J.T. Ellison is the author of the new novel You Know Why. Her many other books include the novel Last Seen. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Q: What inspired you to write You Know Why, and how did you create your characters Brooklyn and Eden?
A: Many years ago, when my husband and I were deep into fertility treatments, and I was hopped up on some pretty intense hormones, I took a flight and was seated behind this gorgeous young family.
They were clearly well off, returning from an island vacation. The children were well-behaved and adorable. But their parents were fighting. Sniping at one other, cruel whispered barbs, and then sniping at the kids, too.
That simply broke my heart. I wanted to challenge them, to shake them. Don’t you know what you have? A beautiful family, a marriage, means, and you’re being crappy to each other and your kids? To say I was filled with rage is not an understatement.
I filed it away to use one day. I channeled a lot of that emotion into the writing of an earlier novel, It’s One of Us, but the scene itself, I held on to.
There was a second impetus. I travel, a lot, and people watching is a competitive sport for me. So many people transiting the airports. I wonder about them all the time, their lives, who they are, what they’re doing.
What if one of them got off a plane and never got on their connection? What would their family do? What would I do? I held that story, too.
Fast forward several years, and I was chatting with my editor about what story I was thinking about next. So I pitched her these two ideas as a dual-pronged story: a woman who has a fight with her husband on the plane, and then he doesn’t make their connection and instead disappears, as one storyline.
The second would be the woman who witnessed the fight and recognized the man as her sister’s missing murderer. My editor gasped, and I knew that was my next book.
The trick was then creating the characters. Brooklyn became the young mother whose husband disappears from the airport. Eden became the one who saw them fighting—and realized that her sister’s murderer was finally in her sights. Trey, the husband who leaves—why does he run? And of course, everyone has secrets…
Q: The author Tracy Clark said of the novel, “The drumbeat of dread echoes through the pages and hits like a dirge, culminating in a deliciously satisfying denouement that will have you looking askance at those closest to you.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think Tracy is a genius, and I was so incredibly flattered and grateful that she agreed to read and offered such a fantastically descriptive blurb.
Dread is the heart of a suspense novel done well. Without it, the story falls flat. Add in this very real idea that you can’t ever truly know someone, even if they share your bed for years, and it creates a very unsettled sense of being.
That’s what I was going for—an unsettling, earth-shifting moment that seems relatively banal until you realize the significance behind it. The why of the storyline brings the dread.
Q: The novel is set in Georgia and in Tennessee—how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: So incredibly important. I’m a big fan of the set piece, be it an island, or an elegant house, or the intimacies of a city strata. Setting is a character for me, a living, breathing part of the story.
I had planned to set this book in a few other far-flung locales—London, Venice, Grand Cayman Island—but this story needed a smaller milieu. I was flying through Atlanta on a trip and realized the international terminal was a great spot for the inciting scene. It all grew from there.
Italy, France, and Mexico are all side settings—Brooklyn was a traveling food photographer who worked on an Anthony Bourdain-style show—but the main components of the current story are in the Atlanta area and Nashville.
The small fictional Georgia town of Malogen is based on the adorable mountain town Dahlonega. Small-town dynamics, a cold case murder, a nearing retirement cop with a huge case to solve—couple all of that with the Nashville component of the story, and it gave me a lot of (literal) ground to cover.
Q: Sisterhood is a theme in the novel—why did you decide on that as a focus?
A: I don’t have a sister and always wanted one. I love Margot and Brooklyn’s relationship. They’re identical twins who are polar opposites personality-wise and have quite divergent interests, yet as adults still support one another and have a deep friendship.
Their childhood was challenging—they were more competitive—but as adults they’ve found their equilibrium and become best friends. Margot would do anything for Brooklyn, and she adores the kids so much. She’s a great foil for her more mercurial culinary photographer sister.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m nearing the completion of the first draft of my 2027 novel. It’s about self-sacrifice, motherhood, bad friends, epic mistakes, and the imbalance of modern power dynamics towards women, all served with a heaping helping of revenge.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes! The characters of Theresa Lee, Pat and Bob Gussin, and Margot Thomas were all from character auctions, and I am so grateful to all of them for letting me use their names and helping out the literacy charities we worked with.
And in very fun news, my wonderful publisher is bringing my earliest novels back to life. The Taylor Jackson series is being re-released with beautiful new editions, some light editing, and dynamic pricing to bring in a whole new readership. The first four in the series are out now, and the rest are coming after the new year.
It’s all the more meaningful because this year is my 20th anniversary of being a writer. What better way to celebrate than a reboot of the books that got me here?
Thanks so much for having me!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with J.T. Ellison.
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