Guessing Game

Sara Foster’s second novel, Beneath the Shadows, has been brewing for a decade. She explains to me that it began with an idea for the central character, Grace Lockwood.

“Grace was a combination of a range of vulnerabilities that were going on in my life at the time. It was a horrible year – 2001 – with lots of things going wrong. I just started to imagine this incredibly vulnerable woman – who was really determined and gutsy as well.”

Pictured: Sara Foster

 Since 2001, Foster has been rather gutsy herself. She has gone from “writing quietly in the background” to having her debut novel, Come Back to Me, published by Random House Australia. She has married, relocated from the U.K to Western Australia, and given birth to a daughter. But through all the years and all the adjustments, the character of Grace was never forgotten: “She just waited, and I think it did a lot of good, because she had that chance to grow and develop.”

What eventuated is Beneath the Shadows: a mystery-suspense novel so thrilling it forces you to burn the midnight oil. “So many books are written now to keep you turning the pages. The challenge of trying to do that is exciting,” Foster tells me, adding: “I love to keep people guessing.”

The novel begins with Grace and her husband Adam, who have traded their busy London lives for the quietness of fictional Roseby – a small, isolated village in the Northern Yorkshire moors. A week later, Adam goes missing. The action of the novel takes place one year later, when Grace returns with their baby daughter to tie up loose ends, and to discover the truth behind Adam’s disappearance.

It’s not surprising to learn that Foster is familiar with the Northern Yorkshire Moors, as the descriptions of the physical setting are one of the most authentic and convincing parts of the novel: “My husband’s family come from there. So I have spent a lot of time there, a lot of Christmases, a lot of winters.”

Foster’s choice of setting is also ideal for creating suspense: “I was brought up in the suburbs, where there were street lights everywhere, and it’s never that dark, where as there – dark is black. You can’t see anything. It’s so quiet as well. Any noise you hear is magnified by the silence.” In Beneath the Shadows, Foster has fun with these silences – scaring her leading characters with loudly ticking grandfather clocks, creaking floorboards and randomly slamming doors.

Such spookiness is reminiscent of the haunting classics – such as Wuthering Heights and Rebecca – that Foster devoured as a teenager: “They obviously made a big impact on me – at times when I was feeling angsty and dark and all those kinds of things. And they’ve all stayed with me, Rebecca in particular.”

As for future projects, Foster has been cooking up some ideas: “They’re very fluid that the moment, but I’m hoping the next thing I do is a bit of a love story by the sea, with a woman who has a mysterious past.”

Beneath the Shadows is published by Random House Australia, $32.95

Foster will be appearing at bookstores and libraries all over Perth from Feb 15^th – March 24^th. Go to www.sarafoster.com.au/events/ for details.

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