Shasta Grant: “A love letter is almost always directed toward somebody or something you can’t have, and this one is no different.”
As a teenager in my hometown of Newport, New Hampshire, with a population of around 6,000 people, weekend nights began by driving through town. My friends and I would pile into a car, roll the windows down and turn the music up. We’d drive up and down Main Street, past the town hall, past the police station, around the big common and the little common, looking for something to do. If we were lucky, we’d find someone old enough to buy us a six pack of beer. It was the ’90s and we had no cell phones, no social media, no way to know where anyone was except to drive the same loop and hope to find them. The night ahead could go anywhere or nowhere, and that was the point.Article continues after advertisement
I set my debut novel in my hometown. I call it a love letter to Newport, although Newport may not come off looking the best in its pages. My goal was to make the town feel as alive as the characters and that required showing that, just like a person, it was complicated. You could love your town and also want to leave it at the same time. Newport’s motto is “The Sunshine Town.” But it wasn’t sunshine for everyone. The truth is, I couldn’t wait to escape. Growing up, I longed to move somewhere far away and big enough that I could be anonymous. The irony is that I’d give anything to return now, to be part of such a tight-knit community where everybody knows everybody.
