Writer Unboxed contributer and award-winning author Barbara O’Neal (AKA Barbara Samuel) released a new novel right before the New Year. Her last book, The Lost Recipe for Happiness, was a runaway success, going back to print many times. Her latest book, The Secret of Everything, promises to be as delicious as the last.

Hungry for more? Read on.

Q: What’s the premise of your new book?

A hiking tour leader has a freak accident and remembers a long buried fact from her childhood, and while she’s healing, heads to the place of her birth to see what she can uncover. Her memory is like a shattered jigsaw puzzle she has to try to fit together, and it turns out there are a lot of secrets she has to solve before she can be whole and get on with her life.

Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?

That it’s about a strong intelligent woman with a major mistake to atone for, and her father, who has secrets he really wishes he didn’t have to reveal, and a town that’s both old and hip, and brimming with food destinations. It’s about the things that make us truly ourselves, and partly how parents shape those things. It’s also about how we survive the inevitable dark episodes in our lives to go on to live well–for me that answer usually includes food, dogs, and good sex, as well as a sense of faith in the unseen.

Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?

The challenges here are all about coming to terms with what actually IS, instead of all the things you wish could be true about your life and your past. It’s also about how flawed we all are–as parents, and human beings.

Q: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?

The headache for me with this book was finding the right setting. Tessa and her father appeared almost whole right from the start, and I had The 100 Breakfasts Cafe from the very first glimmers. I knew I wanted it to be in the mountains, with an ex-mountain biker as a main character. I knew there were threads of magic realism related to animals, and that there was a river, maybe a commune, but….

But…

I spent about two months thrashing around, writing false starts set in Colorado, first around Dillon then in Buena Vista, both towns I loved and where I’ve spent a lot of time, and in fact, the idea started when I was training and walking the Avon Walk a couple of years ago. I trained a lot around Buena Vista, and then the walk itself was between Breckenridge and Keystone, walking right through Dillon and along the lake. A no-brainer, right? I know it well, I love it, the landscape worked for my purposes…..but no matter what I did, the book would not coalesce!

Finally, one morning I was pouring out my frustration to my mother over the phone. She said something completely unrelated, and just like that, a little blast went off in the edges of my skull where I feel a book. The mountains I needed, the setting I needed, was northern New Mexico. Still very familiar, but much older, with hints of old blood spilled, and a darkness of history that Colorado simply cannot deliver, and a layering of magic that always, always, always works for me in my fiction. From that moment on, the book flowed.

Q: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book?

I thought it would be writing about breakfast and hiking, which are two of my favorite things, but the best part ended up being Natalie, the troubled 8-year-old daughter of the mountain biker. She is one of my favorite characters ever–fierce and smart and still very much 8 years old.

Readers, you can learn more about Barbara’s books on her general blog or her Barbara O’Neal site. Write on!

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