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The main character of Everywhere to Hide has a condition called prosopagnosia (face blindness). What is face blindness?
It’s estimated that about 2% of the population has face blindness. The condition affects the part of the brain which maps facial features and then stores those memories. That a person wears glasses or has a beard or a mustache might be remembered. Hair color and hairstyles might also be remembered, but the memory of how facial features relate to each other is absent. A person can be born with this condition or it can be acquired from a head injury or trauma. Some people who think they have trouble remembering names actually have trouble remembering faces. Face blindness exists on a spectrum. Those with the condition can also have difficulty in mapping geography, noting differences in skin color, and distinguishing within groupings of similar objects such as cars.
How did you learn about the condition? What made you decide to include it in this novel?
This novel came about because of an interview I heard on NPR. A couple was telling the story of their relationship. He had prosopagnosia and she did not. They noted some of the challenges they had due to his condition. At the end of their conversation, they talked about their breakup. For the first time, she revealed that sometimes she went to the restaurant where he worked so that she could still see him. He had absolutely no idea; he’d never recognized her.
The thought that she was effectively erased from his life, unless she chose to identify herself, haunted me. They had known each other intimately and yet she was unrecognizable. My writer’s mind turned that idea backward and forward, upside down and right side up. And at some point I thought, ‘When you can’t recognize someone close to you, that’s tragic. But when you can’t recognize someone who might be a threat to you? That’s dangerous!'
Readers love the twists and turns in your suspense that keep them guessing until the very end. How do you create such intricate plots?
This plot was so twisty that through most of my drafts, even I didn’t know who the villain was! With this novel, a quickly-paced page-turner actually took 3 rewrites to produce. Because I write from the first-person point of view, I place myself in my character’s head when I tell my stories. Since my main character, Whitney, couldn’t recognize the villain (due to her face blindness), I couldn’t either. I could only see the things that she could see and I only knew the things that she did. Careful readers will note that I didn’t describe characters by reference to their faces or convey character interactions using facial body language (at least I hope I didn’t!). By taking those tools out of my writing toolbox, I realized just how much I had relied on those for character development and to add color and description to my stories in the past.
How does Everywhere to Hide fit in conversation with your other novels? What common themes appear throughout your books? What will readers find in this latest novel that expands upon your earlier work?
All of my novels have been about women who don’t fit their society’s expectations. It’s only when they choose to accept their ‘otherness’ that they are able to live fully as themselves. My books are stories about seeing. Since this story involves face blindness, that theme is explored--on one level--quite literally. But generally, I write about things that people can’t see or those things people don’t want to see, about themselves and others.
