My guess is that in other cities television news anchors and radio broadcasters don’t generally write books, but in Charlotte it’s another story. This month Molly Grantham, a WBTV news anchor, published her second book, The Juggle Is Real: The Off-Camera Life of an On-Camera Mom. Grantham is not the only Charlotte-area anchor or broadcaster to have published multiple books. Sheri Lynch of the Bob and Sheri radio show has also published two books, and the former news anchor Robert Inman has published numerous books.
Grantham’s The Juggle Is Real is a follow-up volume to her first book, Small Victories, which came out in 2017. In fact, both books share the same subtitle: The Off-Camera Life of an On-Camera Mom. Grantham wrote her first book while on maternity leave. It started as a series of Facebook posts that she wrote on a weekly basis shortly after the birth of her second child. Small Victories has a candid and humorous feel to it. The Juggle Is Real is just as candid has her first book, but it is more serious in tone. The book opens with Grantham recounting her visit with her dying mother. From there she writes about experiences of juggling her job and her responsibilities as a parent while working from home because of the coronavirus pandemic. Grantham includes lots of humorous observations in this memoir, but it is all set against the sobering backdrop of our current public health crisis. For more information about Grantham’s books, please click on the following link: https://www.mollygrantham.com/
Grantham’s two memoirs are perfect shelf mates to Sheri Lynch’s two books about motherhood: Hello, My Name Is Mommy: The Dysfunctional Girl’s Guide to Having, Loving (and Hopefully Not Screwing Up) a Baby, published in 2004; and Be Happy or I’ll Scream!: My Deranged Quest for the Perfect Husband, Family, and Life, published in 2007. Both Grantham and Lynch have a knack for writing self-deprecating humor, but Lynch’s humor is a bit edgier than Grantham’s. Like Grantham, Lynch writes about the difficulties of juggling her family life and her career, but Lynch’s juggling act often doubles as a comedy act. For more information about Lynch’s career, please click on the following link: https://bobandsheri.com/bio/
Of the Charlotte-area news anchors who have also published books, no one can match the record of Robert Inman. From 1979 to 1996, Inman worked as a news anchor for WBTV, but he took an interest in writing novels in the mid-1980s. He published his first novel, Home Fires Burning, in 1987. In 1996, he decided to step down as a news anchor and become a full-time writer of novels, plays, screenplays, and essays. For more information about Inman’s books, please click on the following link: http://robert-inman.com/about-the-author
Inman’s most recent novel, The Governor’s Lady, came out in 2013. Like Grantham’s and Lynch’s memoirs, this novel deals with the experiences of a woman attempting to juggle multiple roles and expectations. In the case of The Governor’s Lady, the central character is Cooper Lanier, the wife of an ambitious southern governor who decides to run for President of the United States. Her husband concocts a plan for her to succeed him as governor so that he can devote more time to his presidential campaign. However, when she is elected governor, she finds herself torn between being a stand-in for her husband and following her own ideas and plans. The result is a story that combines family dynamics and political intrigue.
For Molly Grantham, Sheri Lynch, and Robert Inman, the demands associated with their broadcasting careers have not prevented them from launching new careers as authors. All three of them have written memorable books about the realities of contemporary women’s lives, and Storied Charlotte is richer for it.