There’s a small Michigan town my sisters and I still visit. A place we’ve known for decades. They love it. I have mixed feelings. The lake is beautiful, but the town around it has never tried too hard to be anything other than what it is. Maybe that’s part of its charm. Still, the town with its miles of beaches and old motel stayed with me enough to shape a fictional place called Misery Cove.

The book I wrote isn’t about that town, but the mood of it. The feeling of coming back to a place you thought you outgrew, only to find it hasn’t changed nearly as much as you have. Some places never really let you go. And some stories start exactly there.