Q&A with Kate White

   

 

Kate White is the author of the new novel I Came Back for You. Her many other novels include Between Two Strangers. She is the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write I Came Back for You, and how did you create your character Bree?

 

A: Though I sometimes recall where the spark for a particular novel came from, with this book I just don’t remember it. It was simply there one day, the idea of a mother finding out that the serial killer believed to have killed her daughter eight years ago might not have done it.

 

I always find it so mind blowing when an idea just pops up, though I probably planted seeds for it at various times.

 

This was a very emotional book for me to work on because Bree’s search for the truth is a very tough one.

 

Beyond the idea of her trying to find out who the real murderer is, I was intrigued with the concept of  someone discovering that everything she believed was wrong. I had the misfortune of dating someone in my late 20s who turned out to be incredibly dishonest and deceptive (ha, never made THAT mistake again).  

 

When you go through something like that, you aren’t just facing the fact that a person you trusted isn’t who you thought they were. It’s about realizing that your life wasn’t what you thought it was for a period of time. I wanted to explore that.

 

Bree ends up in such a terrible tailspin when she learns she might have had things wrong. She knows she can’t move on in until she figures out the truth and that means traveling back with her ex-husband to the college town in upstate New York where her daughter was murdered eight years before.

 

Q: Part of the novel is set in Uruguay—can you say more about why you chose that setting?

 

A: I’m so lucky that I get to live in Uruguay every winter. And it’s a beautiful country, plus a very safe and progressive one, and the awesome tranquility allows me to work very intensely on my books while I’m here.

 

As much as I love Uruguay, however, I’d never considered setting a book partly here, but as I thought about the challenge Bree faces and how much she has to risk in order to find the truth (including spending time with her ex-husband!), I decided I wanted her to have to travel a very long distance to return to the college town where her daughter died. It would just make the stakes higher for her.

 

So Uruguay sounded perfect. And it was great to try to capture the landscape and tranquility in Uruguay in the first six chapters.

 

Q: The writer Kimberly Belle called the book “a taut, deeply felt whodunnit filled with grief, reckoning, and painful truths that come to light only when it’s too late to ask the questions.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I was so grateful for that description because I always want my books to be two things: a good story that gets the reader to feel for the protagonist and think about the themes even after the book is finished, but also a terrific puzzle to be solved, a true whodunit.

 

I’ve been really pleased by how many readers have written in to say that the ending both took them by surprise but also seemed very credible. I don’t mind when readers guess the ending because, hey, you expect some people to do that, but it’s always fun to think of a book being a riveting surprise for a reader.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the novel?

 

A: I hope they find Bree’s story so gripping that they even stay up past their bedtime to read the book, but I also hope they’re really intrigued by who the killer must be and are as eager as Bree is to uncover that person.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I just completed my 2027 psychological thriller, Gone Silent. It’s a story about a woman named Gideon who is ghosted by her best friend of many years and has no idea why.

 

She pleads with her friend to tell her what she did wrong, but before she can get an answer, her friend dies after a fall from a hiking trail. Now Gideon is even more desperate to know the truth.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Just that I’m eternally grateful for all the readers in the world and people like you, Deborah, that help readers find out about authors. It means I get to be a full-time author, which I love. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Kate White.