The Alone Time by Elle Marr
What's It About?
For two sisters, confronting the past could come at a terrible price in a riveting novel about a family tragedy―and family secrets.Elle Marr was 11 years old when the small plane her father was piloting was forced to make a crash landing in the California mountains. Everyone on board survived — but, of course, the inherent trauma of such an experience lingered.
Now, many years later, Marr revisits that past fear with her latest psychological thriller, The Alone Time, the chilling story of a plane crash that nets very different results from that childhood event.
“I’d been thinking about writing a story that begins with a plane crash for years, but I didn’t feel ready for a long time,” Marr says in an interview with BookTrib. “I did have to plumb my memories and that was a surprisingly emotional experience. I have flown extensively, so I don’t let the experience bother me in that way, but I had to dig past my logical brain to revisit the emotions and the fear.”
Those feelings, along with a few technical details about the crash from her personal experience, make up the bulk of “truth” in The Alone Time. The rest, Marr assures, is very much fictionalized.
“It’s never been lost on me how lucky we were,” she says. “But I always wondered — what would happen if a plane crashed in a much less hospitable environment, and the survivors were unreachable for a certain amount of time? I’m always interested in survival stories about people who manage to cobble together some kind of happiness much later on…”
For the surviving sisters in The Alone Time, the path to “happiness” weaves its way through childhood secrets that have both bonded and separated them. The story is told through multiple points of view and bounces back and forth through time. Marr deftly explores the impact of trauma — but as loyal readers will know, this isn’t her first time tackling this topic.
“I think that fiction is escapism first and foremost, but it also provides a safe place for us to think about our own problems and compare the choices we’ve made in our lives,” she says. “It’s so interesting to have these false experiences, if you will, and explore the ‘big hurt.’ Fiction is a fun form of escapism therapy.”
For Marr, it’s also an opportunity to further explore her heritage. The Alone Time is the first book in which her primary characters are all Asian-American — and yet, the cultural aspects of Marr, and her characters’, backgrounds in this story served more to demonstrate how we are all alike, versus highlighting any differences. After all, we all must navigate personal trauma.
“Cultural identity is a matrix and crosses a whole bunch of labels,” she says. “But the most pressing need for everyone is to find stability and happiness. And this is a basic universal element readers identify with.”
The characters in The Alone Time are extremely relatable. Which, along with a chilling tale, is exactly what Marr wanted to achieve.
She says she’s empowered by the diversity she’s seeing in publishing — and hopes her book will not only entertain you, but by the gripping end, also empower you.
About Elle Marr:
Elle Marr is the author of thrillers THE MISSING SISTER (2020), LIES WE BURY (2021), STRANGERS WE KNOW (2022), THE FAMILY BONES (2023), and THE ALONE TIME (2024). She is (evidently) a fan of coffee. Her work has been featured in PopSugar, Woman’s World Magazine, CBS affiliate KOIN-TV, ABC affiliate KATU-TV, and Audible.
THE MISSING SISTER was a #1 Amazon bestseller and an Amazon Charts bestseller, while LIES WE BURY earned a Kirkus starred review, and STRANGERS WE KNOW was an Audible Most Anticipated Thriller. Publishers Weekly gave a starred review to THE FAMILY BONES, saying “Readers will be captivated from the very first page.” Her forthcoming novel THE ALONE TIME was chosen as the Amazon First Read for April 2024, while Library Journal said it has “a finale that will surprise even the most perceptive readers.”
Originally from Sacramento, Elle Marr graduated from UC San Diego before moving to France, where she earned a master’s degree from the Sorbonne University in Paris. When not working on her next book, she enjoys watching French Netflix shows with the subtitles off, in Oregon, where she lives with her family. (Photo Credit: Jana Foo Photography)
