THE STORY BEHIND THE BOOK THE COTTAGE AT GLASS BEACH

Earlier today I shared my review and a giveaway of this lovely novel, and I am thrilled to bring you an interview with the author, and the story BEHIND the book!

Escaping the scandal in the wake of her husband’s infidelity, a woman attempts to reconnect with the place of her birth—a remote island off the coast of Maine—and comes to terms with her mother’s disappearance over three decades earlier.

HOW DID THE IDEA FOR YOUR BOOK ORIGINATE?

My ancestors came from Western Ireland to the east coast during the Famine, eventually finding work in the mines of Pennsylvania, but longing for the sea. The stories my grandmother told of those early years instilled an abiding fascination in me—for what it meant to be an Irish immigrant and for the rugged islands off the New England coast that reminded them of home.

I’ve thought of setting a novel in that part of the world for years, but had yet to find the right story—until, on one of my walks, I ventured along a rock-strewn Puget Sound beach and glimpsed a seal, bobbing offshore. The seal followed me the length of the shoreline, as if it were trying to tell me something. I remembered the myth of the selkie my grandmother had told me as a child, in which a fisherman caught one of the mythical creatures in his net and she became his wife, as long as he kept the fur she had shed hidden from her. I went home and did some research, discovering a lesser-known side to the tale—that selkies can be male too. (Who says men get to have all the fun?) 


Finally, the outline of a story began to take shape in my mind, one that cried out to be set in the northerly reaches of New England, just across the water from Ireland, where so many Irish immigrants had settled after coming to this country, as my ancestors had, too. A modern fairytale, grappling with serious issues of divorce, politics, betrayals, abandonment, illness (one of the characters has cerebral amyloidosis, a hidden, little-understood condition that took my mother early this year, which I wrote about in Cottage, both to process the experience and raise awareness), and, ultimately, survival and redemption.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR NOVEL?
I think of the book as The Good Wife meets Alice Hoffman—a blend of magical realism and domestic drama.

HOW DOES THIS BOOK COMPARE TO YOUR PREVIOUS NOVELS?

The plot in The Cottage at Glass Beach is more complex than my previous novels.  While the book is character- and setting-driven like my earlier works, this book includes the development of deeper themes and the unfolding of a family mystery. I made an outline, while writing this book, which I’ve never done before. Rather apt, since we’ve been talking about charting a course—in this case, the narrative sort.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE READERS TO TAKE AWAY FROM READING THE COTTAGE AT GLASS BEACH?

The overriding message is that it is possible to navigate life’s uncharted waters and find our own happiness and truth.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE NEW ENGLAND AS THE SETTING FOR THIS BOOK?

There are certain places that are hardwired into our consciousness, places that feel immediately familiar once we set foot upon them. New England—Boston and the Massachusetts coast in particular, where I spent time as a teenager—and Quebec, where my mother’s ancestors are from (and where a grand-grand-grand pere, Michel LeMay, for whom my mother was named, founded the village of Loftbiniere near the St. Lawrence River; a statue of him keeps watch over the town square to this day) are such places for me. The novel insisted upon being set off the coast of New England, a place where storms rage and clear, and people, past and present, have sought refuge, as immigrants or merely from their daily lives, or even from scandal, as Nora has done.

I’ve long been drawn to such islands, surrounded, as they are, by the ocean. There is something truly primal about them. They call out to us, don’t they? Partly because they are, perhaps, some of the best places to experience, firsthand, the transformative power of nature—on the land, and on our very selves—and the power of community, to compel us to pull together and survive. Cottage seemed to emerge from the very narrative soil of Burke’s Island, as much as from my imagination.

Thanks to Harper Collins for the reprint!