1--What is the title of your latest release?
THE GOOD ONES
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
The Good Ones is about a woman named Nicola Bennett who moves back to her Appalachian hometown to sell her childhood home after her mother’s death. Fifteen years earlier, Nicola’s childhood friend Lauren Ballard disappeared suddenly, leaving behind a husband and young daughter. Nicola gets pulled back into relationships from her past and then begins to uncover the secrets behind Lauren’s disappearance.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
There was never really a question about it. I grew up in a small town in Virginia, and then ended up moving to a different small town in Virginia after many years in the Midwest and on the West Coast. Even though I wasn’t living in my hometown, being back in the area where I’d grown up made me think a lot about how I and the people I’d known back then had changed, and that was one of the things I wanted to explore in the book.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Yes, I could definitely see us being friends.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Smart, curious, a bit self-absorbed
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I spent a lot of time researching unsolved disappearances, and I have very strong opinions now about some of the most famous cases. They’re theories, of course, but if anyone wants to DM me, I’m happy to share them!
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
My process has changed in the last couple of years, and now I’m trying to bang out a full draft before I edit. With The Good Ones, I didn’t really know where the plot was going, so I edited as I went. That’s probably one reason why it took so long!
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Lemon Oreo ice cream
9--Describe your writing space/office!
My husband and I bought a new house last year and I have my own office for the first time ever, which is amazing. I have the best writing chair, by a company called Pipersong - it has a little shelf under the seat so you can put your feet up or cross your legs while you write.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Tana French and Megan Abbott are at the top of my list. Their novels always have crime at the center, but they’re about so much more than that.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Middlemarch by George Eliot. I think it’s the best novel ever written in English and I’ve read it at least ten times. Because it’s so long, I think it has a reputation as something you have to wade through just to say you did it, but that’s not my experience at all - the characters are just so alive to me, and the ethical questions it raises are still relevant today.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was teaching a summer school class (I think we were talking about E.M. Forster’s Howards End) and I got an email from my agent saying “call me right away.” I called her when my students were on a break, and then I had to go back to teaching! I was definitely in a daze for the rest of that day.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love mysteries and thrillers, but I also love literary fiction.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
I have a highbrow answer (Chinatown) and a lowbrow answer (Zoolander). I love them both, but one sounds a lot more impressive than the other!
15--What is your favorite season?
Fall in the Blue Ridge is incredibly beautiful. I missed it so much when I was away.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I always tell my husband that what I want for my birthday and for Mothers’ Day is not to plan anything. If he’ll take care of organizing the whole day, I’ll do whatever he comes up with. It’s great!
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I really loved Rebecca Makkai’s novel I Have Some Questions for You. As far as podcasts go, Chris Lambert’s Your Own Backyard is phenomenal. What he accomplished in his investigation of the Kristen Smart case is just incredible.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I eat mostly vegetarian, but I also have a terrible sweet tooth, and I’ll never pass up a chocolate chip cookie.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I’ve been practicing ashtanga yoga for a long time and that’s one of my favorite things to do. I also love reading and doing anything outside.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’m working on a new novel called The Felons’ Ball. It’s actually partly set at a yoga studio, and it’s a lot of fun to write.
An engrossing work of literary suspense that illuminates the push and pull of female friendship and the costs of being good when the rules for women begin to chafe.
The last time Nicola Bennett saw Lauren Ballard she was scraping a key along the side of a new cherry-red Chevy Silverado. That was the night before her friend mysteriously vanished from her home, leaving a bloodstained washcloth and signs of a struggle—as well as her grieving husband and young daughter—behind.
Now, nearly twenty years later, Nicola, newly unemployed and still haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend, is returning to her Appalachian hometown. For Nicola, Tyndall County has remained frozen in time. Everywhere she turns she’s reminded of Lauren. Yet shockingly, her former friends and neighbors have all moved on. Drawn to stories of missing girls, Nicola obsessively searches the internet, hoping to discover a clue to Lauren’s ultimate fate.
Driven by a desperate need to know what happened to her friend, Nicola takes a job in her hometown, determined to uncover any bit of information, any small clue, that can help. Deep down she knows the answers are tucked in the hollows and valleys of this small Blue Ridge county. As secrets come to light and the truth begins to unravel, will Nicola finally find release and break free of the past—or lose herself completely to unanswered questions from her adolescence?
Thriller Psychological [Harper, On Sale: June 6, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063234154 / eISBN: 9780063234178]
Polly Stewart is the author of The Good Ones, forthcoming from Harper Books in June 2023. As Mary Stewart Atwell, she's also the author of Wild Girls (Scribner 2012). Her essays have appeared in the New York Times and Poets & Writers, among other publications. She runs the Craft of Crime Fiction interview series, formerly published on Fiction Writers Review and now appearing on Instagram.
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