A wealthy family's secrets come to light during their annual Italian vacation in Saltwater, the author's devilish sophomore thriller.
What inspired you to set the book on Capri?
Capri has such a distinctive character. It's both full of tourists and really closed off. When I traveled there for research, I could not believe how humid it was -- such a lush, wet environment, but also an opportunity for rot and mold to develop. These are the two environments at play in Capri: private and public, huge villas hidden behind gates and foliage. I also loved that it has such a rich artistic history. I'm a big fan of Graham Greene, who lived there for many years, and Shirley Hazzard, who visited him and wrote extensively about Capri. It also has a dark history from the Roman emperor Tiberius, who was known for throwing his lovers off the cliffs of the island when he became bored with them.
The book mostly utilizes female points of view -- we never really get inside the men's heads. How come?
Families like the Lingates are often male dominated, whether they want to admit it or not. There's always a Great White Hope of the family, the prodigal son. It's never a prodigal daughter, right? I was interested in narrating the history of that family from three stratified points of view: a woman who would marry into it, a woman who would be born into it, and a woman who would work for it. The men in the book are so invested in the idea of patrimony and heritage, and that's not passed through women, historically. I'm curious about what it means when these legacies, these patrimonies, end up being women's legacies.
How do you approach the pacing of your reveals? There are a lot of twists in this story.
I actually find writing suspense fiction really difficult, because I don't work with an outline. I always sit down and start writing from scratch, with no idea where the book is going. Often, as I revise, I start to discover where the reveals need to go, but I'm also discovering in real time what they're going
to be. As a novelist, I'm interested in the question of what people are capable of believing -- both what we can talk ourselves into and how reliable our vision is. This book was a way for me to investigate whether you can believe what you see. I think an island like Capri asks that question every day. Can you trust this person who's presenting themselves to you in a particular light to be what they say they are?