I have never written a novel that volleys back and forth between a couple of different first person perspectives. It's definitely a challenge because I had to think about who knows what, when do they know it, when are they sharing what they know or what they think they know, how the reader's perspective affects things. Telling the story in that way is challenging. It does require a lot of revision.

It felt like an indulgence. Going back was painful, but, at the same time, it was nice to live with them again for a few pages. I got to live with my brother again for the entire book. Of course as I'm writing the book, I'm getting closer and closer to the end and I know what that means. I knew exactly where I was heading. It was really difficult, but it was nice to make them come alive for those scenes. It was good.

When you have a family, even though you might move a lot, you collect all of these things. It's the detritus of your family and they become the symbols of your family life, and your unit out in the world. In that moment I wanted to allude to the fact that the way my parents' relationship was falling apart was impacting me and my brother, my parents, but also our symbols.

While I've said that there are plenty of things I dislike about the South, I can be clear that there are things I love about the South.

I wrote the first draft of my first novel at Michigan, and then I wrote the first draft of 'Salvage the Bones' at Stanford. So I workshopped the entire thing.

I think that I'm trying to hopefully change my children's ideas about what is possible, and about what is possible for them.

That's why I write fiction, because I want to write these stories that people will read and find universal.