Most of the time I write drafts before I do much research. Perhaps this is a wildly irresponsible practice, but I find that I feel a bit constrained when I’ve done too much research too early, as if I’m simply playing connect-the-dots with useful bits of information I’ve found. I like to feel out my characters in early drafts. I’ll do my most extensive research once my characters exist, then fold it into a novel whose psychology already exists on the page.

The “research” for this novel consisted of two very different veins of exploration. One of the most rewarding parts of this book was investigating mysteries that had lain dormant in my own family for quite some time. The other kind of research was much more traditional: reading first-person accounts of lives quite far removed from mine. I remember one day I staggered up to the Yale Library checkout counter with about twenty-five books about prostitution. These accounts were interesting and often quite surprising: many women were much less inclined to cast themselves in victim roles than I might have imagined. It’s for exactly this reason, the constant unfolding of surprises, that research feels necessary and enlivening; it constantly sends me back to old drafts with a new sense of purpose and possibility.

Why did you decide to tell the story from both Stella’s and Tilly’s points of view? Did you ever consider telling it from only one of their perspectives? From any other characters’ points of view?

The first draft of the novel was written entirely in Stella’s voice, in a fever dream of composition that lasted several months. In this version, Tilly had a different name and a slightly different role to play: she was crazier, more fully tragic, less fully human. As I kept writing and rewriting and listening to both women, I realized that I’d turned Tilly (née Madeline) into a flatter character than I wanted her to be: more extravagant in her gestures, less generous in her affect. I decided I wanted to flesh her out. I kept trying to find ways to fold her voice into the narrative, inserting fragments from her letters or diaries.

Around this time, I was caught in a blizzard while flying across the country. I ended up alone in a hotel in Detroit, sitting down with scraps of paper and napkins that held pieces of the aunt’s perspective—the story of giving birth to Abe, turning her first trick—and I felt like I kept hitting a wall, over and over again, trying to bring her perspective to the page. I finally realized that I needed to give her a full voice. So I did, along with a new name and her own half of the book.

Who is your favorite character, and why?