Every author has a story beyond the one that they put down on paper. The Barnes & Noble Podcast goes between the lines with today’s most interesting writers, exploring what inspires them, what confounds them, and what they were thinking when they wrote the books we’re talking about.
Sometimes inspiration arrives by accident. As the novelist Hannah Tinti explains to Miwa Messer in this episode, that was particularly true in the case of the author’s second novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, a literary page-turner that follows her prize-winning 2008 bestseller The Good Thief. Tinti joins us to talk about the unlikely circumstances that propelled her into the story of a parent whose good intentions clash with his life story — and the strange New England ritual that introduced her to the book’s title character.
Samuel Hawley isn’t like the other fathers in Olympus, Massachusetts. A loner who spent years living on the run, he raised his beloved daughter, Loo, on the road, moving from motel to motel, always watching his back. Now that Loo’s a teenager, Hawley wants only to give her a normal life. In his late wife’s hometown, he finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at the local high school.
Growing more and more curious about the mother she never knew, Loo begins to investigate. Soon, everywhere she turns, she encounters the mysteries of her parents’ lives before she was born. This hidden past is made all the more real by the twelve scars her father carries on his body. Each scar is from a bullet Hawley took over the course of his criminal career. Each is a memory: of another place on the map, another thrilling close call, another moment of love lost and found. As Loo uncovers a history that’s darker than she could have known, the demons of her father’s past spill over into the present—and together both Hawley and Loo must face a reckoning yet to come.
Click here to see all books by Hannah Tinti.
Like this podcast? Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher to discover intriguing new conversations every week.
The post The B&N Podcast: Hannah Tinti appeared first on The Barnes & Noble Review.
The Barnes & Noble Review http://ift.tt/2gE2eV8
Sig Nordal 