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Last month, when I read Rachel Hochhauser\u2019s<\/a> Lady Tremaine<\/a><\/em> \u2014 a reimagining of Cinderella<\/em> from the perspective of her stepmother \u2014 I was blown away. In the novel, Lady Tremaine pulled herself out of poverty as a teenager; but now, middle-aged, twice-widowed and back in debt, she needs to find her two daughters secure marriages before they end up on the streets. Also on her to-do list? Caring for an ungrateful stepdaughter, hunting rabbits for dinner, and keeping their leaky house from quite literally falling down.<\/p>\n Lady Tremaine<\/em> flips everything on its head \u2014 the classic Cinderella<\/em> fairy tale, of course, but also how we view women and mothers, through history, literature, and still today. (Case in point: on Big Salad, I shared how the book led me to a major dating realization<\/a>.) Reese Witherspoon just chose the novel for her book club<\/a>, and I can already envision the movie on the big screen. Here, I spoke to Rachel about her dramatic backstory, favorite sentence, and parenting realization\u2026<\/p>\n First things first: What inspired you to write about Cinderella\u2019s stepmother<\/strong>? Why did that image jump out at you?<\/strong> What a stunning realization.<\/strong> Were you first introduced to the story by watching the Disney movie as a kid?<\/strong> One delightful part of reading the novel was spotting classic Cinderella<\/em> scenes \u2014 for example, she comes down wearing an old blue dress, and the stepsisters touch it and it rips.<\/strong> Lady Tremaine has two daughters, of course, plus her stepdaughter. In your novel, she ends up realizing that she needs to parent each of them differently. That was a beautiful and profound moment.<\/strong> The novel also feels cinematic \u2014 you can clearly picture the grassy fields, the crumbling house, the village market. What background research did you do?<\/strong> How did you decide on the cover?<\/strong> You now have two daughters \u2014 ages one and four. Were you thinking about them as you wrote?<\/strong> Thank you so much, Rachel! Lady Tremaine<\/a><\/em> is a force.<\/strong> <\/p>\n P.S. More favorite books<\/a>, and Kate Baer\u2019s motherhood poems make me laugh and cry<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Will](\"https:\/\/cupofjo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/rachel-hochhauser-scaled.jpeg\")
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The backstory is more dramatic than you might think. In 2023, my husband couldn\u2019t get out of bed \u2014 he had vertigo, he was throwing up all the time, he lost 35 pounds. We didn\u2019t know what was going on. Eventually we found out that he needed emergency brain surgery. The recovery was brutal, and we were spending so much time in the hospital. One day, in the waiting room, I was scrolling through my phone and was stopped in my tracks by a cartoon image of Cinderella\u2019s evil stepmother.<\/p>\n
At the time, I was a caregiver. I was taking care of my husband, solo-parenting our toddler, and working full time. When I looked at Cinderella\u2019s stepmother, I didn\u2019t see a villain. I saw a mother who was doing what she needed to do to take care of her family.<\/p>\n
That seed got under my skin. I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about it, I felt compelled and called to the story.<\/p>\n
Yes, and I was enthralled. Even now, when I think of the iconic animation, the set design, the scale of it, I feel very taken with it. The interesting thing is, I\u2019m trying to re-message the story around Cinderella<\/em>, but it\u2019s also a love letter to Cinderella.<\/p>\n
It was really fun to play with the familiar plot points but defy expectations and make U-turns. Then the second half of the book explodes that world.<\/p>\n
You go into parenting with lots of expectations \u2014 what it\u2019s going to look like, how your kids are going to be. But kids come out who they are, and that\u2019s been an essential lesson for me. Parenting is a violation of expectations again and again, on a small and large scale, and you can\u2019t parent any two kids the same way.<\/p>\n
The novel\u2019s very much in conversation with the western European version of Cinderella<\/em>, but it isn\u2019t actually set in a specific time period or place. So, it was a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card for me; I wanted it to read like historical fiction but I didn\u2019t need to be hyper-specific about what life looked like in England in 1797. Instead, I researched a broader swath of time \u2014 I read the diaries of 18th-century women, etiquette books for women, fiction written during that time\u2026 Since Lady Tremaine has a falcon, I read old falconry manuals and took bird workshops. Helen Macdonald\u2019s H Is For Hawk<\/a><\/em> is an exquisite book.<\/p>\n![\"Lady](\"https:\/\/cupofjo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/rachel-hochhauser-1.jpeg\")
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Ninety-nine percent of authors don\u2019t get to choose their covers, but I did get to offer feedback and St. Martin\u2019s Press was wonderful about listening. We originally had different florals, but I asked, could we ever use something from the world of the book? I sent over images by Clara Peeters<\/a>, one of the few female Dutch Golden Age painters. I didn\u2019t actually know you could do this, but St. Martin\u2019s used the flowers from her painting for the cover! I LOVED that. They\u2019re not just pretty florals, they\u2019re from a woman who was ahead of her time and doing something different.<\/p>\n
Yes. The ending almost reads like a letter to young girls, to my daughters. My favorite sentence is the last sentence: \u2018You<\/em> are the scariest thing in the woods.\u2019<\/p>\n