Maybe you’ve seen a production of Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play about small-town life in Grover’s Corners, or perhaps you’ve seen the 1940 film version. It’s a grand and touching story about life and appreciating it while you have it （that’s the short version）。
I spent a lot of time thinking about the play and the characters and taking notes and musing and wondering how to fold the opioid crisis into this story of what was, in the beginning, a story about a girl, Emory, and a boy, Gage, and the small town of Mill Haven. I tend to overwrite everything in the beginning （Big pharma! A house fire! Robbery!）， and it’s only with the help of my magnificent editor, Krista Marino, and my agent, Julie Stevenson, that I was able to rein things in and realize the story was really about Emory and her brother, Joey.
So I wrote the story of a quiet girl, the “good one” in her family, who experiences addiction through the struggles of her wild brother, Joey. And I owe all the gratitude in the world to Krista Marino, Lydia Gregovic, and Julie Stevenson for shepherding this book and helping me fine-tune the story of a girl and her brother and the long path they’ll walk together. Extra thanks to this trio for agreeing to do virtual meetings with me during a pandemic, when I often couldn’t leave the house for days and desperately needed to talk to someone other than my dogs and cats.
As always, I am extremely grateful to everyone at Delacorte Press and Penguin Random House for giving my stories a home: Beverly Horowitz, Barbara Marcus, Judith Haut, Monica Jean, Mary McCue, Kristin Schulz, Kelly McGauley, Mary McCue, Neil Swaab, Elizabeth Ward, and Jenn Inzetta. Thank you for the care you’ve given to Emory and Joey’s story.
Writing is solitary and lonely even at the best of times, so I have enormous gratitude for friends like Janet McNally, Karen McManus, Lygia Day Pe?aflor, Shannon Parker, Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock, and Liz Lawson for keeping me on track with gossip, encouragement, tales of yurt life, trapeze adventures, and endless GIFs. And big thanks to my friend Beth, who let me borrow her last name for a character in this book and also went on many a dog walk with me where we talked about everything but writing.
And in the interest of full disclosure, I’d also like to thank coffee and Grey’s Anatomy for being my constant companions while writing You’d Be Home Now. （Every writer’s process is different!）