Author Chat with Shana Youngdahl (A CATALOG OF BURNT OBJECTS), Plus Giveaway~ US ONLY!

The powerful story of a girl struggling to figure out her estranged brother, a new love, and her own life just as wildfires beset her small California town—perfect for fans of Nina LaCour and Kathleen Glasgow

Seventeen-year-old Caprice wants to piece her family back together now that her older brother has returned home, even as she resents that he ever broke them apart. Just as she starts to get a new footing—falling in love for the first time, uncertainly mending her traumatized relationship with her brother, completing the app that will win her a college scholarship and a job in tech—wildfires strike Sierra, her small California town, forcing her to reckon with a future that is impossible to predict.

A love story of many kinds, and a reflection of the terrifying, heartbreaking Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California, where the author grew up, this is a tale that looks at what is lost and discovers what remains, and how a family can be nearly destroyed again and again, and still survive.

Order * Goodreads

YABC:  What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

After my first novel, As Many Nows As I Can Get, I wanted to write something lighter. I started a found-family, found-home story in which a group of misfits find an unexpected home in a small northern California town modeled on Paradise, where I grew up. At this time, my job in Maine was pretty unstable and my best friend had just returned to Paradise, so I was also homesick, and writing into that. But then on November 8, 2018, the Camp Fire leveled my hometown in a matter of hours. I quickly realized I wasn’t writing a light book about finding where you belong in the world. I was writing about fire and its toll on so many people I loved, about how it had altered the landscape and wilderness of my childhood. For a long time, I didn’t know exactly what to write, or how. Then some friends asked if I could write a poem to honor the preschool teacher who reopened their son’s school after the fire in her home. I wrote the poem and the response from my friends made me feel like maybe I could find a way to write this book, and that it might be meaningful to others coping with climate catastrophes.

YABC: Is your main character like you?

I tried hard to make her different from me. She is much more organized and logical. But even though I’m way more disorganized, I do like to make plans, and when they are upended, I struggle. But creativity can help us find a new way. Caprice is interested in becoming an app developer, and one thing about computing that’s like writing is that you’re always trying to find the most efficient way to achieve your task. The thing I like more about writing, though, is that efficiency can actually be a very long description, provided there is a good reason for it!

YABC: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Like many writers, I’ve always been one—I have stories and poems saved going back to as soon as I can write words. I remember the pride I felt getting the second-grade writing award, and my teacher, Mrs. Hutton (Thanks, Mrs. Hutton!) saying she thought we would all be reading my books one day. That assembly at Ponderosa Elementary school is the first time I really remember swelling with pride. Spelling was hard for me, and at the beginning of the year Mrs. Hutton had placed me in a lower reading group. She moved me up quickly, but it was really winning that award that made me feel, maybe for the first time, like anything was possible.

YABC:   How do you keep your ‘voice’ true to the age category you are writing within?

I spent twenty years working with first-year college students, and when I stopped doing that I had a teenager living in my house. Listening to people is the first step, understanding how they talk and why. But it’s also really important to remember readers will believe a character is real at any age so long as they are developed and full—give us a reason that your teen speaks the way they do, and we will believe it.

YABC:   Which character gave you the most trouble when writing your latest book?

River. Caprice really needed a nice-guy love interest, and it fit with her character to have someone relaxed and driven like he is, but it also took me a while to feel the importance of the love story in this book. I was so sad about the fire, and sad for my characters. Finally, I realized that community and love are what gets us through, and that keeping my focus there could serve me as I built the story and my characters.

YABC:  What word do you have trouble overusing?

“Just.” But my first drafts are also littered with people who shrug.

YABC: If your character could meet a character from another book, who would it be?

I think Caprice and her best friend Alicia would have some interesting conversations with Rayne and Delilah from Jeff Zentner’s Rayne and Delilah’s Midnight Matinee. I think Beckett has probably met Wynton Fall from Jandy Nelson’s When The World Tips Over on some road trip down the coast before both characters had accidents that changed their lives.

YABC:   What is your favorite reading space?

I’m happy whenever I am reading, but my favorite spot is at my in-laws’ house on Swan’s Island, Maine. There is nothing quite like looking at the ocean and swallowing books like they are glasses of water.

YABC: How do you plan to celebrate the launch of your book?

My local bookstore, Main Street Books Saint Charles, is hosting an event at the Saint Charles Public Library on March 18 and I’ll be in Saint Louis on March 20^th with the Novel Neighbor. What is most meaningful to me during launch time is connecting with the community who supported me during the writing process, and I’m putting my focus on those folks and all the gratitude I feel for them. I’m hopeful my daughter will make cookies.

YABC: What is your favorite holiday or tradition and why?

Well this is a bit silly but, during COVID, when we were looking for things to bring us joy, we started celebrating Festivus, and I love how the airing of grievances gives us the ability to remind one another that we can correct our behavior all the year through—like I can say, “Hey you still have a chance to figure out how to not leave your socks all over the house before it’s my grievance against you AGAIN this year.” Sometimes it works. Also since I’m head of household, I appreciate the feats of strength.