Hall Interviewed by Deborah Kalb

Longtime freelance writer and editor Deborah Kalb began her book blog Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb in 2012, and has since featured hundreds of interviews with a wide variety of authors. Kalb recently invited Meredith to discuss Beneficence.

Kalb was particularly interested in the novel’s very specific setting:

Kalb: The novel takes place on a farm in Maine. How important is setting to you in your writing?

Hall: For me, setting is inextricable from characters and events. The “where” is vital to our understanding of the Senters. They are bound to their house, their farm, the land, the barn and creek and fields, the orchard and the generations of gravestones on the hill under the pines.

This place brings them purpose in their hard work, beauty and a sense of independence and freedom, an apartness from the world. And, in the end, it helps them find their way back to the comfort and love the farm has always nurtured in them.

Read the full exchange with Kalb here.

Pre-order Beneficence here.