“That’s always been part of the mission of my work—to write about the sheer breadth and wonder and scope of our southern lives.”

Leoneda Inge: I understand that this book came at a critical time for you, health-wise. Was writing this novel a healing experience for you?

Tayari Jones: I feel like this novel really healed my belief in stories and what stories do. I did get sick, and that did kind of stop me from writing, but more than even my health problems was that I had kind of a creative crisis. In 2020 … the pandemic was happening, George Floyd. I was really saying, “What is it that a book can do for the world? Am I going to go to a hospital and heal somebody with a novel? Am I going to throw a book at someone that’s injuring someone else?” I didn’t see what the point was. And I think that really gave me a kind of writer’s block. I had never had writer’s block. I didn’t even really believe writer’s block was a real thing until it happened to me. And I believe that when I got diagnosed with Graves’ disease, and I was in the hospital, all of that, I feel that, in many ways, [in] writing this novel, I kind of wrote myself back to health.