The book’s narration is occasionally overtaken by a ghost—throughout the novel, too, there is a sense of haunting, of the Other, with characters pondering the existence of ghosts, sharing folk stories, conspiracy theories, and lore. How did you decide to include a ghostly narrator? Are any of the Fripp Island–specific tales real?

Nope! Well, they’re “real” ghost stories, but not specific to Fripp Island.

I’m intrigued by the conflict and overlap between facts and feelings, especially as they pertain to memory, and this theme is explored in the book by both the living and the ghost. The ghost mentions at one point that the living are trying to recall the facts and feelings of their lives, and later mentions that it is actually a relief, in death, to be freed of the burden of feelings and “the belief that everything that originates from within you is true, can be trusted, and must be acted upon.” I don’t necessarily believe that intuition or emotions are what separate us in our human form from the Other, but it’s something I enjoyed considering as I created the ghost voice.

In terms of the characters, you introduce such a range, in terms of age, class, and life experience. Was it tricky bouncing between so many different perspectives? Were there any that felt particularly difficult to write?

I get bored quickly, so it’s best if I have several minds and hearts and sets of eyes to bounce between as I’m exploring a scene. I find it harder to write males, so you may notice that although I’ll include insights from male perspectives, I tend not to linger there. The three girls, Rae, Kimmy, and Alex, were the easiest and most enjoyable to write, as all three contain specimens from my own childhood, from the swimsuit made to look like acid-washed denim to baiting hooks with night crawlers.

This is your third book. In what ways was the process different this time around?

The manner in which I became acquainted with my characters was different with this book, which is more of an ensemble story. In my first two novels, there was a clear protagonist from the outset, and my goal was to chase the story surrounding that character, with their emotional life at the helm of every decision I made. In this book, I started off with a cast of characters and a central mystery, which is introduced in the prologue, but when I started writing the first draft, I hadn’t yet decided how it would shake out. So I was unearthing multiple characters as I wrote (while they were unearthing one another), without a preordained hierarchy as to which narrative and whose voice would prove most critical to the story. Also, my first and second books both spanned several decades, whereas ninety percent of the action in this book takes place over the course of three days, give or take. One of the early challenges was learning how to draw out time without decelerating the pace of the narrative. In other words, I needed to figure out how to make time become slow without letting it feel slow to the reader, which was a new skill to consider and develop.