RUN YOU DOWN @JuliaDahl opens a new window on a hidden world

HALLIE EPHRON: When I finished reading Julia Dahl's Edgar-nominated first novel, Invisible City, I dearly hoped that the story wasn't over. Because though the main mystery was solved, a bigger (to me) mystery -- why Rebekah's mother had abandoned her and where she was now -- remained to be answered.

So I'm delighted that Julia's second novel, Run You Down, is a sequel. And I'm thrilled to host Julia herself to tell you all about it.

 

JULIA DAHL: The idea for my first novel, “Invisible City,” was simple: I had been told by activists and police officers that in cases of sexual abuse and domestic violence, people in the insular Hasidic Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn, N.Y. were often reluctant to talk to authorities about what they had witnessed for fear of bringing scrutiny onto their community. But what would happen, I wondered, if there was a murder in this tight-knit world? Would people speak out then?

Over the next six years, I explored that question.

HALLIE: I was riveted by all the details Hasidic famlies, neighborhoods, their relationships with the police and religious authority. How did you find all that out, given how secretive the community can be?

JULIA: I met people who had grown up Hasidic, and some who still lived the strict religious life. I sought to tell their stories through the eyes of my narrator, Rebekah Roberts, a young reporter trying to make a name for herself at a seedy New York City tabloid.  

To connect Rebekah to the world of the Hasidim, I created the character of her mother, Aviva Kagan, who ran away from the cloistered world of Borough Park as a teenager, got pregnant, and then abandoned Rebekah and her father. When, at the very beginning of “Invisible City,” Rebekah is assigned to report about the murder of a Hasidic woman, she uses the opportunity to learn more about her mother’s world – which is she both disdainful of and fascinated by.

HALLIE: Rebekah's personal story is just as compelling as the murder she's investigating. But left those answers hanging.

JULIA: As I got to the end of the tale of the murdered woman, I knew that there was a missing piece to Rebekah’s story: her mother. Why did she leave Brooklyn? Why did she abandon her child? And where has she been for the past 23 years?

But introducing Aviva would have taken “Invisible City” in an entirely different direction. It was, I realized, another story. Another book.

HALLIE: Did you know there'd be a sequel?

JULIA: I hadn’t initially conceived of “Invisible City” as being the beginning of a series, but when Minotaur gave me the opportunity to write a sequel, I jumped at it.

 

Immediately, I knew that “Run You Down,” would be different from “Invisible City.” I wanted part of the book to be told by Aviva, and I wanted to examine different issues. I also had a deadline, which was something I hadn’t had with the first book, which I wrote in my spare time, unsure if it would ever get published.

HALLIE: Ah, a deadline. How did that work out for you?

 

JULIA: I wrote the first draft of “Run You Down” in about 10 months, then spent six months doing revisions. Alternating narrators was a challenge – I had to make sure the voices were distinct, that present and past action flowed smoothly, and that the reader wasn’t “ahead” of Rebekah in her investigation into the death of Pessie Goldin.

Writing “Run You Down” was by far the hardest work I have ever done. For whatever reason, the plot of “Invisible City” came relatively easily to me. “Run You Down” – perhaps because there were more moving parts – was a puzzle. There was a lot of frustration (I have nearly 300 pages of deleted scenes), but each time I hit what I thought of as a “plot knot,” I knew that if I just gave myself a little time, I’d unravel it. I started to think of the finished book as a Rodin sculpture. I had a block of marble and for nearly two years I chipped away, knowing that as long as I kept chipping, eventually, the rough stuff would fall away and the object inside would appear.

HALLIE: Your process sounds as chaotic as mine. My "OUT" file is usually almost as long as the novel.

Did it make it any easier knowing who Rebekah is?

JULIA: As I was writing, a lot of people remarked that writing a sequel “must be easier” because I “know the characters.” In some ways this is true, of course: I know Rebekah’s backstory (though I was fuzzy about Aviva’s), but Rebekah was not the same person I began writing about so many years ago. When “Invisible City” began, she was in many ways unserious and immature. By the last page, she had evolved into a more professional reporter and a more empathic, if still judgmental, human being.

In “Run You Down,” which begins just a few months after the end of “Invisible City,” I knew these new parts of her would be tested. Could she balance the demands of reporting for a tabloid with her growing instinct that she is, as she puts it, “a human being before a reporter”? What choices would she have to make? Who would she have to disappoint?

I knew that if I was going to keep readers interested in Rebekah (heck, if I was going to stay interested in her) I had to answer these questions. I spent a lot of time gazing at walls, trying to slip into her skin and feel what she would feel. We’ve become close, Rebekah and I.

And now, as I write her third story, I am happy to say that if we met in the newsroom, I think we might be friends.

HALLIE: And I'll be lined up to read it. 

Thinking about this, I'm wondering do series protagonists need to change?