By Nicole Lesperance

It goes without saying that setting is one of the most essential elements of a book. It dictates the tone, the landscape, the weather, the kind of characters, and the boundaries of how the story will unfold. In many books, characters can travel beyond the place where the story starts, and that’s often a catalyst for the plot. But when a book is set somewhere remote or the main character is trapped in a small area of space, that creates many limits and boundaries.

When I set out to write The Depths, one of the main things I worried about was keeping the plot exciting when every single character was limited to an island that is less than two square miles. I first started writing it back in 2016 (aka the Before Times) and it was hard for me to conceive of being so physically limited, while still making plot stuff happen. Because of that, and for various other reasons, I ended up shelving the draft. 

A few years later the pandemic hit, and I picked the story up again. This was back in the days of early lockdown, when many of us stayed in our homes all day, only venturing out for walks or essential supplies. It was a horrible, stifling, trapped feeling — not good for anybody’s mental heath, including mine. But when I started working on the book again, I had a newfound understanding of the dread and claustrophobia that were essential to the story. 

I realized that the solution for this book was not to travel farther away, but to go deeper. Deeper into Eulalie Island’s underbelly, its network of underground caves and waterways. Deeper into its strange and dark history and the people who ventured onto its shores hundreds of years ago. Deeper into the main character Addie’s emotions, the reasons she holds herself to such high standards and beats herself up when she fails. And deeper still to find herself, her core strength, far beyond what she ever expected.

A lot of us went deeper into ourselves during the pandemic, and maybe that was a good thing and maybe it wasn’t. But for me, taking all of my dark feelings and channeling them into a story full of ghosts and danger and death was incredibly cathartic.* And given the sheer number of horror and horror-adjacent books coming out recently and in the near future, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t alone in those feelings or artistic pursuits. 

It’s not just the pandemic, either: The Russia-Ukraine war, the attacks on human rights and gun violence in the US, and the devastating global effects of climate change are all creating an incredibly stressful environment these days. My hope for The Depths is that readers will recognize, face, and start to process some of their own deeper, darker feelings. Sometimes watching a fictional character go through hell and come out the other side stronger is just what we need.

* Note: Writing is not and should never be a substitute for proper mental health care! Therapy plus writing is what ultimately helped me.

Nicole grew up on Cape Cod and graduated from Wesleyan University. She spent a few years in London and now lives near Boston with her husband, two kids, and two rambunctious black cats. She writes young adult (The Wide Starlight and the forthcoming The Depths) and middle grade novels The Nightmare Thief and The Dream Spies) , and her books have received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and BCCB. In her spare time, she likes to practice yoga, knit, and read tarot cards.