Andrea Bobotis's new novel is The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt.From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt?Visit Andrea Bobotis's website.
A: My novel is based on a murder that happened in my family two generations before me. It was a story I'd heard all throughout my childhood, and I think I had to write it down in order to free myself of it.
Q: The novel takes place in a South Carolina town--how important is setting to you in your work?
A: Very important! I would go so far as to say that setting is a separate character in my novel. The fictional town of Bound, South Carolina, is small and insular enough to provide a perfect breeding ground for the secrets and intense family dynamics that drive the plot.
What's more, my novel is set in the late 1980s, when the textile industry is beginning to collapse in the South, with flashbacks to the onset of the Great Depression, when dependence on cotton deepened economic loss. Ultimately, the decline of ...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue