Every Room Remembers with Author Tara Badstubner

Tara Badstubner’s debut novel deals with difficult subjects (grief after losing a spouse/depression) and centers around SJ following the loss of her husband in a tragic accident. Set between Sleepy Hollow, New York where SJ lived with her husband Wyatt and Beaufort, South Carolina where SJ travels to complete her work on the renovations of the Osprey House, we are immediately swept away into the story from the very first page.

SJ leaves behind everything she knew, including her newfound friend, Avery, who works at the local Wendy’s by night and studies for MA in family therapy by day, to return to Beaufort, her hometown.

It soon becomes clear that her husband’s dog, Hawk isn’t the only one who came along for the ride.

Join me for an inside look into Every Room Remembers in this Q&A with author Tara Badstubner, where she shares about the inspiration for the novel, how the characters continue to live on in her imagination, and an inside look into what she’s writing next.

When were you first inspired to write your debut novel, Every Room Remembers?

My interest in exploring grief from both sides, the living and the dead, first started during COVID. Like so many people, I was feeling overwhelmed by the barrage of loss: the images, the news. I was in a tough place mentally, and a good friend suggested that instead of trying to control or ignore my fears, I write about them through the guise of a fictional character. That character became SJ Monroe, my protagonist, a woman whose world is turned upside down in a single afternoon.

The novel is set between Sleepy Hollow, NY and Beaufort, SC. What is the significance of the settings you chose?

The name Sleepy Hollow captured my imagination. It represents a kind of “before”: a quiet, happy existence, a sort of Garden of Eden, and then SJ is cast out of her idyllic life in one afternoon.

Beaufort is a town rich in history, with roots reaching back to the sixteenth century. All those lives lived, the heartbreaks and triumphs, in such a small area create a kind of compressed energy that took my breath away the first time I visited. The veil between the living and the dead feels especially thin there, and many locals have a ghost story they’ll gladly share. It felt like a fitting place for Rose, a woman who easily straddles both worlds.

Tell me about the research process for the book.

My main goal was to take an unflinching look at grief, especially in the early days of loss. I didn’t want to minimize it in a rush to move the story along, so I read memoirs to better understand the textures of loss. Beyond that, I researched Beaufort’s history and folklore, as well as its architecture. I enjoy any excuse for research.

How did you decide on the signs from the natural world that are revealed to SJ throughout the book?

I knew early on that there was a fox in my story, but the reason wasn’t immediately apparent. Once I realized Wyatt was a ghost, I became interested in animals that serve as harbingers of things to come or symbolize a kind of duality, the physical and the spiritual. Each animal appears at an important turning point in the novel, but it’s up to the reader to decide how it informs the narrative.

What was the hardest scene to write (or) the scene you enjoyed writing the most?

Some of the Wyatt scenes were difficult to write because I wanted to keep him an observer rather than an agent of action, which limited his influence on events. Still, I wanted to explore the idea of a grieving ghost. Wyatt’s epiphanies about his life, seen in hindsight, felt just as valuable to me as SJ’s growth.

Which character from the book did you feel the closest to while writing?

There are aspects of Wyatt’s personality that I understood intuitively, without any effort. But both SJ and Wyatt are very real to me, as real as anyone I know well.

When the book concludes, was it hard to leave the characters behind, or do you feel like their lives had turned out exactly as they should?

I spent so much time in SJ and Wyatt’s world that even now, with the novel long finished, they live on in my imagination. But the ending felt like a kind of discovery, even for me. I was quite a while into the writing before I understood that the fox would appear once more in those final paragraphs, and it surprised me in the best sense.

Are you currently working on your next novel, and if so, can we get a sneak peek?

I’ve finished the first draft of my next novel, and it’s waiting patiently for me to return to it. Adult siblings Tennyson and True spend a long weekend together recounting the strange events of a childhood summer, when the backwoods of their Massachusetts home were inhabited by their late father’s nomadic college friends. Decades later, the summer of 1983 continues to shape their individual lives and their powerful bond.