Wendy Walker Author of Don't Look for Me Joins SI Recap

 

Don’t Look For Me is a thrilling novel about a woman who is lost, in more than one way. Despondent, depressed, steeped in self-blame, self-loathing, and surrounded by a family who supports her in both, Molly does not know how to proceed. She gets stranded near a gas station, and reluctantly accepts the help from a stranger and a young girl who reminds her of her lost daughter. Molly goes missing. 

            

Wendy Walker joined our group ready to tell us about her process, challenges, and inspiration while writing Don’t Look For Me. Driving back from her son’s soccer game, Wendy saw a road at a gas station. For a moment, just a single moment, the weight of being a parent, of watching her children now old enough to endure the harshness of the world, led to a prick of a thought to just go down that road and leave everything behind. The thought faded as quickly as it had sparked, but her entire ride home, her writing brain took lead. She researched that impulse that leads to bar fights, suicide, road rage, and a story started to form.

 

In the early stages of the story, Molly was having an existential crisis, but editing forced Wendy to give Molly real tragedy; the loss of a child, a loss she had been part of. So Annie was created, and promptly killed in a terrible car accident, where Molly was driving. Wendy uses this to create the tragic landscape of Molly’s life. Molly blames herself, her husband blames her, her children blame her, even the dogs blame her, even if no one is out right saying it. Molly feels her grief and her family’s grief and blame in her body.

 

Wendy uses perspective chapters to tell her story, allowing readers to know things characters don’t. She found her Nicole chapters to be much harder to write, with action, clues,  red herring characters, and everyone inching closer and closer to Molly. The Molly chapters were easier, filled with Molly’s reflections and quiet suspense.

 

If you found the Alice character unsettling, you were meant to. She is a child deprived of properly developing social and empathy skills. As readers, we watch her interact with Molly the best she can, her aching frustration a testament of how social isolation and gas lighting have terrible long-term effects. 

 

If you enjoyed Don’t Look For Me like we did, be on the look out for Wendy’s next book, coming out in June 2023, about a detective who saves a man’s life, only to have him stalk her. It’s a Wendy Walker thriller, so there will be far more to the story, but you’ll have to read it to find out!

 

While you wait, Wendy recommends Girl A by Abigail Dean. 

Posted by book lover: Jessie T.