Frostbend follows a woman who returns to her hometown after the death of the man who terrorized her childhood, only to find herself drawn into a chilling supernatural mystery. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?

I’ve always been fascinated by old, formerly beautiful buildings and the secrets they hold. I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a haunted house story, but it took me many years to realize that my experience living in the Ozarks was something truly valuable that I could bring into the horror space. After deciding that I wanted to set it in the Ozarks, the idea of two sisters battling it out over the fate of a haunted house came to me next, and then the ideas continued to build until I finally had what today is Frostbend. 

The Desmond mansion feels like a character in its own right, with its history, secrets, and unsettling presence. How did you go about creating such a vivid haunted house?

This is a wonderful compliment, as this was exactly the impression I hoped to leave with readers. Building the mansion at Frostbend was a culmination of all the gothic novels I’ve ever read and loved, all the sumptuous gothic horror movies I couldn’t stop watching, and a dash of research. I looked at many photos online of real buildings, picking and choosing elements that I thought most fit my novel and researching architectural terms. I love the feeling of wandering an old place alone, wondering what stories it would tell and making up fictional histories in my head. Frostbend is a natural extension of those interests.

Something else that I find fascinating is the way in which different spaces and buildings affect the psyche. For example, old gothic cathedrals that are impressive to behold. It’s hard not to feel small and a bit intimidated by spaces with such a presence. For Frostbend, I also wanted to feature a larger-than-life space that elicits a strong feeling. But I also felt it was important to include some beauty in the midst of the house’s horrible history, which is where touches like the mother’s stained-glass window come in. There are shafts of light and glimmers of beauty, even in the most horrible places. That feeling is an important thematic thread in Frostbend.

Isla is fiercely independent, sarcastic, and emotionally guarded. What drew you to writing a heroine whose greatest challenge is confronting the past she’s spent years avoiding?

I think most people can relate to the feeling of avoidance. There’s a temptation when you have a difficult past to try to leave it all behind, but the danger there is never processing the trauma in a healthy way. I think we all have things we would rather forget, and there’s a temptation to “demolish it.” Isla is redeemable and relatable for precisely that reason—who hasn’t wanted to leave all the unpleasantness of the past behind?

But the hopeful thing about Isla is that when she returns to her past, she discovers she’s not the same person she used to be. She is more capable. She has more people on her side. The scales have shifted, not because the horrors are less vivid, but because she has more resources and power.

The story asks whether escaping the past is ever truly possible. Was that question one of the driving themes you wanted readers to consider? 

I think Isla could have escaped her past. She could have hung up the phone and never gone back to Frostbend, but she chose love for her sister instead. Even if she was kicking and screaming and cussing her way through it, she chose not to fully flee her past because of her love for Willa. And I think that is one of the themes I wanted readers to consider. That perhaps even a dark and terrible past is worth remembering, because you can’t always fully untangle the good memories from the bad ones. There is space in the heart to keep the good while putting the bad in its proper place. One question both sisters grapple with is whether they will allow their pasts to rob them of love, and this is a choice I think we all have to make at some point. 

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