PHOTOGRAPHY BY GRANT MOXLEY
There are short and long answers for the inspiration behind Jessica Strawser’s sixth novel, The Last Caretaker, out this month from Lake Union Publishing. The former? A solitary hike at Cincinnati Nature Center on a chilly winter day.
As she walked, Strawser caught glimpses of the caretaker’s home between the trees and wondered what it would be like to live there. The thought led her to the idea of a plot point that would become the basis for her story. “By the time I was done with that hike, I was running back to my laptop,” she says. “It wasn’t a fully formed idea, but a pretty good premise.”
While initial inspiration was taken from the Cincinnati Nature Center, Strawser says that the book’s setting of Grove Reserve, from its geography to the staff, is entirely imagined. The Last Caretaker follows recent divorcee Katie, whose college best friend, Bess, offers her a caretaker position at the Grove in Cincinnati. But when Katie arrives, the caretaker’s residence is in disarray, as if her predecessor left in a rush. Soon after, she finds herself in the middle of an underground network shepherding domestic violence victims to safety.
Strawser’s long answer goes back to her 2018 novel, Not That I Could Tell, which also touched on themes of domestic violence. “I wrote it to honor a friend I’d lost to domestic violence,” says Strawser. “And I wrote it because there weren’t many stories from the perspective of a bystander. Usually, if you encounter domestic violence in a TV show, movie, or novel, it’s from the perspective of a victim or perpetrator. But in real life most of us will encounter it through a friend, family member, or someone we love.”
In the years since the book’s release, Strawser says she’s had countless powerful conversations with women—everyone from readers to librarians to book club members—sharing their own experiences with domestic violence and abuse. That same sense of solidarity found its way into The Last Caretaker. “If you had asked me in 2018 if I was going to write another novel that had to do with domestic violence, I would have said, No,” she says. “Really, it was the process of, five years later, realizing that I still had something to say about the topic.”
The Last Caretaker is the first time Strawser has returned to a topic in her novels. She notes that her first three (Almost Missed You, Not That I Could Tell, and Forget You Know Me) fall into the domestic suspense genre. Her last two (A Million Reasons Why and The Next Thing You Know) are book club fiction centered on moral dilemmas that put readers in the protagonist’s shoes.
This new story blends the subgenres, with Strawser describing it as a 50/50 split. Katie presents as an everywoman trying her best, while an ensemble cast allows Strawser to dream up the people—both expected and unexpected—who might get involved in a whisper network, from a baker to an OB/GYN.
Strawser says her last two novels were research-intensive, so she felt it was time to return to a more personal story as well as switch genres. When she decided to write about domestic violence, she knew she wanted the story to be empowering. Despite the heavy topic, she also didn’t want The Last Caretaker to take itself too seriously. “I would much rather write an entertaining story that gives you something to think about and maybe even sneaks up on you than, This is a book about an issue,” she says. “I think I’m going to reach a lot more people that way.”
Along with being a novelist, Strawser is an editor-at-large and columnist at Writer’s Digest and regularly speaks at book clubs and conferences; being embraced by book clubs has been an “unexpected and delightful” aspect of her career. “You really do leave feeling like old friends,” she says. “It’s just amazing to be
in a room full of people who have read your book and talk about your characters as if they’re real people and sometimes argue about what the character should have done.”
Jessica Strawser will discuss and sign her new novel December 2 at Cincy Book Bus Depot in Sharonville. Find additional book signings at jessicastrawser.com/events.
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