Author Jo Treggiari and editor

Author Jo Treggiari answers questions about her new novel, Heartbreak Homes, from her editor, Whitney Moran

Whitney Moran, the editor of Heartbreak Homes, the gritty new YA murder mystery from Governor General Award–nominated author Jo Treggiari, had a few questions for the author.

WHITNEY MORAN: Heartbreak Homes has such a fascinatingly complex plot—a murder mystery, multiple points of view, a town on the brink of collapse. Do you remember the initial spark that led you to write this story, and did that initial idea change much as you developed the novel?

JO TREGGIARI: Thinking back, my original idea revolved around a property development and how its failure impacted an entire community. I was really drawn to the contrast between this ostentatious showroom house and a town filled with bankrupted mom-and-pop shops and foreclosure signs.

I thought about how that kind of financial ruin would impact the children of those who had invested their nest eggs and even those who hadn’t, then I thought of a way to bring together my three teen narrators who came from different backgrounds. Once I had the party idea, I decided to up the ante with a murder. I really wanted to talk about the wealth divide and I think I did that.

WM: Our three POV characters—Cara, the street-smart punk; Martin the self-deprecating journalist and Frankie, the book nerd with a heart of gold—are all underdogs in their own way, and each has a unique perspective. Why was it important to you to write Heartbreak Homes in multiple POV, and what do you think each of these characters brings to the story?

JT: I love writing multiple POV. I think it comes naturally to the way I tell a story and enables me to bring together three or more distinct threads of narrative. Having more than one point of view focused on the same event, allows the reader to get the bigger picture.

Each narrator’s particular biases are revealed and since the characters bounce off of one another as they interact, I can develop them more fully. You see Cara through Frankie’s eyes, Frankie through Martin’s and vice versa.

Each of them is interested in solving the murder for personal reasons. I think that, especially when writing a whodunit, it’s important to offer the reader various perspectives and allow them to sift through the information and decide what to believe and what not to believe.

Frankie is doggedly persistent, Cara is fighting to keep her found family intact, and Martin doesn’t know where he fits anymore and is trying to reconcile his past with his future. Multiple POV allows me to be more nuanced in how I portray each character because we all lie to ourselves and we all fall prey to making assumptions about others.

WM: This book explores a number of huge social issues and deeply personal traumas, but doesn’t lose sight of the universal experience of being a teenager. How did you manage to balance all of these narratives, and why is it important to you to include both macro and micro “issues” in your work?

JT: I am trying to write the truth to the best of my abilities. And I am trying to write richly. I want my characters to live and breathe on the page and part of their development is a believable back-story (most of which does not make it into the final draft but helps me know my characters fully) which supports all their actions in the book.

Frankie doesn’t have to react the way that I or the reader would, but she has to act in character. They are teenagers. They are questioning and finding their way.

And my characters are flawed. They have their little tics, their interior monologues, their fears and their insecurities. I want to challenge them and I want them to change by the story’s end, to have come to some hard realizations, and find some kind of resolution that brings self-awareness. ■ See our review of Heartbreak Homes in our Young Readers section.

WHITNEY MORAN is the managing editor at Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press in Halifax.

JO TREGGIARI is a bestselling and multi-award nominated author of several young adult thrillers including Heartbreak Homes, The Grey Sisters and Blood Will Out.