Debbie Levy is the author of the much-lauded The Year of Goodbyes: A True Story of Friendship, Family, and Farewells, and now Imperfect Spiral, a different and engaging new novel about finding out who you are in the face of tragedy and beyond.
Danielle Snyder’s summer job as a babysitter takes a tragic turn when Humphrey, the five-year-old boy she’s watching, runs in front of oncoming traffic to chase down his football. Immediately Danielle is caught up in the machinery of tragedy: police investigations, neighborhood squabbling, and, when the driver of the car that struck Humphrey turns out to be an undocumented alien, outsiders use the accident to further a politically charged immigration debate.
Wanting only to mourn Humphrey, the sweet kid she had a surprisingly strong friendship with, Danielle tries to avoid the world around her. Through a new relationship with Justin, a boy she meets at the park, she begins to work through her grief, but as details of the accident emerge, much is not as it seems. It’s time for Danielle to face reality, but when the truth brings so much pain, can she find a way to do right by Humphrey’s memory and forgive herself for his death?
YOUNG ADULT: What is your earliest memory involving writing?
Debbie Levy:
When I was seven years old, I wrote my first book, Little Red Train, and my mom and I mailed it off to a publisher—Scholastic Book Club. Hooray, I’m going to be an author! Every month, when we got the book club newsletter/order form at school, I looked for the listing for my book. It was never there. (Surprise.) We never heard from Scholastic Book Club, so I can’t show you my little red train book, but it was similar to the next book I wrote (also when I was seven), calledSomething Happens To Tuggy. That one I can show you, as my mother kept a fistful of my early efforts. Here’s an interior page:
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What is different about Imperfect Spiral?
DL:
For me, Imperfect Spiral is different because it’s my first novel for young adults. For readers, I think what’s distinctive about the book is the character of five-year-old Humphrey—I admit, I love him wholeheartedly—and the unlikely friendship that develops between him and protagonist Danielle Snyder, his babysitter for one fateful summer.
YA: What do you hope younger readers will take away from this sobering and intense story?
DL: Besides the pleasure of spending some time with characters they really like, I hope they take away the proposition that connection—friendship—can be found in unexpected places. It can transcend age and it can transcend death. A friendship cut short can be the most important friendship of a person’s life, and a transformative friendship—for both parties—nothing can take it away.
YA: How did the idea for this book arise? What were your major influences?
DL: Imperfect Spiral began with the characters. I started thinking about a character, a teenage girl who feels, as teenagers often do, that she is impossibly peculiar. And she is, in fact, peculiar, but only a little bit, as so many of us are. She’s socially awkward. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but who is? The unfortunate thing about her—I eventually named her Danielle—the unfortunate thing about Danielle is that she’s stuck. Around her, friends and classmates are blossoming. But Danielle is so concerned about what sheisn’t—not a go-getter like her best friend, not a rebel like her brother—that she’s not really growing into what she is. I wanted something to happen to her that would shake her out of this state, that would prompt her to become more engaged in her own life, because that’s part of her problem: she’s not fully engaged in her own life.
I thought it would be helpful for Danielle to come to see herself reflected in the eyes of someone else, but not a love interest someone else (although eventually there is a love interest in her life), so I came up with a little boy. A great little boy, who is also a little bit peculiar and wonderfully and completely unaware of this. Who thinks Danielle is absolutely the greatest. And who can make it clear to the reader how great she is. I named that boy Humphrey. And then. . . . Humphrey died. At my hands, obviously.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
DL: Coffee at my desk. A quick check of email and social media; mental notes of what to respond to or post later. But if I’m working on a manuscript, or even if I’m just messing around with ideas, this is my time to focus. My dog has developed a convenient routine where, after her breakfast, she’s content to lie around cat-napping for a couple of hours, so I have her company and that of the cat. (Who is also cat-napping, of course.) I’m not really a morning person when it comes to sociability, but this is my best time for writing. Everything that happens after around 11 a.m. is far less predictable.
YA: Besides the classic ‘never give up’, what advice would you give to aspiring young writers today?
DL:
I know you know the answer: Read. Read widely. When you find books that you love, try to understand what makes them work so well.
DL:
In December, We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song, comes out from Disney Hyperion (which is also my publisher for the book that came out before Imperfect Spiral, The Year of Goodbyes.) It’s a picture book, with beautiful collage-type illustrations from the talented Vanessa Brantley-Newton, that traces the life of this iconic song from slavery days to the present for very young readers.
YA: What other authors, YA or otherwise, do you idolize? Or, what YA books are on a pedestal for you?
DL: Highest on the YA pedestal for me is To Kill A Mockingbird.
Danielle Snyder’s summer job as a babysitter takes a tragic turn when Humphrey, the five-year-old boy she’s watching, runs in front of oncoming traffic to chase down his football. Immediately Danielle is caught up in the machinery of tragedy: police investigations, neighborhood squabbling, and, when the driver of the car that struck Humphrey turns out to be an undocumented alien, outsiders use the accident to further a politically charged immigration debate..jpg)
YOUNG ADULT: What is your earliest memory involving writing?
YA: How did the idea for this book arise? What were your major influences?