Notes on the Novel

I grew up on the North Shore of Boston near the seaside communities of Manchester-by-the-Sea and Beverly Farms.  These small communities have an old world feel to them, a sense of the bygone, and their shores are graced by stately houses originally built as summer homes for the Boston Brahmin.  

I had always been fascinated by these old houses and the people who inhabited them, and I was somewhat privy to that world through my grandmother, who lived for many years in Beverly Farms.  Thus, the first pages of my novel began with one such house and a young woman who inherits it after the death of her great aunt Ursula.   

The novel begins with the main character, Larisa, purchasing a wedding dress though she has no groom.  When I wrote these opening pages, I was curious to see how far she would take this ruse.  But as the manuscript took shape, I found it more interesting to explore the challenging circumstances, namely the mother’s illness, that led Larisa to engage in deceptive behavior and then ultimately come clean. 

The novel features a fascinating flower called a night blooming cereus.

I embarked on this novel on a writing weekend at the Emerson Inn in Rockport, MA. As I sat in their dining room, trying to write, I kept finding myself distracted by the ridiculous wallpaper that featured a large repeating pattern of tan pheasants on a navy backdrop.  Each of the many identical pheasants peered backward over its shoulder, beak slightly open so that it looked almost like it was gagging on something.  I couldn’t stop laughing when I looked at them and I couldn’t stop looking, so I began to write the wallpaper into my manuscript.