Its among the first batch ofgreat 2019 reads.
Read on below.Sugar RunpublishesJan.
8and isavailable for pre-order.
Credit: Jesus Perez; Algonquin Books
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This took you several years to write.
In about 2010, she took up residence in my brain.
I dont have a sense of where she came from or what specific person or experience.
But I started thinking about her, and became infatuated with her.
I started daydreaming about her all of the time, working on the book then, on and off.
I was teaching myself how to write with this being my first novel.
But Jodi was very strongly in my mind.
Like Id neglected her.
I felt guilty, like she was mad at me.
Its interesting you say Jodi haunted you because she has such a tough, vivid backstory here.
They were very vivid to me.
My parents had rented out their house and I didnt really have a home base there.
This feeling of having left a place and expecting to go back.
When Jodi leaves with Paula, she doesnt think shes leaving for 18 years.
Shes in prison, and the main thrust of the story begins the day she gets out.
What happens if you do actually get to go back home?
It doesnt usually look like it did in your dreams.
Shes almost envisioning a sense of utopia with the farm on West Virginia.
The story of the family having lost their land is a story Ive heard a lot growing up.
You offer such a complicated, full portrait of the South.
They got folded into the narrative.
I didnt set out to write a noir story.
But thats how it came to me.
In revising it, I realized, This is a story thats not all that common.
Its not all that common!
I do think the noir genre needs more of this, but this just came about in that way.
I structured it around that.
Thats something that very much exists, unfortunately.
It doesnt fit neatly into any box.
I did want to ask you about the pacing, too.
Its a suspenseful read, toying with thriller conventions a little bit.
moment, this huge revelation.
But then I realized that wouldnt have worked too well either.
I needed to balance those.
I didnt want to lean too heavily on the thriller, Whats she in prison for?
I didnt ever want it to overshadow the other story that I was trying to tell.
