At the beginning of last year I spoke with Kim Taylor Blakemore about her novel The Companion, a dark and sumptuous historical thriller set in nineteenth century New Hampshire. Her new novel, After Alice Fell, shares this same setting and roughly the same time period (1865, ten years after events of The Companion). The story follows Marion, a nurse recently returned from the war to discover that her younger sister, Alice, has died after falling from the roof of the asylum she’d been committed to in Marion’s absence. Wracked with guilt, Marion sets out to investigate her sister’s death, which she’s convinced was no accident.

Read on for my conversation with Kim Taylor Blakemore about After Alice Fell, wherein we discuss history, suspense, and the treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth century America. The last time we spoke, Kim and I were entirely unaware of the pandemic that would hit in a few months time, so it was also great catching up with her about how her writing and research process has changed in light of our new reality.

(This interview is spoiler-free!)