Caroline Leavitt rewards readers with emotionally resonant, gripping, and topical page-turners. Days of Wonder (Algonquin Books) is her latest. Radiant with empathy, Leavitt imagines not only her protagonist Ella, but also those in her orbit. Leavitt is known for her fiction, but also for her support of other writers. With fellow fiction writer Jenna Blum, Leavitt founded A Mighty Blaze in March 2020 to replace canceled book tours has blossomed into a robust, creative team of volunteers to promote new books and independent bookstores, and connects them with readers. For The National Book Review, Leavitt spoke with fellow literary citizen John B. Valeri about her origins as a fiction writer, writing and researching her marvelously satisfying novel -- and magically they avoided spoilers.

Q: When we first meet Ella Fitchburg, she is being released from prison after a decade-long sentence for the attempted murder of her boyfriend’s father. How does having spent a portion of her developmental years incarcerated influence her life outlook as she grapples with the notion of freedom even as she remains a prisoner of her past?

A: Ella missed out on all those years of being with her peers, which is why when she’s released and gets to Ann Arbor, a college town, she’s fascinated by the people her age, how different they are, and yet, because of her past, she’s terrified to even try to get close to them. That’s not freedom when you have to hide who you are. She makes friends in Ann Arbor with Marianna, who is older than she is, which is both a kind of mother-connection, and safer than being friendly with a peer. This having to keep your true self secret for fear of repercussions is so traumatizing because Ella knows there will be a cost when people find out, when people can’t forgive her.

Q: Ella relocates to Ann Arbor after learning that the child she gave up for adoption lives there and then establishes a relationship with the family under false pretenses. Essentially, there’s a genuine bond that develops -- but one that’s built on a lie. How does this allow Ella what she desperately wants even as it threatens to be her undoing?

A: This was the most difficult to write because Ella does have a moral center—she's not going to kidnap her child from the adoptive mother, especially when she gets to know her and they become friends. But it's a damned if she does damned if she doesn't situation. Yes, she gets to be with her daughter and love her all the time, but she knows if she tells Marianna, the adoptive mother, the truth about who she is and that she lied, Marianna will cut off all contact. Same goes for the friendship Ella has come to depend on. She knows she can have a friend and her daughter--but only if she lies. And then when she's needed to go to court, it all blows up and she has to tell the truth.

Q: Ella has a conflicted relationship with her mother, Helen, despite the fact they’re facing some of the same challenges – new living circumstances, new career prospects, new love, old secrets threatening to spill out. Tell us about their unique dynamic and why it creates friction between them despite (or perhaps because of) these similarities.

A: As a parent, Helen wanted to raise her daughter up totally differently than the way she had been raised, with rules, regulation, strictness. She gave her daughter freedom—and some of those freedoms may have not been so wise, like letting Jude practically live in her home. But also, Helen couldn’t let go of what she had valued about growing up Hasidic—the sense of community, the warmth of family, the feeling of everyone taking care of everyone. She encouraged Jude to be part of her family because she could get that feeling back that way, but when she began to realize that her “us against the world” relationship with her daughter was being tugged apart, she began to fall apart, too. Same with Ella. While she loved her mother deeply and loved that her mother loved her boyfriend and let him build a garden in their backyard, she began to feel like her mother was using up the oxygen in the room. As an adult, Ella had to form her own life, her own identity, and that meant leaving her mother, moving to a whole new place that was hers alone, something that hurt them both.

Q: The relationship between teen lovers Ella and Jude is a palpable and potentially toxic one. How did you tap into the emotional truths of first/young love – and why was capturing the essence of that bond critical for the story to work?

A: When I was 17, I fell into my first, passionate, probably insane love and ended up having a nervous breakdown when it ended. I just never forgot that feeling where nothing else mattered—I was ready to run away with this boy, both of us having no money at all! I needed their love to be all consuming, so consuming that even committing a crime would seem reasonable to them, and right. And also, my favorite film of all time is Splendor in the Grass, with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, and I wanted to capture that feeling—of young lovers being torn apart and then they get to see each other years later, and what you think or want to happen doesn’t happen.

Q: The narrative alternates perspectives, timeframes, and recollections of a crime. How does this structure enhance the story in ways that a linear approach wouldn’t – and what was your process like to account for the complexities of the set-up?

A: Oh, this dual timeline just about killed me. At first, I had it chronologically, but it took way too long to get to the crime. I knew there was going to be three separate versions of what happened that night, but I wanted the last, real version, to come at the end of the book. I mapped it out, tore it up, mapped it out again, and I had a lot of help.

The crime aspect was really hard. I had to talk for hours with an attorney and a New York defense attorney to figure out the questions I needed to happen. How do cops act? What questions would they ask? How could a case be messed up? The most haunting thing I learned was that lawyers don’t think about whether their client is guilty or not (that’s TV and movies for you!). That information is considered irrelevant to the case. What they focus on are the facts and how those facts might serve their case so that they can win. That spun me around! I began to think more about how guilt and innocence are not always what you think they are.

Q: You had to research many things for this novel – including, but not limited to, adoption/custody protocol, the different branches of Judaism, law/policing, location, poisons, and prison culture. What is your approach to identifying entry points into your respective topics so that the legwork doesn’t seem overwhelming – and how do you then gauge when it’s time to ease up on fact-finding and start writing in earnest?

A: I break up research into two parts, before I start writing and I have a vague idea of what I need, and after I’ve written when I need to get things right. I had a blast researching because I learned so much and met such wonderful people. My friend, the writer Mary Morris, told me when it comes to research to look for the stories, not the facts. My hardest thing was to get the legal stuff right. I talked to lawyers who kept saying, no, that wouldn’t happen. No, that’s wrong. I was desperate! I finally went to my first husband, a friend, and said, “This is the plot I need to happen. Tell me how to make it true.” And he did! I was also really lucky to find Peter Barta, a criminal defense attorney in New York, who not only finessed my plot for me, but suggested great movies for me to watch. He’s now a treasured friend.

For women in prison, someone suggested Jean Trounstine to me, a wonderful writer (Motherlove, her upcoming book, is about mothers of children who kill) and we quickly became friends. She invited me to her "Changing Lives Through Literature," a class that women under probation have to take. Of course I went! There was a probation officer there, a judge, Jean, me, and about 15 women on probation. They discussed one of my books and I got to talk to them afterwards. At first, they were suspicious of me when I said I was going to write about women in and out of prison. “You aren’t going to make this like Orange is the New Black, are you?” I told them I wanted to present their truth, and they and Jean told me astonishing things. Even violent women in prison benefited from knitting and sold what they made to guards or visitors. You could have fun with a homemade slip and slide by pouring dish liquid on the ground. And the worst part of prison was the boredom. The best part was the strong friendships the women made. I still am in contact with some of these women.

The Hasidic stories came partly from my mom, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household with seven siblings and a rabbi father. But I also found Beatrice Weber, who left her Hasidic community and sued New York for better secular education for Hasidic kids—and won! She’s amazing and inspiring. I wrote to Leah Lax, author of Uncovered, about how she left her Hasidic community when she realized she was gay. Not only was she a wealth of information, but as a writer, she read my pages and vetted them! We became really close.

There was also The Poison Lady, Luci Zahray, known to novelists for dispensing perfect advice about poison! I needed a plant that could help in the right doses—and harm in the wrong ones. She was the one who suggested foxglove and gave me the details. The right dose could help Jude’s father who had a heart situation, but too much could be deadly. And I talked to an ER doctor about how they might handle such a poisoning.

Q: Without moving into spoiler territory: Days of Wonder is an evocative title that captures the spirit of the book in its totality. Using it as a reference point, how did you conceptualize an ending that struck you as realistic and satisfying without being predictable or unduly “happy”?

A: I always want a book to have a kind of never-ending story, where readers will close the book and imagine what happens next. And I always feel that everything has to have some sort of cost to it, even happiness! I think my world view comes from my life—I’ve had enormous, horrific tragedies, and yet I consider myself an optimist about everything. Experiencing great trauma makes the great joys even more radiant! And that is where the sense of wonder comes in. You can be sad about things you wish had never happened, but every single moment is a new opportunity for joy! Call me Pollyanna!

Q: Books play an important role throughout the story. Tell us about their significance to the characters (and relationship building). What of your own formative reading experiences informed that aspect of the book?

A: I was a shy, bullied little girl, and books were my way into a whole other world. When I read, I wasn’t a little girl with asthma and funny hair. I was a ballet dancer in Spain. Or a cowboy in France. I read and reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn so many, many times that I felt I was part of the story. It was so important to me that the first secular book that Helen, a Hasidic young girl, finds and treasures was that book, because it rescued her just the way it rescued me. It cracked open the world.

Q: One of the things I most admire about you (beyond your talent, obviously!) is your ability to share your insecurities about writing, and promoting, books publicly. How does allowing yourself to be vulnerable help to ease those anxieties – and in what ways do you hope this honesty empowers others who are struggling with similar self-doubts?

A: Ah—I was a nervous wreck when I first started touring. I was afraid of everything and ashamed of everything. At first it was my asthma--I was writing about it in Pictures of You and kept tearing up the pages because I didn't want anyone to know. But the character--and the asthma kept coming back on the page, and a writer friend said, "That's because you need to write about it. Write what scares you." So I did, and the whole two years I was writing about the asthma, my own asthma seemed to vanish. I knew I'd have to talk about it on stage so I bought myself a talisman--a ten-dollar pair of short red cowboy boots, the kind of boots only a tough woman would wear--and I put them on to become that woman. And I talked about my asthma, terrified the whole time. To my astonishment, after my talk, people came up to me. "Me, too," one woman said. "Thank you," said another. I realized that the way to banish shame is to put it out into the light where it will shrivel up! I've done the same about my hearing--which was partially destroyed after I had my son. I was so embarrassed to tell anyone and it took me five years of struggle to even think of going to an audiologist and when I did, I told him, "I'm not getting hearing aids. I'm just here to make sure my ears are okay." He was very chill and he said, "Okay, but can I try something? Just for my own edification?" He walked outside and said something to me that I couldn't hear at all. Then he put a hearing aid in one ear and turned it on, and walked outside the office and spoke to me, and I could hear him and I burst into tears.

I began to talk about that too, because I found that people will be understanding and helpful, and the ones who make those lame jokes—well, that says so much about them, rather than me.

Of course, I am also anxious about my career all the time, but I find that talking about it soothes away the nerves because it does help others, who might erroneously think, well what do YOU have to be worried about? I want people to know that being real, not pretending, are real gifts, both to yourself and to others. Again, I always think of it as presenting doubts, insecurities, fears, out into the light, where they shrivel up, or at the very least, you see them more clearly because of the light and that makes it all easier to handle!

Q: You are a passionate advocate of authors, books, and booksellers. What guidance can you offer as to how best we can all effectively support this community that connects readers and writers?

A: Oh, this is such a great question, John, and thank you for asking this. There are so many easy ways to do this! Post about books and authors you love, and about indie bookstores you love. Buy books from indie stores. Write reviews of books. Come to readings (authors worry constantly about the “I gave a reading and only two people showed up and they were there for the free food.”). And tell friends about the books and bookstores you love.

John B. Valeri is a book reviewer, author, and host of the web series “Central Booking” who has written for CrimeReads, Criminal Element, Mystery Scene Magazine, The Big Thrill, The National Book Review, The New York Journal of Books, The Strand Magazine, and Suspense Magazine. His popular Examiner.com column, “Hartford Books Examiner,” ran from 2009 – 2016 and was praised by James Patterson as “a haven for finding great new books.” Visit him online and watch past episodes of “Central Booking” at JohnBValeri.com.