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Let Them
Until I Come Back for You follows a young girl, the youngest of five siblings, as her family escapes the dangers of Detroit and tries to build a new life in the countryside, only to encounter a menacing and violent new neighbor. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
That’s easy – my real life! My family really did leave Detroit in the early 70s, and my city-slicker parents really did buy a small farm on a dirt road in rural Michigan. The bad guy is fictionalized, but the setting and family characters are all real.
What was your approach to writing the interactions between characters?
For me, the key to dialogue is to let it come quickly, naturally, and not overthink it. Don’t argue with your characters – let them speak. Let them stutter. Let them mispronounce words. Because that is how humans talk. Dialogue should “play” in the readers’ heads as if they can hear it, and so it has to “sound” authentic. If a writer edits dialogue the same way she edits the narrative, you lose that authenticity.
How do you balance story development with shocking plot twists? Or can they be the same thing?
For story development, I’m an avid plotter. I map out the big parts of the story, the bones. For this story, I focused on “the event” and worked backwards to include everything that had to come before it. Then worked forward, writing all the consequences and fallout.
The plot twist(s) were afterthoughts that organically stemmed from the story. There is a writing rule: “Get your protagonist in trouble. Then get them in more trouble and more trouble.” When I did that, she really surprised me, and it was just my job to capture that.
What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it out?
For right now, I’m having so much fun with this book, I can’t even think about another. This was a bucket list goal for me, so I’m just allowing myself to revel in this moment.
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Right where she left it.
UNTIL I COME BACK FOR YOU invites you to wallow in the comforting nostalgia of the 1970s, a simpler time when there were only three TV channels, two colas, and one phone in the house. Smell the honeysuckle of lazy summer days; listen to sisters sharing whispers in bunk beds before drifting to sleep. Just when you get comfortable, you’ll find yourself stranded in a tree, dragged across a field, held down on a cold examination table. Taste the blood in your mouth from a lost tooth. Feel the breath of a predator on your neck. Hear the death rattle of a lost soul.
Follow one family’s history woven into the tattered fabric of the Midwest and witness one girl tear at the seams of girlhood, suspended between the generations of women who reinvented womanhood.
Until I Come Back for You
P.A. White’s Until I Come Back for You is a gritty and heartfelt coming-of-age novel wrapped in the warmth of humor, nostalgia, and quiet devastation. Set in 1970s rural Michigan, the story follows Trisha, the youngest of five siblings, as her family escapes the dangers of Detroit and tries to build a new life in the countryside. At first, their farm life seems charming, if a little chaotic, but the idyllic picture quickly unravels when their new neighbor, Ronnie Clark, emerges as a menacing, violent figure. The story balances childhood mischief and tender family dynamics with the dark undercurrents of trauma, violence, and survival.
What struck me most was the writing. White’s voice is funny, raw, and full of personality. The tone swings wildly. One minute you’re laughing at a family spat or a calf in the backseat, and the next you’re reeling from a jarring act of cruelty. I loved that unpredictability. Her sentences are tight, punchy, sometimes jarring, and always vivid. She captures the voice of a precocious kid better than most authors I’ve read. There’s no gloss, no pretension, just a sharp memory and a fearless pen. Her storytelling is laced with trauma, but it never begs for pity. It invites you to look, to sit with it, and to feel every uncomfortable inch of what she lived through.
But it’s the ideas underneath that left the biggest mark on me. This book isn’t just about growing up. It’s about what’s stolen from you when adults fail to protect you. The tension between innocence and danger is relentless. I found myself deeply moved by how the story exposes cycles of abuse, the silences of good people, and the resilience of children who learn to carry too much. The Clark family, and Ronnie in particular, are portrayed with brutal honesty, and I often had to put the book down just to breathe.
I’d recommend it to anyone who appreciates sharp memoirs, especially those by women who aren’t afraid to tell the ugly parts of their story. If you loved Educated by Tara Westover or The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, this belongs on your shelf. It’s also a must-read for anyone who grew up in the Midwest, anyone who knows what it means to live in a town where “nothing bad happens,” until it does.
Pages: 382 | ASIN : B0F224D1BJ
LITERARY TITAN 