores Hart, 1960
West Side Story starring Natalie Wood, 1961
What is your favorite season?
Summer! Hands down, every year, bring on the sunshine, pour the iced tea: SUM-MER.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I tell everyone in my life the same thing: the best gift I can receive on my birthday is a handwritten card. Not a phone call. Not a party. Not a dinner out or neighborhood singalong or bow-tied gifts heaped on a table. A handwritten card that I can read alone at my leisure and reflect quietly on the person who sent it. That’s how I love to celebrate.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
The podcast “Wiser Than Me” with Julia Louis-Dreyfus is brilliant. Every episode and every person interviewed is a gem, but what makes the whole thing work so outstandingly is Julia. She brings relatability, humor, and her own sparkle of wisdom to the production. I push this podcast on every woman I know, and they’ve all come back enriched by it.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Seafood. I will fight the boogeyman for a king crab leg.
What do you do when you have free time?
During COVID quarantine, I started taking long nature trail walks and have tried to continue to do them as often as time allows. I don’t call them hikes because honestly, I avoid hills at all costs. But I’ve come to crave nature. When I have free time, I throw on my sneakers and my big, brimmed hat. I go out to the meadows, the forests, the pony pastures, down the long winding trails and across the creeks. It’s a luxury to unplug from Wi-Fi and plug back into the earth.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’m not one to share my “what’s next” projects. Not because I’m superstitious but because I simply don’t know if that story seed is going to be the one to grow into a book next or if another will. I don’t want to mislead readers. What I can tell you is that I’ve been working on another historical novel inspired by powerful, real-life woman.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LORI LOVELY? by Sarah McCoy
A Novel
From New York Times bestselling author Sarah McCoy—a spellbinding novel based on a true story: a beautiful young movie star of Hollywood’s Golden Age gives up her bright career to become a nun.
In 1969, twenty-three-year-old starlet Lori Lovely, the apple of Hollywood’s eye, shocks the world by ditching a promising film career to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as a Benedictine nun. Gossip columnists and scandal sheets can’t get enough of the story. Why would such a beautiful girl take the veil? Was she hiding from someone? Did it have anything to do with the tragic death of her costar, heartthrob singer Lucas Wesley?
In 1990, Lu Tibbott is under the gun to complete her senior thesis in modern American history. Instead of spending weeks in dusty archives, Lu decides to dig into a true twentieth-century mystery and write about her aunt Lori, now the Mother Abbess at a cloistered convent in rural New England. Biographers, bloggers, and media types have long speculated about her aunt Lori’s sudden departure from Hollywood. Mother Lori, however, has refused all requests for interviews—until Lu arrives at the abbey with a tape recorder in hand. To her delight, Mother Lori announces she’s finally ready to talk…but only if Lu is truly ready to listen.
Lu is shocked to discover that the story of Lori Lovely’s rise in Hollywood was far more tumultuous than she’d ever expected, a fairy tale twisting with ambition, unforeseen alliances, forbidden love, and secrets. What began as a history thesis now threatens to upend all their lives with its unexpected truths, especially as the media gets wind of Lu’s project and begins to ask…
Whatever happened to Lori Lovely?
Audiobook Narrators– Cassandra Campbell, Helen Laser, Stephanie Németh-Parker.
Women’s Fiction Historical | Literature and Fiction Literary [HarperCollins, On Sale: September 2, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063338746 / eISBN: 9780063338760]
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About Sarah McCoy
Sarah McCoy is the author of the novels The Baker’s Daughter and The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She currently lives with her husband and dog, Gilbert, in El Paso, where she is working on her next novel.
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