ABOUT THE AUTHOR: CAROLINE KETTLEWELL

I only ever wanted to be a writer. Perhaps this is because I come from people who are both bookish and wordy, often simultaneously. Perhaps it is because I grew up in the South, where impractical romanticism seeps into your pores, inspired by Flannery O’Connor and Stanley Kowalski’s heaving, sweaty passion, and you imagine that spending whole days at a time wrestling a single paragraph into submission is a respectable pursuit for an adult.

But I was born in the North, to Northern parents, and even an entire childhood spent amidst a Faulknerian landscape of honeysuckle and simmering repressions couldn’t overcome my native Yankee pragmatism. A good Yankee begins her first piggy bank in kindergarten with an eye towards retirement planning for the next 65 years. I knew that a writer’s life would be all about budget-brand macaroni-and-cheese and dunning notices from my creditors...