New from Haunted Doll House, Letitia Trent’s novel Summer Girls is a tense, unsettling, and intoxicating story of two sisters and one pivotal summer. Here, Trent answers questions posed by blog mistress Jessica L. Walsh.
JW: Can you talk about the writing process for Summer Girls? Where did the concept originate? What was the creative journey like for you?
LT: It’s been a few years since I started the book, so it’s hard to remember the exact beginning, but I believe my inspiration was a lot of cult documentaries and patterns I noticed in my therapy work with trauma clients. I had also recently read The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon, which explores faith in various ways, including through a character who joins a cult. I’ve also long loved stories that involve sisters – We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Sharp Objects, Housekeeping, The Virgin Suicides – there’s just something about that closeness, but also potential for separation in adult life or through circumstances that’s ripe for tension. I first wrote a pretty straightforward, short draft where I had most of the pieces – two girls spending the summer with their grieving aunt, an alcoholic mother, and an artist couple next door that first feel like a glimpse of some idealized life that ends up being something else completely. I then spent a couple of years figuring out exactly what this story was – I thought it might be YA at first, then quickly realized it wasn’t. I am grateful for all of my early readers and their help in shaping the novel into what it is today.
JW: Summer Girls deals throughout with the immediate and long-term impact addiction has on a family. Chelsea and Mariah carry the behavioral scars of growing up with an alcoholic parent. Can you talk about the role her mother’s addiction has in setting up Mariah for what happens later?
LT: I think her mother’s lack of presence, her inability to model a functioning adult life, and above all, the family’s isolation make Mariah and Chelsea long for something that feels solid, affectionate, and attuned. They have had to find what little bits of connection they can find, mostly in each other, but also in their aunt and her partner. Addiction exacerbates these problems, since the girls develop a habit of keeping quiet, of self-sufficiency that keeps them alive, but also keeps them even more isolated. For Mariah, what she has to look forward to after this summer of her sister’s 18th year are a few more years with her rapidly declining mother, stuck with the terrible responsibility of trying to keep her own mother alive. Her desperation for some adult to model her life after makes her vulnerable.
JW: The images of Chelsea’s later life–after the events of that one particular summer–present her as a mom who strives for a “normal” life. At times, she seems almost desperate for that. Yet the events of the novel are horrific, traumatic. If you allow yourself to imagine beyond the scope of the novel, what do you see for her down the road?
LT: Chelsea has to do the work of middle age, which is reckoning with all the loss she’s experienced and the loss to come. I see her holding less tightly to “normalcy” and more to acceptance. I wanted to give this novel a hopeful end on purpose. I’m not sure if it comes across as hopeful to everyone else, but for me, she comes to two conclusions: 1. Acceptance that she did her best with the tools she had to help her sister, even if she wasn’t perfect and couldn’t see it all until it was too late, and 2. that her gut was right, and even if she couldn’t accept it then, and she can begin to trust herself now. These lessons are hard-learned, but I think they create a looser, less tightly-wound character by the end.
JW: One question that haunts me about the novel is where to locate the point of no return. The finesse with which you write each small mistake or failure makes catastrophe seems inevitable almost from the start, though a reader would have no idea what form it will take. Do you see a decisive moment, or is the machine of destruction already at work before we even enter the story?
LT: I’m glad this is coming through in the text, because this question is central to the book for me. I don’t think there’s an answer to this, and I think that’s what makes Chelsea so anxious for normalcy, to smooth things over and make them right – she wants to avoid a point of no return, to bring everything back into order, when in truth we never know how far is too far, and often don’t even know when we’ve hit that tipping point ourselves.
I am curious about how much what happens to us shapes us. I am not a determinist, and I don’t think trauma cannot be healed or that we are doomed because of difficult childhoods. I do think that formative experiences can be a place where we either decide to dig into our habitual patterns or break from them. Mariah clings so fiercely to her idea of this summer and the people she believes Stefan and Willow to be, so much so that it becomes a defense: she has to believe in their goodness, because if she doesn’t, what does she have left? Chelsea is better able to resist illusion because she sees herself as being more realistic and is less trusting, but she’s also in an illusion. It just happens to be one that protects her against Stefan and Willow. Her illusion is that she should be able to go it alone, to do it all herself. The tragedy here is that Mariah’s idea of seeking connection and care in community is ultimately right, and if she had met different people and started to build healthy connections, then the story would be very different.
5. What are you working on now, in terms of creative pursuits or other projects?
I’m working on a novel with the tentative title of The Last Victim, which is probably my most high-concept novel, one that’s both crime and horror, my two favorite genres. I’m pretty excited about it. I’m also revisiting my watercolor painting work and working on my weird, very amateur music projects. Music is fun because I arrive at my guitar or my synths as a completely untrained musician (except for three months of frustrating guitar lessons fifteen years ago), which forces me to be uncomfortable, into beginner’s mind. I’m trying to write more on my substack, Tell Me Something Good, as well.
Summer Girls is available here.
Letitia Trent is the author of three novels, including Summer Girls and Almost Dark, and two full-length poetry collections. Her poetry and short stories have most recently appeared in Biscuit Hill, Figure 1, Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself, and Smartish Pace. Her short story “Wilderness” was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award and later appeared in Best Horror of the Year, Volume 8. She lives in a haunted Ozark mountain town with her family and works in the mental health field. She can be reached via her substack Tell Me Something Good or Bluesky.
Jessica L. Walsh is the blog mistress for Agape Editions.
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