Easter Eggs Part Three
I didn’t plan to include so much of my early life in the book, but it just worked out that way. Similar to the music that appeared in the book, the setting crept in unexpectedly, but also intentionally, like the flowers in the book. In this week’s episode of Easter Eggs, we’re talking about the little pieces of me that appear in the book about setting.
But first, a little background. I grew up as a Navy brat. We moved every three to five years of my life up until I was thirteen, when dad retired. While I remember living in Idaho, I was five when we left and landed in Groton, Connecticut. Groton was a great place to grow up and we’d lived there before when I was two and three, but I don’t remember it.
Our house in the Navy subdivision was at the top of a hill. At the edge of our backyards were the woods. We spent a lot of time in those woods, playing games we made up, using acorn caps as whistles, bringing home salamanders, frogs and all sorts of other fun reptiles my mom wouldn’t let in the house (I don’t blame her). The path to the school also included walking through the woods and going over a creek by way of a little bridge.
Needless to say, those formative years spent in a very woody, winding road New England town remain firmly implanted in my brain. When I sat down to write this book, I already pictured my MC, Seraphina, driving down a road with tall trees showing the fall color change. I changed the season to summer for timing reasons (my MC just graduated from grad school), so we don’t see that, but we do see quite a bit of my New England life.
The name of the street where Seraphina lives – Gungywamp – is a real street in Groton. New England is rife with streets and towns named after the Native Americans and Gungywamp is one of them. I’ve always loved it because it just sounds amazing- gun-gee-wamp. It’s right up there with Tchoupitoulas (chop-i-too-las) in New Orleans as having a piece of my heart.
The woods behind Seraphina’s house and the arched tree mentioned in the book are also a nod to Groton. The main path down the hill from our backyard in the woods had a tree arched across it. We called it The Arched Tree. I know, our creativity is outstanding; we even had a large rock with a natural bench built in that we called the CasMike rock in honor of our last name and the last name of the kids who lived next door. Obviously, CasMike Rock did not make it in the book.
The scenes in New York City come directly from my own experiences there. I moved to New York after law school and lived in a tiny apartment on the Upper West Side for five years before moving to Brooklyn for two more. I decided to stick to towns I could describe and I couldn’t help but place her college and grad school years in New York. I loved living there, although after a while, all the people got to me. But for the book, I put in some local color.
To be fair, her best friend is old money and would most likely live on the Upper East Side, but it’s my book and I wanted it to be where I had a great five years. The restaurant mentioned in Chapter 24, Carmines, is a real restaurant my then roommate and I ate it at many times. And Penne al a Vodka is one of my all time favorite pasta dishes, especially from there.
I also mentioned the crinkle of the brown and gold plastic bag that my MC carried her bottle of wine in when walking back to the apartment. This is a classic bag you got from wine and liquor stores in NYC. I don’t think they use them anymore for environmental reasons, but anyone who lived in NYC during the 1990s and early 2000s would easily recognize that bag.
And that’s it for setting. Mostly. There are many things I don’t share with Seraphina – her house size, her boarding school experience, or the voice in her head. But I loved including those experiences and places I loved in my MC’s story while still keeping it separate from who I am as a person.
In next week’s Easter Egg post, we’ll be discussing books. Books are a big thing in Seraphina’s world (and in mine), so get ready for some hints and more direct connections to me in that post.
Stay tuned!