Debut Spotlight: Hester Young

In today's debut spotlight it's my pleasure to introduce you to American author Hester Young whose debut novel The Gates of Evangeline is published here in the UK this Thursday.

Hester Young holds a Master’s degree in English with a Creative Writing concentration from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Before turning to writing full time, she worked as a teacher in Arizona and New Hampshire. She lives with her husband and two children in New Jersey.

Website: http://www.hesteryoung.com
Twitter: @hesterauthor

All families have their secrets, their tragedies, their stories. When I began writing The Gates of Evangeline, I turned to a family story that had always haunted me with its sad and eerie beauty.  

In 1956, my grandmother began to have a recurring nightmare about her four-year-old son Bobby, a child whose cognitive functions had been impaired since birth by hydrocephalus. In the dream, she’d spot Bobby through a window, falling from the floor above. When she hurried outside to him, she found only a smashed melon in his place.

One day, troubled for weeks by this dream, my grandmother left Bobby with her parents. A window was left open; somehow, Bobby fell out.  At the hospital, she learned that Bobby had not survived. His head was “crushed like a melon” from the fall, the doctor said.