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Processing My Trauma
Tremor in the Hills follows a teenage girl struggling with trauma after surviving a devastating quake, whose best friend is accused of murder, and she has to help discover the truth. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration: In 2007, I was with my husband and 2 young children visiting his family in Ica, Peru, when an 8.1 magnitude earthquake struck. 90% of the town we were in was destroyed, and we had a difficult time getting home, although we were VERY lucky and grateful that we survived, and everyone in his family did also. 500 people died in the same town we were in. When I got home, everyone wanted to hear my story, but I did not want to talk about it, so I wrote it down and sent it to everyone I knew. The writing got a very good reception, and I have always loved mysteries, so I decided to continue processing my trauma through writing a story based loosely on my experience.
It seemed like you took your time in building the characters and the story to great emotional effect. How did you manage the pacing of the story while keeping readers engaged?
Tremor in the Hills has been through countless edits and 3 different editors, so I think it was mainly practice, editing, and just getting to be a better writer over the years.
How do you balance story development with shocking plot twists? Or can they be the same thing?
I hate to say it, but I think it’s a mixture of real-life experience and twisted imagination… I do believe that story development and shocking plot twists are melded together.
When will Book Two be available? Can you give us an idea of where that book will take readers?
Book two, with any luck, will be out in late 2026. It will feature many of the same characters. The setting is Caral, an archaeological site in the north of Peru, and answers part of the question of where K’antu went at the end of Tremor in the Hills. There will be 3 books total in the trilogy.
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Tremor in the Hills
Cristina Matta’s Tremor in the Hills is a gripping young adult mystery set in post-earthquake Peru. The story follows Tamara, a teenage girl struggling with trauma after surviving a devastating quake. When she returns to Manchay to visit her family, her best friend K’antu’s husband is found murdered, and K’antu vanishes. Torn between fear and guilt, Tamara sets out to find her friend and uncover the truth. What unfolds is part mystery, part emotional reckoning, and part cultural portrait, full of vivid landscapes, buried secrets, and human fragility.
The writing is intimate and immediate. I could feel the grit of the Peruvian desert, the tremor beneath the earth, and the weight of Tamara’s panic as if it were my own. Matta writes trauma the way it exists — not in neat scenes, but in waves, sudden and unstoppable. Her sentences don’t just tell a story; they echo the disjointed rhythm of someone haunted. I loved how she wove the cultural and historical context naturally into the dialogue and environment. It didn’t feel like a history lesson. It felt lived-in. Real. Still, sometimes the prose tripped over itself, moving too quickly when I wanted it to breathe. I found myself rereading passages not because I didn’t understand them, but because I didn’t want to miss a single heartbeat of emotion.
The characters felt raw, even when they frustrated me. Tamara’s self-absorption made sense, and K’antu’s silence spoke louder than most people’s screams. What stayed with me most, though, wasn’t the murder mystery. It was the quiet undercurrent of guilt, survivor’s guilt, social guilt, the guilt of privilege. Matta doesn’t lecture; she just shows what happens when the world falls apart unevenly and who gets to rebuild. The dialogue felt real and unpolished in the best way, and the tension between classes and families simmered beneath every conversation. There were moments where the pacing slowed or where I wished a secondary character had been fleshed out more, but those dips didn’t shake my connection to the story.
This isn’t just a story about murder or earthquakes. It’s about what happens afterward, when you’re left standing on uneven ground. Tremor in the Hills will stay with readers who crave emotion more than perfection. It’s ideal for anyone who loves coming-of-age stories with a dark edge, mystery readers who like their puzzles tangled with human pain, or anyone who’s ever tried to rebuild themselves after everything cracked open.
Pages: 282 | ASIN : B0FQ26XKFB
LITERARY TITAN 