Pivoting to the Dark Side: Unsafe Haven @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: As you, my Jungle Red family, are well aware, I’m mostly known in the mystery world for my series featuring a food critic living in quirky Key West. Over the years, darker ideas have come to me that would not have fit in that genre. I filed away snippets of characters and plots that seemed too gritty or dark for a cozy mystery even though I recognized them as elements of a good story. For example, what if a terrified young girl handed you a newborn—and then vanished?

That's the question that lies behind the new book, Unsafe Haven which is out in ebook form today. I do not exaggerate when I say that writing this book has taken FOREVER. I think this was the first time I mentioned it on our blog.

But I have notes and emails and photos going back to 2009, including opinions from classes I took and my trusted writing pals. The one thing I knew all along was that the driving force behind the story would be teenager Addy Carl, who gives birth alone in a New York subway, and hands off the baby to an unknown woman. I'd begun to save headlines from the news that might explain Addy's actions. These were stories about young women who abandoned hours-old infants in astonishing places. (I'm not even counting Julia's character from IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER.) One newborn was left in a restroom in the Hilton Hotel in Key West. Another headline told the story about a teenager attending a dance who went to the ladies’ room because of cramps. Not realizing that she was pregnant, she delivered her baby right there, left it in the trash, and returned to the dance. Another baby was stashed in a nativity scene outside a church. What kind of girl or woman would abandon a newborn this way? These stories haunted me—I wanted to understand how a new mother might make this seemingly impossible choice. 

As I thought about writing Addy’s story, I did not picture her as a young woman who didn't care about her child. I imagined this book to be about a girl who was desperate and scared about something; so desperate that giving birth alone and pushing the new baby into a stranger’s arms felt like the best decision—the only decision—she could make in that moment. I hoped that readers would come to understand and share the agony of her choice and the fear that was driving it. 

I had also begun thinking about this second woman, Elizabeth, whose life had hit a major turning point. She’d planned a fancy New Year’s Eve wedding to her college boyfriend, but he’d shocked her by calling it off three days before the event. Everything she thought she knew about her future was suddenly turned upside down. 

As Addison, the new mother, emerges from the bathroom in a New York City subway station with her newborn, her eyes meet those of Elizabeth, the jilted bride. Addy thrusts the baby into Elizabeth’s arms and bolts. One minute later, another train, those women’s paths would never would have crossed. 

Exactly as my characters had, my writing reached a turning point. My writer brain understood that these characters and this story would not fit into the framework of a cozy culinary mystery. The challenge became whether I could tell Addison’s story in a different voice—dark, compelling, emotional, relatable—with a gritty city as the backdrop. The result is Unsafe Haven. 

I hope you’ll give it a try. You can read chapter one here.

If you read primarily in one genre or subgenre, what does it take for you to decide to veer off course and try something new?

Ways to order your copy of UNSAFE HAVEN:

Book depository 

Indiebound 

NOOK book at Barnes and Noble 

Kindle ebook at Amazon 

"In a major departure from her lighthearted Key West mysteries, Burdette invites readers into the world of a chilling thriller. (Unsafe Haven is) a page- turner highlighting the problem of exploited runaways."

—Kirkus Reviews

“Lucy Burdette shows us that she can write dark as well as light. Brilliantly plotted with characters we come to care about."

—Rhys Bowen, NYT bestselling author of the Venice Sketchbook and the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy mysteries

"Lucy Burdette's Unsafe Haven is a gripping rollercoaster of suspense—you will root for her characters through every twist and turn of this beautifully plotted novel."

—Deborah Crombie, NYT bestselling author of A Bitter Feast

"Devastating, heartbreaking and completely immersive. This riveting story of fear and redemption, motherhood and second chances, and our responsibility to strangers is a powerful thriller proving one split-second decision can change our lives forever. Unsafe Haven has Hollywood written all over it!" 

—Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today bestselling author of Her Perfect Life