1. The
Dream:
Each
one of my novels was inspired by a dream.
Before I wrote “A Breath After
Drowning,” I had a dream that my husband and I came home and couldn’t get
our front door open. I slid the key into
the lock but it wouldn’t turn. Inside,
the phone was ringing off the hook, and I knew in my heart something horrible
had happened. That dream was the seed
that grew into my new novel.
Dreams contain an underlying truth. What did this one mean? I was suddenly homeless. I’d lost my
identity. An unknown force was threatening
everything I held dear. I’d been locked
out of my own home—this ignited my imagination, and I became obsessed with its literary
implications.
2. The
Memory:
My
father was admitted to a psych ward after his first suicide attempt. I remember visiting him there was I was
sixteen years old. The clocks in the
waiting room told the wrong time, and the magazines were three years old. Dad shuffled toward us in his pyjamas and
bathrobe. He looked washed away. His eyes were faded. He talked to us as if he’d forgotten who we
were. As if something alien had replaced
him. This memory still haunts me, and it
inspired the pivotal scene in “A Breath
After Drowning” where, as a young girl, Kate visits her mother in the
asylum.
3. The
True Story:
The
murder of Jessica Lunsford effected me deeply.
She was a nine-year-old girl from Homosassa, Florida, who was murdered
in 2005. Her body was found 150 yards
from her home. She’d been buried
alive. Her death was so tragic and
cruel, it filled me with anger and sadness.
I couldn’t imagine how her parents coped with such a loss, and so I gave
their terrible pain to my main character.
In
my novel, “A Breath After Drowning,” child psychiatrist Kate Wolfe’s world
comes crashing down when one of her young patients reveals things about Kate’s
past that she shouldn’t know—things involving the murder of Kate’s sister
sixteen years earlier. In writing this book, I felt a powerful connection to
Kate, a connection so strong it propelled the book forward. She took the dream, the memory, and the true
story, and she put it on her shoulders—I followed
A Breath After Drowning by Alice Blanchard (Published by Titan Books)
Sixteen years ago, Kate Wolfe’s young sister Savannah was
brutally murdered. Forced to live with the guilt of how her own selfishness put
Savannah in harm’s way, Kate was at least comforted by the knowledge that the
man responsible was behind bars. But when she meets a retired detective who is
certain that Kate’s sister was only one of many victims of a serial killer,
Kate must face the possibility that Savannah’s murderer walks free.
Unearthing disturbing family secrets in her search for the
truth, Kate becomes sure that she has discovered the depraved mind responsible
for so much death. But as she hunts for a killer, a killer is hunting her…
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