A Conversation with the Author

What was the inspiration for this story?

As with The Unfinished Garden, the original story seed came from a dark what-if moment in my own life. An older family member was experiencing short-term memory loss that generated anger, confusion and a string of emotionally exhausting phone calls. In the middle of one of those phone calls, I had a terrible thought—could life get any worse? I decided, yes, it could. And my mind created Will’s dilemma. Memory, grief, mental illness, rural Orange County…ideas started swirling and I did what I always do—I followed my gut, my curiosity and my research. I’d been toying with a ghost story, and that idea had already unearthed threads about psychic healing, rock climbing, Native American spirituality and animal guides. All those roads led to Will and Jacob. Poppy popped out pretty much formed, and Galen evolved while several people close to me were battling depression. (Echoes of my life run through everything I write.) My real problem was Hannah. Finding empathy for a holistic vet was quite a challenge, since we don’t even own a goldfish. I started out with false assumptions about Hannah and found her too calm and too spiritual. I agree with Galen—she’s a hard person to read. But when my son relapsed into crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Hannah suddenly lit up for me. I realized she was just another terrified parent. I also learned that being the mother of a child struggling with mental illness is very different to being the mother of a young man in the same situation. That was something I wanted to explore further and I did, through Hannah’s journey.

What did you enjoy most about researching and writing The In-Between Hour?

My research took me to places I couldn’t imagine, but my favorite part was hanging out with John “Blackfeather” Jeffries, former Chief of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. The first time we met, I turned up with a string of questions. Within minutes I abandoned the interview and just listened. John told me so many wonderful stories about his childhood, his family history and the history of the tribe that I lost track of time and almost missed school pickup. The second time I was smart enough to take a recorder! We spent hours looking through his scrapbooks from the excavation of the ghost field and the reconstruction of the living village. John’s shed is the best-kept secret in Hillsborough. It’s a museum of living history.

What do you hope your readers will take away from this novel?

The In-Between Hour is about two broken families coming together to heal. I hope readers will find it an uplifting story of redemption and community, and a story that reveals light in the darkness of grief and mental illness.

The story is an emotional read that explores dark issues. Was it a challenge to write some of the scenes?

I went through a string of personal crises while writing the manuscript, and the characters became my escape and my therapy. I found it surprisingly easy to walk out of my problems and into theirs, but the trick was finding emotional distance, especially from Hannah. I didn’t want to project my family’s struggle with OCD onto her family’s struggle with depression. The scene that was the most emotional for me was the one in which Will breaks down. It’s hard to put yourself into the thoughts of a grieving parent and stay detached. On the flip side, the suicide scene was surprisingly easy to write, because Galen is at peace with his decision.

Do you have a favorite scene?

Please don’t think I’m a sick person, but the post-suicide scene is my favorite. I love the interaction between Will and Hannah, and I love the way the action unfolds. I wasn’t sure I could write action, but a friend helped me choreograph it, and I was thrilled with the result. We really did act out most of the scene! (Yes, alcohol was involved.)

How did you create the character of Angeline? Is there a reason that Will never attempts to diagnose her?

The character of Angeline was inspired by the idea of families keeping secrets, whether those secrets involve alcoholism or mental illness. I started by researching various diagnoses and reading a number of memoirs, but Angeline quickly became her own character—wildly creative with severe mood swings. In the end I decided she should have no label since she was never diagnosed. I also found the impact of her behavior on family life more intriguing than the source of her demons. The reality, too, is that many people with mental illness are misdiagnosed. (That happened in our family.)

Can you explain your fascination with mental illness?

My aunt, who lived with us for a while when I was growing up, was diagnosed in later life with paranoid schizophrenia. Even as a child, I struggled to understand why she led such a seemingly empty life—always treated as if she were frail and always kept apart from others. My grandmother worked tirelessly to shield her from what she perceived as the shame of mental illness. When my son was diagnosed with OCD at a young age, I wanted the opposite for him. I’m drawn to memoirs and stories that find hope in the darkness of mental illness, because I need that hope for my son. I also struggle with the stereotypes of mental illness in popular culture—especially those of OCD. So often the focus is on failure or weird behaviors and not on the incredible courage it takes to live a life framed by mental illness, to admit to that diagnosis publicly and to fight back. (For the record, my son is academically gifted, and an award-winning poet, lyricist and musician. I am incredibly proud of him.)

Both your debut novel, The Unfinished Garden, and The In-Between Hour touch on grief. Why do you write about loss?

My father died when I was in my late thirties, and my subsequent grief was a very isolating experience. No one close to me had lost a loved one, and I didn’t know how to make sense of my thoughts, especially the layers of guilt. I tried to be strong for my mother, and I tried to pretend I was coping, but I’m a creature of emotion. The moment I collapsed and dumped on my husband, I began to find my way forward. I believe strength comes from admitting you’re struggling and seeking help. You have to face the monsters within.

Woodland settings figure heavily in your writing. Do you, like your characters, have a special connection to the North Carolina forest?

My mother teases me that when I moved to London I said, “As long as I can see one tree from my bedroom window, I’ll be fine.” I don’t know where my love of the forest comes from. Even though I grew up in an English village surrounded by open countryside with rolling fields, I had this fantasy of a bathroom with a huge window that looked into woods. The moment I stepped into our house—and saw the view—I felt as if I had come home. We live in the middle of the forest, at the bottom of a very steep hill that inspired Saponi Mountain. I love woodland gardening; I love watching the seasons change through the leaves; and I love the way the light of the gloaming makes the treetops shine gold. My original title for this novel was The Gloaming.

Why do twists of fate play an important role in your fiction?

In my mid-twenties, I was working in the London fashion industry and focused on my goal of becoming an assistant fashion editor. When I failed to snag the job of my dreams, I was devastated. My boss suggested going to work for her husband, and a few months later my new job took me to New York. Flying home through JFK Airport, I started talking with this guy. We discovered we were on the same flight and swapped seats to sit next to each other. Even though we chatted the entire way across the Atlantic, we never exchanged last names. (I know, really?) After we landed at Heathrow, I was stuck in customs for two hours and assumed I would never see him again. But I emerged in arrivals and there he was—­desperate to pee but too terrified to move in case he missed me. He was a sweatshirt-clad professor living in a small Midwest college town; I was a London fashionista with a wardrobe of designer leather skirts. I was the daughter of an Anglican priest; he was the grandson of a Hassidic rabbi. I grew up in rural England; he grew up in Brooklyn. He was divorced and thirty-eight; I was twenty-four and determined to stay single. Last summer we celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Now ask me why I believe in fate… .