Map of My Escape by Cheryl Reed
Looking for a gripping, character-driven thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat? Then Cheryl L. Reed’s Map of My Escape is just what you need. It’s the story of a young woman on the run — from the law and from her traumatic past.
In high school, Riley Keane lost her younger brother in a mass shooting. Since then, she’s been an outspoken — and often arrested — anti-gun activist. This stands in stark contrast to the beliefs of her lover, right-wing Chicago politician Finn O’Farrell. Despite their political differences, the two share a deep connection — but can it withstand Riley’s sudden disappearance after her best friend, Chicago cop Reece Taylor, is shot?
You can find out more about Map of My Escape here in our full review, or read below to learn about what went on behind-the-scenes to bring this story to life.
Q: What inspired you to write this book?
A: I have watched as one mass shooting after another is covered on the news. I’ve reported on several myself as a crime reporter. But I always wondered what happened when the satellite trucks were gone and the reporters had packed up to head to the next shooting. How did the survivors move on? That’s why I’ve set the book 13 years after a high school shooting. Also, I was curious about how you could elude the police as a wanted fugitive in a digital age. I covered fugitives in my early career as a journalist, but it’s much harder now that there are so many cameras and tracking devices. And the other aspect — because I never write a book about one singular event — I’ve always been curious about islands that are cut off from the rest of the world for months at a time. I wondered what it would be like to overwinter on an island and what might you learn about yourself without the influence of the outside world.
Q: What made you decide to set the story mainly on the chilling, remote islands of Lake Superior?
A: As I mentioned above, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to hide out on an island and I thought it was a perfect place to set an insular world.
Q: Where did you find inspiration for these characters?
A: As a journalist, I’ve interviewed literally hundreds of people. And I study people. What motivates them, what drives them to act or react in a certain way. As an author, I want my characters to be interesting and, for the most part, unpredictable. Otherwise, the reader would get bored. That said, these characters are based on parts or pieces of people I know, people I’ve interviewed. I want my characters to seem real, plausible. Riley is the gutsy, fearless woman that I’ve always been inspired by. Reece is the complicated quiet guy that everyone always underestimates. And Finn is the seemingly happy guy who has a dark past.
Q: How did you balance the story’s action and suspense with the characters’ development?
A: There are lots of theories about how to intersperse interior monologues with exterior action. I think the method that works best is what emulates real life. When a character is in an action — either as the giver or the receiver — they are in the moment. But later they ruminate over what happened. The best way to shape a character is to give them an existential problem, which all these characters had in multiples.
Q: The story touches on issues of grief and the characters’ self-discovery. Can you tell us how you went about addressing these themes?
A: Early on in the book, one of the NativeAmerican islanders warns Riley: “The island does funny things to people … You want to find out what you’re made of, who you really are? Spend a winter on Angelica.” The island forces people to address who they are and their own resiliency. At the same time, I believe that unresolved grief will keep coming up until a character deals with it. That’s certainly true for these three characters. They’ve chosen paths in life specifically to deal with their grief as shooting survivors.
Q: How would you compare your book to other thrillers? Are there any books or authors that influenced you?
A: I don’t just see this book simply as a thriller. One of my readers told me that she didn’t see it as a crime novel, but rather as a human-interest story. Too many times books get labeled one genre or another because it’s easier to categorize and sell. But the reality is that there are lots of literary books that feature crimes. I think about Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History, about a group of friends who carry the story of a murder among them. I think about The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston, which is historical fiction, but whose gutsy lead female character is on par with Riley in Map of My Escape.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from this story?
A: I hope they come away with an understanding of how one pivotal event can shape the direction of the rest of our lives. Although this is not an anti-gun book, the book does look at our mass murder epidemic from multiple points of view and I hope they think about what is the answer. How do we stop these senseless acts of violence? I hope they also consider the trick our eyes play on us, how what people see may not be what is really happening: a woman shooting a gun, a man filming from a second-story window. These all turn out to be something other than what they appear to be.
Cheryl L. Reed is the author of the nonfiction book Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns and the novel Poison Girls, which won the Chicago Writers’ Association Book of the Year.
A former staff editor and reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and other publications, Reed’s stories have won multiple awards, including Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. She has twice been awarded a U.S. Fulbright Scholar fellowship, first in Ukraine and then in Central Asia. She currently lives near the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Visit her at cherylreed.com.
