Cheryl Reed

About Cheryl Reed

Cheryl L. Reed is an author and journalist who has shadowed dark and mysterious characters — from cops to murder suspects, cloistered nuns to girls doing drugs. Her second novel, Map of My Escape, is a suspense about Riley Keene, a school shooting survivor turned anti-gun activist who accidentally shoots a Chicago cop and must flee to an island in northern Michigan where she eludes her trackers by using old school methods in a digital age. Reed’s debut novel, Poison Girls, is a thriller about girls from Chicago’s political families playing a deadly game involving opioids. Poison Girls won the Chicago Writers’ Association Book of the Year Award. Reed’s book of nonfiction, Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns, chronicles her bizarre journey of living with religious women in convents off and on for four years. She is a former editor and reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and many other publications. She currently splits her time between the Northern Neck of Virginia and Washington, D.C. Visit her website at: cherylreed.com.

BOOKS:

Map of My Escape (June 2024)

Poison Girls (first edition 2017, second edition 2022, Audible 2022)

Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns (hardcover first edition 2004, trade paper second edition 2010)

Your biggest literary influences:

Tana French, Donna Tartt, Jane Hamilton, Wayne Johnston and Karin Slaughter.

What readers will take away from your books:

My work as a journalist focused on subcultures. I often embedded myself in these societies that few people have penetrated. My book readers tell me that my work has authenticity, and they enjoy accessing these worlds and subcultures they previously knew nothing about. I hope readers are engaged with these aspects of my books. 

In Map of My Escape, my goal was to explore how such a pivotal event like a school shooting effects people for the rest of their lives. I also wanted to show multiple viewpoints surrounding America’s gun culture. The book provides a realistic approach to a fantasy that most people have had at one time or another: What would it be like to disappear?

What is your ideal target audience?

Thriller readers, people who like strong female lead characters, women, Midwestern folks who are interested in stories taking place in their region, anyone fascinated about running away, anyone interested in life on an island or small town.

If you had to describe your book as a cross between two well-known books, what would you say?

Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her meets Donna Tartt’s Secret History meets Jane Hamilton’s A Map of The World. 

The book that changed your life:

Jane Hamilton’s A Map of The World was very influential to me as a young writer and journalist. This intense, fast-paced literary novel focuses on a nurse who is falsely accused of molesting a teenage boy. As a young journalist I was falsely accused by crooked police of influencing young girls to do drugs in order to get a story. The police were hoping to destroy my credibility. Truth won out in my life as it did in Jane’s book, but the path to proving innocence was difficult and painful. That’s what I’m hoping to also show in Map of My Escape. Riley, the main character, realizes she won’t have a chance to prove her innocence and she runs. I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I had made Riley’s choice.

Tell us about the protagonist in your latest book, and who would play her or him if they made a movie out of your book?

Riley Keene is a tough young woman who survived a mass shooting at her high school in Chicago. Her brother was killed and surviving the shooting and that memory has affected her choices in life. She becomes an anti-gun activist, someone who often takes on the cops. But in her private life, she’s having an affair with a Republican Councilman who is a Second Amendment advocate. So, there are lots of complications in her life. 

The actress who could play her part well Ana Taylor Joy or Saoirse Ronan.

If your protagonist could befriend any character from literature, who would he or she choose?

Henry David Thoreau.

If you could write a retelling of any book and put your own spin on it, which book would you choose and why?

Thoreau’s book Walden is a great adventure and appeals to many people who wonder if they could be as self-reliant as he portrayed himself to be. I would rewrite the novel and have him really make it in the woods — without breaks — and have adventures. I would spice up the book by adding conflicts and encounters, forcing him to have to solve problems. Thoreau is somewhat discredited because he didn’t live in the woods as fully as he claims in the book and parts of the book do drag because mostly he is using the woods as a setting in order to pontificate about self-reliance.

Your favorite literary character:

One of my favorite characters, Sheilagh Fielding, is from one of my favorite books, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Sheilagh is a tart-tongued, hard-drinking journalist in Newfoundland — the book is a work of historical fiction. Sheilagh is a columnist and journalist who doesn’t shy away from challenging authorities and her writing exposes corruption.This happens at a time when women were relegated to the social event pages of the newspaper.

ARTICLES:

Female Fugitives: An Interview with Cheryl L. Reed, author of “Map of My Escape”

Former Daily Press Journalist Releases Debut Novel (Daily Press)

Book Nook: Poison Girls, by Cheryl Reed (Wyso 91.3 Book Nook)

20 Questions with Cheryl Reed (Running Wild & RIZE Presses)

Author’s View with Cheryl Reed (Running Wild & RIZE Presses)