A FRENZY OF SPARKS was inspired by a true family event: I have an uncle who overdosed before his eighteenth birthday. Even though he died years before I was born, it was too painful for my family to talk about. I didn't know much about him, though I worried, growing up, that whatever had caused his addiction, was in me too, a fear that followed me until I was much older.

Shortly after publishing my first novel, A LILY IN THE LIGHT, it hit me that this was the story I was meant to tell next – to finally uncover this unexplored history.

For the first time, I spoke directly to my father about his childhood. We scheduled Saturday morning interviews, which he took very seriously. I had questions about his neighborhood, family, things he did for fun, local legends, the shops they visited, much of which shaped the novel’s setting, though at the time, it was less about historical accuracy and more about curiosity. It’s a special thing to imagine your parents as children.

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Our first call lasted four hours. My father was close to Gia’s age at the time, but ultimately, A FRENZY OF SPARKS is fiction, told through the perspective of a girl on the cusp of adulthood. I borrowed from my own experience and frustration with the expectations projected on Italian American girls: do well in school, help your mother, grow up, get married, have children, maybe be a teacher. Those are all fine things to do, but I felt, from an early age, that I wanted something different.

Gia is the closest character I’ve written to myself. She is young and naive, but fearlessly observant and intune to the moods of others. She feels a deep connection to nature and the natural world despite living so close to New York City, a fact that sets her apart from her family. More than anything, she wants to do good in a world that isn’t quite open to her yet.

Years ago, I taught high school in Rockaway and moved to Howard Beach for a shorter commute. I lived off a canal that flooded when the tide was high at full moon. I used to watch the planes take off from JFK in the park where Gia and her cousins set off fireworks, but the funny thing is, my apartment was right around the block from the house my father grew up in. We joked that I must've been drawn there, but it never felt like a coincidence. It was part of the story, past and present and fiction, a dot on the journey to understand a past that shaped me, and prepared me to tell Gia’s story long before I knew it was in me.

My father described reading A FRENZY OF SPARKS as the surprise of walking around the block and bumping into someone he hadn’t seen for a long time. Gia reminds him of me.