Kat Rosenfield discusses the inspiration behind her new novel Inland, which approaches mermaids in a uniquely beautiful way.
From Kat Rosenfield
When I first started circling the idea of this book, it was because I was trying to put my own twist on the supernatural romances which, for better or for worse, are such a staple of YA. I wouldn’t know where to begin writing a book like that — the idea of constructing an entire fantasy world is incredibly daunting to me — but I kept wondering if there might be a way through those books to the kind of story I did want to tell.
At that point, I began thinking a lot about a poem, “Inland,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was a woman who felt an incredible connection to the sea and often wrote very poignantly about how she loved it, but “Inland” is unique in that it addresses her horror of being taken away from the water. The final stanza describes her waking up in the middle of the night and finding that her landlocked bedroom has become a tomb, and in that moment, she cries out and begs to be drowned instead, so that she’ll die tasting the ocean for one last time. I’ve always loved this poem, and in this case, as I read it, I started imagining a family in which every woman felt that way — all powerfully drawn to the ocean, for reasons that could be magical, or could be madness. That was the idea that became INLAND.
Inland summary:
Callie Morgan has long lived choked by the failure of her own lungs, the result of an elusive pulmonary illness that has plagued her since childhood. A childhood marked early by the drowning death of her mother—a death to which Callie was the sole witness. Her father has moved them inland, away from the memories of the California coast her mother loved so much and toward promises of recovery—and the escape of denial—in arid, landlocked air.
But after years of running away, the promise of a life-changing job for her father brings Callie and him back to the coast, to Florida, where Callie’s symptoms miraculously disappear. For once, life seems delightfully normal. But the ocean’s edge offers more than healing air … it holds a magnetic pull, drawing Callie closer and closer to the chilly, watery embrace that claimed her mother. Returned to the ocean, Callie comes of age and comes into a family destiny that holds generations of secrets and very few happy endings.
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