The Epic Story of Every Living Thing (Labyrinth Road) introduces Harper Proulx, a teenager grappling with persistent anxiety that has peaked during the pandemic. Harper also feels something is missing in her life: her father was an anonymous sperm donor, and she believes that learning his identity is the only way she will be complete. When a social media post leads Harper to find out she has multiple half-siblings, she travels with them to Hawaii to come face-to-face with their father. In the process, she learns much more about herself and the world than she ever anticipated. In a starred review, PW called The Epic Story of Every Living Thing “a bighearted novel, which endorses the wonders of being present.”
Caletti, a National Book Award Finalist and Printz Honor recipient, chatted with PW about the worry and distress faced by so many young people today and how writing helped her through the most challenging months of the pandemic.
The Epic Story of Every Living Thing feels so timely, though it explores universal and timeless themes. What made you decide to set the story in the midst of the pandemic?
Ever since I was a child, I haven’t just liked books or loved books, I’ve needed books. Books give me comfort and solace and refuge in hard times, and they’ve been essential to helping me understand my life and relationships and the world we live in. And during the pandemic, wow, did I ever long for comfort and solace and refuge and understanding. I badly wanted a book—a hopeful book, a kind book—that might offer perspective on the surreal thing we’d all been experiencing, one that might reach out its hand to me, to say, I hear you, I get it, that’s how I felt, too. I didn’t necessarily want to swim around in the excruciating, daily details of the pandemic, but I did want someone to tell me the truth. If this is what I was yearning for, I had a hunch that my dear fellow book lovers and my own readers were also having some of these similar needs.
As a writer, one of my main goals has always been to offer my readers the cherished things books have given me—that unique company and support of a story, that particular understanding that you can only find on the page. So, in spite of the difficulties, complications, and risks of setting a story smack down in the middle of an evolving situation with an unreadable end point, it seemed important to write about the pandemic anyway. Books make our life struggles and triumphs a shared experience. When we read about something we’ve also lived through, we realize that, thankfully, the story is not just ours alone. Which is, of course, one of the main themes of The Epic Story of Every Living Thing.
What can you share about your main character? What aspects of her personality and circumstances do you anticipate readers will relate to the most?
Harper is a young woman under pressure in a noisy, stressful world—pressure to achieve academically, to shine on social media, to succeed, both right this minute and in the future. Her anxiety, too, is at an all-time high after the worst of the pandemic. I think these are aspects of Harper that we’re all familiar with lately, but, statistically, our teens, especially our teen girls, are experiencing this pressure, stress, and anxiety at unprecedented rates right now. None of this is helped by the confusing, clashing, and very relatable messages that she, as a young woman, is pummeled with: images of unreachable perfection, smashing against the realities of being human. A constant sense that we are in imminent danger, yet ill-equipped to handle it. A contradictory barrage of Girls can do anything! Rah! alongside the quiet and insistent tear-down of things like those bracelets inscribed with, Beautiful girl, you can do hard things. Poor Harper, poor all females, required to be both beautiful and resilient, even though no guy has ever been given a bracelet that says, Good looking boy, you can do hard things.
Harper is also struggling with identity; a struggle made more complicated by social media and her own personal circumstances. And while I hope that readers will see parts of themselves in Harper, there are aspects of her story readers may find compelling because they aren’t as common. Raised by a single mom, Harper was always aware that she had an anonymous, sperm donor father, a mystery man she longed to know more about, a guy she was sure held the key to unlocking her true self. What she didn’t know, though, and is just about to find out? Well, let’s just say that those 41 half siblings were a bit of a surprise.
How much do you establish about your characters before you begin writing?
In real life, we get to know people over time, even if we may have assumptions about them in the beginning, and this is true for my writing process, as well. Before I began Epic Story, I knew that Harper was anxious, and I knew that she was a young woman who was experiencing the same stressors as many teen girls. I knew she had a wonderful boyfriend, Ezra, who loved her, but who was getting weary of her focus on her phone. I knew that she was someone who carefully crafted her image on her popular social media account, but that her image of herself would fall to pieces when she discovered a huge number of half-siblings who looked just like her. I knew that a chance comment on her page would lead her to meet three of those siblings and one dog who would embark on a voyage to Hawaii to find their sperm donor father, and that the events of that summer and the man they’d discover—a charismatic deep-sea diver obsessed with solving the mystery of a fragile sunken shipwreck—would drop Harper, literally, into the deep, quiet, and often beautiful waters of some big questions about identity and connection, family and love. I knew I wanted to ask the questions, Who am I, and what matters? How do we survive the shocking and unforeseen things that happen?
But, until we spent time together, I did not know all of Harper’s individual vulnerabilities, and neither did she. I did not know all of her strengths, and neither did she. I did not know the degree to which Harper’s story would intersect with the true story of 19-year-old Mary Patten, who, in 1856, was the first female to captain a ship, navigating it around the treacherous Cape Horn while pregnant, and neither did Harper. I did not know all of the beautiful people who would come into Harper’s life—her father, Beau; her grandmother, Greer; all their friends on the island, from Big Dean and Amber and Jake from the dive shop, to Dirk Cooke from the Oceanography Institute, and Mr. and Mrs. Nuu from the PP Shack, and Loyale Grant, former chanteuse, known for the hit song of the 1960’s, “Sand in my Pocket.” I didn’t know about the firework jellyfish, and I didn’t know about the whale.
For me, if you’re doing it right, writing a book is a process of discovery. In real life, you open the doors and step outside and see what happens. In writing, you open the doors, and step in.
As you’re writing, do you think a lot about your intended readership? In your opinion, should YA novels also speak to adults?
When I’m writing, I’m mostly thinking about doing my job—crafting characters that are true and feel real; crafting a story that is meaningful and layered and that speaks to something honest and maybe even important. But, you know, I’ve thought a lot about this question since we’ve seen it come up so often lately, especially as a criticism of YA books that seem to be “meant for adults.” To me, the heart of this debate seems so demeaning to teen readers. I maybe don’t see the dividing line as clearly as some do, because the teen readers I’ve encountered throughout my long career have been incredibly astute, empathetic, capable, and hungry for that meaning and those layers. I think about the questions they’ve asked me, the writing they’ve done about my work, the art they’ve created, the conversations we’ve had, and their life experiences that they’ve shared, and I think… Why do we keep saying that certain YA books seem to be written for adults? Not every teen is at the place where they want or actually need to take in more complex or thought-provoking work (either thematically or situationally), but many, many are. I sure was, as a teen. The letters I get from my teen readers (and the life stories they share with me) are not all that different from the ones from my adult readers. I care about all of my readers, and I hope my respect for them—their capacity, intelligence, their hearts—shows in my work.
Young adult novels don’t always focus on fully developing the adult characters. How important is it to you to bring to life these older characters when you’re writing a novel for younger readers?
I have a confession to make, one that goes way back: I don’t frequently read YA. Mostly, this comes from fear—I want to keep my eyes on my own paper, so to speak. I worry about making sure that my own voice is always my own voice. So… I never knew that young adult novels didn’t always focus on fully developing the adult characters. This tendency of mine was first noted 20-plus books ago, when I wrote Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, a story about a young girl who embarks on a road trip to reunite a pair of geriatric lovers (and a finalist for the National Book Award). And, ah, I had no idea this wasn’t generally done! No clue! Now, though, I continue to trust that my readers want to see their world reflected as it actually is—full of realistic adults, and realistic little brothers, and realistic dogs.
Do you feel that formulating a sense of ‘identity’ is more challenging for young people today than it has been in the past? Why or why not?
It’s definitely more challenging, and the literature reporting that teens, especially teen girls, are having more issues with anxiety and self-esteem, is telling us so. The literature is also pointing to the effects of phone use and social media on a wobbly and often destructive sense of oneself. I don’t know about you, but I feel it. I wonder sometimes who that woman is, a woman in a square, looking at a square. How do you cope with a constant feeling of not measuring up, in addition to that? Or with a sense that perfection is not just possible but required? Or with the tools at hand to fix a blemish or a smile, or to insert a rainbow where there wasn’t one? Or with being so seen and so unseen at the same time? In Epic Story, it was important to me that Harper goes from our noisy and stressful world, to the quietest one—underwater. She dives down into the waves that have been waves forever, into that old, old ocean to connect with what has lasted. She goes below the surface, where no one will even see her, where she can finally just be her very own self, what a relief. And when she is there being only Harper, magical stuff happens. She witnesses the ongoing life of astonishing creatures who have been here since the beginning of time, going through stuff, surviving stuff.
For readers who might be struggling during these times, can you offer any words of solace or guidance?
You know, I really wanted all of Epic Story to be words of solace. I wanted it to be a hopeful book in a hard time, a story about things that endure and deeply matter—kindness and connection, wonder, and love. I don’t always feel equipped to give guidance, but in those pages, I did want to offer my own humanity and my own struggles, particularly with anxiety. I wanted to say, Me, too! And Wow, isn’t it messed up, what we went through, and are still going through? I wanted to say, This is a strange and difficult time. I wanted to say, Hey, it’s me and you again here with our anxiety, hanging out in this book together. I wanted to say, Girls, you know what? That story is a lie, the one you’ve been told, that you should be afraid all the time, and that you aren’t capable of handling hard stuff. Mary Patten, that girl taking Neptune’s Car around Cape Horn, she heard the same lie—it’s been going on forever. I wanted to say—You may look at yourself in all those squares, but there is only one you, the you yourself, a beautiful you with your own epic story, as every creature and human being who ever lived has an epic story. I wanted to tell them that living their full true story is the most basic right of every human being.
What’s coming up next for you? Is there anything you can tell us about your upcoming book?
My next book, Plan A, is the story of 16-year-old Ivy DeVries, who makes her way from Paris, Texas, to Rome, Ore., to get an abortion. As Ivy travels across the country, the women in her life—family friends, mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers—open up to her about their own abortions and life choices. Sometimes you are absolutely and utterly compelled to write a book. With Plan A, I was compelled. I hope you’ll put it on your Fall 2023 book-radar. I can’t wait for you to read it.
