John Corey Whaley chats with the LA Times . . .
I’d been trying to find a good place to place a teenager — a kid trying to grow up in that kind of craziness. A story about life growing up as a teenager in a small town you don’t fit into developed into a story about are we looking for the right things and do second chances exist, because while everyone in this town is preoccupied by this extinct bird coming back to life, the narrator’s younger brother goes missing. So then the story is sort of a parallel. He and his family are looking for their lives. Everyone else is preoccupied with this nonsense.
On a side note, someone might want to let the writer know that Where Things Come Back wasn’t set in the author’s hometown in Louisiana. Always best to get your facts straight before you publish . . .
