Zibby Books author alert! Zibby welcomes debut author Sarah Sawyer to discuss THE UNDERCURRENT, a stunning, achingly beautiful, and gripping suspense about an overwhelmed new mother who becomes obsessed with the unsolved disappearance of a young girl from her small Texas hometown—and unearths her own family’s dark secret. Sarah shares how her own experiences, particularly watching her daughter struggle with a thyroid disorder, inspired her reflections on the transformations women experience. She also delves into her novel's themes of female relationships, different life paths, and the impact of motherhood on personal identity. Finally, she shares her best advice for aspiring writers.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Sarah.

Congratulations on the undercurrent. So excited to talk to you today about this fabulous debut novel of yours. Congrats. 

Sarah: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Zibby: Okay. Tell everybody, what is The Undercurrent about? The big question. 

Sarah: It's about a lot of things, I think.

Zibby: It is about a lot of things. 

Sarah: Well, it is the story of a new mom named Bee, who becomes fixated with the story of a girl who went missing in her neighborhood when she was a kid.

And because she is struggling with her new motherhood, she gets stuck the idea in her head that she's going to go back to her hometown and unravel this mystery, and she ends up uncovering, uh, some family secrets that have been beneath the, the surface of her life all along. That's the story. 

Zibby: Amazing. So you are an English teacher.

This is your first book. Ever. 

Sarah: Yes. 

Zibby: Why this topic? Why these characters? Like, how did this whole thing happen? Why now? Like, maybe back up and just give us some background on, on how we even got here and how this is the book that you ended up writing. 

Sarah: Well, there are a lot of ways to tell that story, I think, but the sort of immediate thing that made me sit down and write was that my daughter, when she was, you know, going, let's see, going into 10th grade, ended up having a thyroid disorder that made her lose 40 pounds and her resting heart rate was like 158.

And just in the span of just months, this happened, right? And nobody could figure it out. And it was a whole thing. And then when they solved the thyroid problem, they were like, she gained 40 pounds again. And for a sophomore girl, this was like a little rough, I think. And it got me thinking about just the girl body and how it transforms so spectacularly.

Even if you don't have a wacky thyroid, like, over the course of your life, you have to live in all these different bodies. So that was the first. thing I was thinking of. I loved being a little girl. I felt so strong. I won all the presidential fitness. It was amazing, you know, and then all of a sudden it's like, at least that's what it felt like to me.

So I was thinking about that and I think that at that same time I started to say I was reading Madame Bovary and I started to think about her as a character and wondered what would happen if a woman had written that book, wondered if she was just bored. I wondered if she was a creative person who was sort of stuck.

So those things kind of came together and really made me sit down and start writing. Other than that, I can't truly tell you where it all came from. I don't know. 

Zibby: And had you always wanted to write a novel? Was that a goal? 

Sarah: Yeah, yeah. I have tried a few times. I wrote many years ago when I turned 40, I have a family scrapbook that's super intriguing and I wrote a very bad novel about the woman that the scrapbook is about and tried to tell it in that way.

So I think I'm always interested in just sort of the experience of women in the world and in the ways that like mothers and daughters interact. I think that's really fascinating. Yeah. 

Zibby: And you said a minute ago, but it got cut off a little bit. 

Sarah: Oh, no. 

Zibby: How you felt, this was before, but how you felt as your own body was changing and fitness and all that.

Could you just tell that piece again? 

Sarah: Oh, sure. So actually the opening scene of the novel is It's sort of inspired by something that I remember very vividly as a child because I was, I don't know if I got caught off, but I was talking about the presidential fitness tests and how I loved them because I won them all the time and I loved them.

Zibby: This is like push ups and sit ups and all that? 

Sarah: Yeah, and you keep on the mile. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Sarah: You do. And, and in the Texas public schools, these were a very big deal. So when I was little, I loved them. And when I, I think when it, between third and fourth grade. You know, things started shifting and moving. And all of a sudden I didn't win anymore and had like all kinds of things happening.

And I just didn't have that like strong little girl body anymore. And I can remember standing in a field next to my house and being like, what has happened and like trying to run really fast and trying to figure out if I could still run really fast. So for me, that was like a sad experience. It wasn't. It didn't feel magical and wonderful because I watched all my friends who were boys get bigger and stronger.

And I was like, wait a minute, what's happening. And then, you know, over the course of my life, obviously, you know, you have babies, all kinds of things happen to your body and meanwhile, I feel like. Watch my husband. I'm like, what? You just get to just be nothing happens to you. You don't grow milk ducks like that.

I'm nice for you, you know, so it just felt not magical, but maybe like a little bit of a betrayal of the body. And I'm very grateful, obviously, for what I have in my good health, but I also I also think there is that selfishness in me that I wanted to write about. 

Zibby: Interesting. So one of the perspectives is as a new mother from Bee and her life today, and then you go back in time.

And by the way, the, the craft involved in the multiple perspectives and timelines, how did you do that? And like, how did you decide that that was the way to tell the story and how did you execute it? 

Sarah: Well, there's a line in the novel that is really just me talking about what it felt like to tell the story.

And it's, I'm going to get it wrong, and it's my own novel, but it's something like the story is rotating slowly in a liquid darkness. And that's kind of what stories feel like to me, they have all these different parts to them. And I think probably because I'm a teacher, and I'm just very aware of trying to make the experience in the room as common as it can be, but also being aware that there are.

Just, you know, if you have 15 kids in the room, they're having 15 different days and experiencing the room in 15 different ways. So I'm, I'm, I'm very aware of that in just my lived experience. And I think to tell the story, I really felt like. You know, the problem with the women in the novel is that they, they think they understand the story as we all like to think we understand the story, but that it needed all these different perspectives in order for that point to become clear that, that we don't know everybody's story and that we have to listen and we have to be open, right, to, to what other people are living.

Craft wise it was hard. I, you know, I, you know, I, I wanted Bee to be in the present time. But then there was a desire to have her speak in the past, which would have been a mess. It was just kind of, it just took a lot of discipline and sort of clarity of purpose, I think, to make it. And I hope it was successful, but I can thank Bridie, my editor, for that as well.

But, uh, you know, you have to really keep your eye on what it is that you mean to do if you're going to mess around with multiple perspectives, that's for sure. 

Zibby: Well, it was, you know, from an execution standpoint, it was so well done. You are such a great writer. I mean, I remember reading even the first draft and oh my gosh, you're, you're, you're just so talented.

So it's amazing. I'm not surprised that it's gotten so much, so much praise and, and all the rest. Can we go back for a second to the experience of what happened to your daughter? And I'm so sorry that that happened, but you were like, oh, you know, nobody knew it was happening and blah, blah, blah. But I feel like that would, derail my life in such a big way to have that panic and anytime anything happens to a kid, especially something you can't figure out, like everything it like, you feel it in your own body so much. Like tell me what that whole experience was like and how can you, can you talk about that anymore? 

Sarah: Sure. Yeah. Well, You're only as happy as your unhappiest child, right?

Zibby: Mm-Hmm. 

Sarah: It was hard 'cause it was right after covid. So we had that, our school was open during Covid, so my daughter was in ninth grade going to school, wearing a mask, trying to, you know, be a ninth grader and then this happened and it was hard because her pediatrician sort of said, well, you know, it's anxiety or she's anorexic.

And I was like, no, no girl loves to eat and like not to offend your professionalism. But I work with lots of teenagers and I know, I know why you're saying that, but that's not what this is. So it just took maybe longer than it should have to sort of solve. And once it was solved, it was quickly solved.

Right. And it's sort of an, an, an easy fix minus seven million times going to the doctor. So it, it ended up being fine and she's a pretty determined person. She had a hip surgery last year. She's not a lot of things, but she, you know, she would wear this heart rate monitor for field hockey and like, you know, have to go sit down and she was just very determined to do everything.

So I wasn't worried in, in that way. I was more just sort of frustrated. Cause I was just watching her shrink and she's, you know, she's five 11. She's not a small girl. So I was like, what, somebody needs to fix this. She's quite athletic and she couldn't do the things that she, she loved. So, so yeah, it was hard, but it was more just sort of bizarre, you know, to watch.

It was just bizarre. I can't explain to you. And then I started thinking, maybe, maybe the thyroid is my problem. Maybe everybody should check their thyroid. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. My, I am like, I have had my thyroid tested so many times that my, my husband makes a joke of it and. 

Sarah: But yeah, that all of us have. Something like that going on.

Zibby: Wow. 

Sarah: It's wobbly, right? 

Zibby: Yeah, a little bit, yeah. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: You know, it goes to your point of the betrayal of, of the body and how it's all out of our control. I mean. 

Sarah: Mm hmm. Right? 

Zibby: Not only do we become nursing moms and have all this stuff happen, but then, you know, even on a good day, Is anything really consistent and what can we do?

What can we do with that? So you have, uh, you have so many things in the book. You have moms who live across the street from each other and have pursued very different paths in life, which is another one of these relationships. I mean, all of these different threads, it's almost like a grid. I want to, like, draw the connections of all the different, really important relationships in the book.

But those two who live across the street and, you know, raise their kids together, but have very different outlooks on life. Professionalism versus stay at home, like their own sort of tense relationship and how that evolves over time. Tell me about May and, what's her other, what's the other name? Oh my god.

Sarah: We have Diana. We have Mary. We have.. 

Zibby: Mary and Diana. Okay. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Zibby: Tell me about, tell me about Mary and Diana and what you were trying to do with that juxtaposition. 

Sarah: So that sort of came out of the Madame Bovary thing, I was thinking it was just sort of three different versions of, of women. And so Diana is sort of based on my father's a classics professor and he always was bringing home, you know, academics when I was a kid.

And I think, you know, cocktail parties at the house with a bunch of classicists. So fun. But, uh, so that really Diana comes from me just sort of eavesdropping on those people, those experiences. And Mary is, well, my mother did say to me the other day, if there's a movie, I'd like to be played by Meryl Streep.

I was like, mom, you're not in the book, but my mother believes herself to be in the book because it is true that she would sit on the back porch and smoke cigarettes.

But that's just like another, you know, just the sort of a woman who do to, you know, choices she made when she was very young, you know, is living this life that, you know, is, is abhorrent to her really. And the, the sort of the sickness that that kind of unhappiness can cause, I think. So yeah, so they're just these different versions of women who, whose creative lives have been sort of curtailed and in various ways who, who feel like it's either this or that, you know, which I don't personally feel though.

I can understand it for sure. I was not writing anything when my children were small. Right. So. It's very hard and I don't know how people do that, but yeah, so I can understand absolutely how they, how they feel. 

Zibby: And then talk a little more about Gus and what happens to a group of three and how all of that can, you know, talk more about that.

Sarah: It's making me go back to the other question about how did I pull these all together. I'm like, there's a lot of threes. 

Zibby: There are a lot. There are a lot of threads. But they're great. They're so vivid. And yeah. Yeah. 

Sarah: So that to me was sort of thinking about. The way that your relationships change as you grow older, partly the way that it's really hard to maintain friendships with people who, who knew you as a child.

I have one very dear friend who I'm so excited will be in Philadelphia at my event that I've known since I was born, but people sort of slough away. Right. And just thinking about how you can think you know the reason for that, but you might not. And you can think you know everything about the house you grew up in, but you might not.

And, but mainly it was about, like I said before, the idea of, of the importance of really listening, not just bumbling along and thinking that you know something, but really listening. Gus is so sad. Gus doesn't want to tell his story and Leo doesn't want to betray him. And it's an awful story that he has.

And there's. You know, he's a hard person, but there's like a nobility to him that that I appreciate. And I think it's It's part of that story of, of sort of refiguring your relationships with people as you grow older, if those relationships are valuable to you. 

Zibby: So what do you want readers to take away once they put down The Undercurrent?

Sarah: I want them to think and pay better attention to the people in their lives. That's sort of a high calling for the book, but I think that would be the best thing. And I also think just to consider for mothers, how truly transformative that experience is. I think it's such a common experience and an ordinary experience, you know, in that so many people do it that I think we don't necessarily register how much change it really requires in a person. My mother always says beware of life events that require parties. It's like, if you need a party thrown by women, you know, you're in trouble. But it's sort of, it's, it's a little bit true. It is hard and I can't think of anything that I've done that has been harder.

And it certainly was in the easiest possible circumstances with lots of people who love me and nobody's hungry and all that. So I think that that is important just to register. And I think for If you were a mother reading the story to feel that you don't maybe have to ascribe to the maybe obsessive positive talk about motherhood, it's like, it's okay to be bad at it or not love every minute or and I think that's better for your kids if you're not trying to be perfect or superhuman or something as the cultural narrative would have it, but yeah.

Zibby: Yeah, that's what I was so in a way is the disappearance of the girl actually you. 

Sarah: I think it's I think it's any Girl, right? I think the other thing I didn't say at the beginning when you were asking about the Inspirations for the book is that my husband and I watched so much television during kovat one thing we watched so much of was British detective shows and every Every time there's a girl disappearing, there's a fascination with that.

And I think the fascination is because it's has metaphorical possibility, right? The girl in you does disappear. And like, how do you do her there? I loved being eight, right? I loved being strong and feeling like I could do anything. And I try to keep that with me. I try to keep that kind of, I don't know, confidence before you feel the The Buffets of the world, you know, but yeah, I think, yeah, absolutely.

For sure. 

Zibby: Well, launching a book is one of those life events that has a party. 

Sarah: So not, not, not just thrown by women. 

Zibby: Not just thrown by women. Okay. All right. So that's the caveat, I guess. When you think about like the people you're going to meet and getting this book out into the world and what some of the goals are, like, what would, what are your grand visions?

What would you like to have happen from this point forward? 

Sarah: Well, I don't know. My friend, Debra Emmergut, who is great, once had like an event at her house and she, her, you know, female artists in the valley where I live and, um, she talked at that event about equanimity because I think that's really, my personally, my goal is just to sort of enjoy and I don't have any expectations for how it will go just because I have learned in the course of this process that, you know, you could write world's best novel and nobody might like it or, right or buy it or whatever. And those are, those are industry issues, right or, or something, and it's a bit mysterious, all of that. So I don't have any expectations for how it will go. I am really glad and grateful that. People who read it seem to like it. My, my colleague who was reading it last week, he kept coming every day.

He was like, I've got it. I've got it. Leo, every day he would come with like a new theory, which was, he was the very best kind of reader, so engaged. He was quoting sentences to me. And it was so, so to me, that's, I mean, that's amazing. And I didn't write it thinking that anybody would ever read it. I just wrote it to write it.

So I think. Yeah, I think my expectations are to enjoy myself and meet people and see, see what this is all about. 

Zibby: Amazing. If you could go back and do the writing of this book over again, would you have changed anything? Would you like have started it years ago? Would you have like just knowing where you've ended up today?

Sarah: I think maybe because I teach writing, I don't really think that there's a perfect final version of anything. It just sort of is finished when the forces around you say it's finished. I think if it weren't to be published, I would still be finished tinkering with it, just because I think that, you know, at some certain point, the story is behind you, right?

And you're not in it anymore. I think I would have maybe, and just in terms of the way I wrote it, the actual nitty gritty of the pieces, there were so many charts and color coding and all kinds of things. And like, you know, if you, one character's wearing a sweater on page two and you change that, then you got to change, I'll find all the sweaters and change it.

It's like, it's like really, so I think I maybe would try to be more methodical, but I think that might just be how I am. I don't know. 

Zibby: And how much has what you're reading with your students or just for fun, how much does that inspire? I know with Madame Bovary, you said obviously it did and there was a direct connection, but how, talk about sort of the influences of some of the books in your life and especially the ones you delve deep into.

Sarah: So I, really love simplicity in prose, and I love prose that is not afraid to try to be both simple and kind of luminous. I think that is really hard to do, and so that's kind of what I try to do, and what I really love when I see it. I've read Gilead and all those books, and I think those are just perfect, um, in terms of their construction or A ton of French, I love for, I mean, they're a different flavor of book, but for a similar reason, I think they're very precise and simple and clear and very complex at the same time, which, which I really appreciate.

I like novels that think about time, I think. Maybe that's obvious, but I really love Emma Cline and I think her too. The girls and then the guests treat time so differently and I was sort of amazed by that and I love those. So yeah, I'm always just sort of, I'm, I'm a pretty avid reader, um, and so I'm always just kind of looking for.

Things that I like and then thinking about because I've very kind of strong gut reactions to things and then trying to consider why I like them. And usually the answer is that kind of combination of simplicity and beauty or complexity. If that answers your question. 

Zibby: That answers my question. And do you have advice to aspiring authors?

Sarah: Oh, I don't know. I mean, I think for me, the hardest thing is just sitting, right? So if that is your particular problem, I have advice, which is just to like, you know, the Pomodoro situation. I really, I set timers. I'm like, I'm only sitting for an hour. It is okay. You know, even right now I'm standing, like, I really, I really have trouble.

I have trouble sitting, which makes it hard to type. But I think the best advice I've received that I would pass on is just to know that the writing is the fun part, right? So that sort of playing in the sandbox and, and focusing and thinking deeply about something is really fun. And, you know, Trying to get to some form of expression that is pleasing to you is really fun.

So my advice would just be like, why not? You know, it's, I wouldn't have any expectations about how it's going to go, because I think those things are really complex and out of most people's control, right? But, but I think just to kind of sit and try is great. I'm organizing my with our dining services.

And, and as it turns out, two of them are writing novels, like a murder mystery about the dining services. I had a dream and I'm like, that's amazing. Like, yes, go do that thing. Cause that's the fun part is she's like, I look forward to it. When I get home from work, I sit down and I write, she's like, it's so silly.

I'm like, no, it's not. It's what anybody does. Right. Who's doing that. And some people are fortunate to do it, you know, for, for their life. And that's, That's amazing, but I think most people are not, right? So most people need to kind of wedge it in where they can because it brings them joy. Yeah, I would say.

Zibby: Is there a character in here you miss the most now that the book is done? 

Sarah: Oh, I think I like the most the one that probably nobody should like. It was Diana. I really love Diana. She's so, I don't know. I just really enjoyed writing those. parts and she's kind of mean. She's a little ruthless. She just is, I don't know, I just enjoyed her and I like those art toys so much and I was so happy to sort of stumble across them.

So yeah, I would say she's the one. 

Zibby: Amazing. 

Sarah: My secret bias lies. 

Zibby: Well, Sarah, congratulations. We're so honored to be publishing your book. It's so good, and everybody must read it. It is just amazing. You're so talented. 

Sarah: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Really talented. It's so exciting. So. Thank you so much for trusting us and very excited to be along for the ride of this one.

We'll see how it goes, right? It's already going great. All right. Well, best of luck and watch out for all those parties by women. 

Sarah: All right. 

Zibby: Okay. 

Sarah: Bye. 

Zibby: Bye.