Writing this novel, and thinking about it in the ramp up to its publication date, has done all of these things. Researching forest fires especially, I sometimes felt like River does watching clips and news stories about the fire that puts his mom on evacuation alert, sadness “like a log across his chest,” and I’d struggle with what can seem like an inevitability, that “from now on things [will] just get worse and worse.” There is a lot of climate grief in The Fall-Down Effect. Characters reflect on the increasing frequency and severity of forest fires; activist and government-worker characters alike feel, at times, defeated when they think of the environmental and climate costs of the logging industry; parents worry about the world their children will inherit. And yet, at the same time, each of the characters also tend to and preserve their hope for and connection to the natural world. None of them are going to quit caring for and about the planet. None of them will give up the fight and there’s nothing they can do.

Research for my novel began in the hallways of my parents’ nursing home, where I watched too many intense family dramas explode right in front of me. How did family relationships turn so ugly? Did those siblings get along when they were younger? How common is elder abuse?