In search of a 'Lost Boy': Westerly novelist Juliet Grames explores rustic Calabrian mystery in 1960

If you're one of those global travelers who seeks out obscure and otherworldly destinations in Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast, you'll want to visit Santa Chionia, a charming but remote village located in Calabria's Aspromonte mountains at the very southern tip of Italy. It's rustic, antiquated, mysterious and … well, troubled.The problem is, Santa Chionia only exists in 1960, and no travel agent can help you. The only way to get there is through Juliet Grames' wonderful new novel "The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia." It's an adventure well worth taking and Grames, whose first book, "The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna," vaulted her to critical and popular stardom, has spun out an immersive, literary mystery that seizes assured control of the reader's five senses. It's that evocative — and also funny as hell.The story is narrated by Francesca Loftfield, a 27-year-old native of Philadelphia and a PhD dropout. After the heart-crushing development that caused her to flee her husband in Venice, she moves to Santa Chionia to start a nonprofit nursery school on behalf of a charity group. Shortly after she arrives, a flood wipes out the bridge and destroys the post office — under which had been buried the skeleton of a young man.Though Francesca is treading cautiously in this strange town where the Church and the mafia — or at least their real or imagined intimidation factors — loom large and townsfolk are cautious about her outsider status, she's also one of very few people who can read and write.There's also no doctor and only one traffic patrolman to provide any forensic or investigative acuity so, when two different women approach Francesca asking for help in identifying the skeleton — each of whom believes the remains are a missing loved one — she's intrigued. It's in her nature, after all, to help people.Looking for cluesPlus, as the reader discovers, there's a pesky, impetuous sleuthing quality to Francesca that she'd probably deny — but which refreshingly begs comparisons to classic amateur detectives like Nancy Drew or Miss Marple. And when Francesca's elderly landlord/roommate, the initially irascible Cicca Casile, becomes complicit, the pair is reminiscent of great crime-solving duos throughout literature.For purists of either literary or crime fiction, this fusion works terrifically."It was a great joy to pack the book with genre homage, including the Francesca-Cicca investigating duo relationship. I very much hope Francesca satisfies fans of famous amateur sleuths," Grames said in a phone conversation Tuesday. She was on a train traveling from New York to Boston, connecting back-to-back dates on a just-started "Lost Boy" promotional tour that extends into September. The junket brings her on Monday to the United Theatre in Westerly — which, coincidentally, is home. Grames is a Hartford native, and she and her husband, Soho Press publicity director Paul Oliver, moved to the Westerly area in 2018 after several years in New York City.Helluva day gigDespite the writerly qualities of "Stella Fortuna" and "Lost Boy," the latter of which is out from Knopf, arguably the world's most elite literary publishing house, Grames has a fondness for mystery fiction that isn't just a hobby. She's the longtime editorial director at Soho, the independent publisher known for superb crime fiction, and has worked with several of their writers in her career.James Benn, the former Chester resident and author of the popular Billy Boy World War II mysteries, knows Grames well. "Juliet was my editor when she first came to Soho," he said, "and she was an absolute joy to work with. She combines a sharp and incisive mind with joyful good humor — even as she wields a wickedly effective red pen. She's an amazing writer, too. I loved 'The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna' and can't way to start 'The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia.'"If the quick success of "Stella Fortuna" was exhilarating to Grames, the subsequent expectations for her next manuscript presented demands. "It's been really hard," she admitted, "but also very gratifying. I love my day job, if you want to call it that, and I don't want to give it up. I make sure to have time for my writing and my time for Soho. I need a clear head for the intellectual property of my authors, and I would never leave them behind.A delicate balance"I don't think I was expecting the first book to do as well, so suddenly the stakes were pretty high to deliver the next book. But my publisher has been very supportive, and Soho has been accommodating about my workload, so I've been able to separate my writing time and my editing time.""Not only is Juliet a brilliant writer, she's an excellent publisher," said Luanne Rice, the bestselling Old Lyme novelist who has shared panels with Grames in the past and hosted a "Lost Boy" event Friday in South Glastonbury. "She creates complex characters and takes us to seductive settings, and understands the process and the business — how intense it is — and it's important to her to be incredibly kind and supportive to other writers."If the whodunit — and whydunit — aspects of "Lost Boy" provide a slow-build narrative tension, the novel is bewitching on several levels. It's a complex examination of a little-explored Italian subculture at a point when the new modernity enjoyed by much of the world was slow to arrive, if at all, to such an isolated outpost. Too, Grames captures the distinct disparities between men and women and the wealthy and poor, and does so through a large cast of characters richly developed with depth, empathy and complexity.It's all in the preparationThis is decidedly NOT the sort of book that could be written in free form abandon where the writer had a general idea and blasted off, letting the narrative and characters evolve during the process. Grames plots out every possible detail before she writes one word of the manuscript. In the case of "Lost Boy," this amounted to 200,000 words in a "bible" that contains answers to every question, story points, and detailed character backstories."I know every bit of the plot ahead of time, and I do an amazing amount of research," Grames said. "I do years of advance work and, to tell you the truth, that's the fun part. I love to read and learn." She laughed. "I claim to be a writer, but it's really just an excuse to do those other things."Hard to picture itInasmuch as Santa Chionia is entirely fabricated, and the action takes place street by street and house by house, Grames literally made a fake Yahoo map of the community.It's also amazing to learn Grames has Aphantasia, a rare characteristic some people have that means they don't have visual imagination."I literally can't picture an apple or whatever in my mind," Grames said. "I love verbal descriptions in books because I can't picture stuff."This explains why her descriptive powers are so lush, but to pull them off, Grames cuts out little pictures of paper of images or images of people who look like her characters and tapes them to her wall."I felt very stupid," she laughed. "My husband said, 'You're gonna take the paint off the wall.' I said, 'It's my office, so YOU don't have to worry about that.'"People with Aphantasia often don't even know they have it — what experience would they have to compare it to? — so Grames doesn't regard the situation as a particular obstacle, anymore than what she perceives as lacking the ability to make people laugh. Readers who get to know Francesca will learn early on that Grames is hilarious.Be more funny"I don't think I'm very funny," Grames said. "But I WANT to make people laugh. I had a lot of goals with this book and a lot of axes to grind, and the best way to grind them is if people are enjoying themselves. In a lot of the books that I love the most are books on serious topics but where the author can also make you laugh."Importantly — and astonishingly — Grames originally envisioned Francesca as an Italian native of Santa Chionia, and the narrative would be third-person."I'd written 60,000 words, then threw it out," Grames said. "I had this other voice banging away inside my head and it was much more amusing and was able to make comments to the reader. I didn't feel I had the facility in Italian to pull that off in first person. I took a break and rebuilt the backstory and it hit me: this is not an Italian story; it's an American story set in Italy. And the whole tone and some of the focus of the book shifted. And it was OK to give it up."Unsettling parallelsOne final component to "Lost Boy" is very important to Grames, and she handled it with indelible eloquence. The reader might well infer parallels between events in the book and the political and cultural situations going on in the world right now. They're there, and they're definitely intentional."The historical scenarios and conflicts in the book are all natural allegories for what's in the news right now," Grames said. "Francesca's core dilemma is something I think about every day, how to be a good person and how to do the right thing when the structures around you are flawed and crumbling. I hope she inspires readers not to give up hope, to keep finding ways to ignite compassion and energy."