Happy publication day to Katharine Britton‘s Little Island! When Joy’s family comes together for one weekend in Little Island, Maine,  Joy will discover that there is more than pain and heartbreak that binds them together, when a few simple words lift the fog and reveal what truly matters. For fans of J. Courtney Sullivan’s Maine, this multi-generational family drama will find a way into your heart.

Here, Katharine discusses her inspiration for writing Little Island:

“Every book I’ve ever read, beginning with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, has influenced me as a writer, so it’s tough to select just the few that might have influenced Little Island.

My greatest influence was not a book at all, but a weekend spent in Maine. Next door, in a rented cottage, an extended family began to gather. My husband and I had a second floor unit with a balcony, which gave me an ideal vantage point from which to observe my neighbors’ comings and goings. (Writers are notoriously nosy.) I watched family members arrive, greet one another with great enthusiasm, and then cluster on their front and back lawns and on the rocks below the cottage. As darkness fell, the men migrated onto the deck and the women into the kitchen.

The next morning, more cars arrived; by midday the driveway was empty. Later, towels had appeared on the deck to dry, and croquet wickets had sprung up on the front lawn. At dinner that night, in an adjoining dining room, our neighbors, about fifteen strong, loudly celebrated an elderly relative’s birthday or anniversary: the presumptive reason for their gathering.

Their ebb and flow reminded me of our family, which gathers annually for a reunion. We greet one another, ask the requisite questions about jobs, houses, children, and then move on to more substantive conversations, few of which are ever completed satisfactorily. The weekends comprise a series of truncated interactions over meals, games, and cups of coffee all of which leave me exhausted, but wishing we had more time. I love these fractured, somewhat chaotic gatherings, and decided to replicate one in Little Island: it would be a story about a close-knit family that gathers for a weekend on an island in Maine.

It turns out that close-knit families do not make for interesting plots. So, I gave each member of the Little family, as he or she arrives on Little Island, far more “baggage” to tote than the wheeled suitcases they roll across the threshold. Their issues become subplots that contribute to the central plot (as happens in life). Although I selected one character, Joy, to carry the through-line, I thought it important to present each family member’s story and perspective, and so wrote it from multiple points of view. Influences for this style include Barbara Kingsolver’s masterful, The Poisonwood Bible. I found it fascinating to experience that tale through the eyes and mind of each character.

It seemed logical to organize the story into three sections. “Gathering:” as each character prepares for this weekend en famille, and we see what each character is “packing” for the weekend; “Gathered,” once the family is all on the island; and “Gone,” after one character reveals a secret that fractures the rather delicate connections holding the Little family together, and each heads off in a different direction. Two of my favorite books, Julia Glass’s Three Junes and E.M. Forester’s A Passage to India, are organized in three sections, and might well have influenced my decision.

Another literary influence for the structure of Little Island was The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein. He presents his emotional story in very short chapters, which I thought would work well as a device to simulate the disjointed nature of a family gathering.

In terms of content for my book, Sue Miller’s extraordinary Family Pictures was undoubtedly an early influence. Miller’s book about how a single act (in Miller’s case, the birth of an autistic child) can disrupt a family is a theme I explored in both Her Sister’s Shadow and in Little Island. Families are systems, and what we know from Systems Theory is that a disruption anywhere affects the whole.

For inspiration about the setting, I poured over several beloved books about Maine: Here on the Island, text and photography by Charles Pratt; Exploring the Maine Coast, by Alan Nyiri; Our Point of View: Fourteen Years at a Maine Lighthouse, by Thomas and Lee Ann Szelog; and The Penninsula, by Louise Dickinson Rich.

Readers are writers and writers are readers. I usually have at least one novel in process: usually an audio book in my car and a physical or e-book beside my bed. To be completely fair, I should probably acknowledge them all.”

Pinterest PS – We were so inspired by the gorgeous cover of Little Island, we created this Pinterest board!