Writing fiction has always felt like an escape from the real world for me, but also a way to process my own feelings about whatever is going on in my real life at the time. It’s why I’m drawn to women, mothers, daughters, sisters, wives. I love taking on the roles of my female characters in my head, embodying their voices with my words on the page, but writing about themes that impact my own life too.
In my search for the perfect ending in the final stages of my revision, I realized the story I ultimately wanted to tell was one of women helping women in their darkest moments, of self-preservation, of a fight for survival, and of the importance of home—all things I’d thought about many times in my real life in those long pandemic months. As much as I gave Daisy, Jordan, Catherine, and Myrtle a voice, maybe they gave me one too.