The Monsters of Templeton

Willie Cooper arrives on the doorstep of her ancestral home in Templeton, New York, in the wake of a disastrous affair with her much older, married archaeology professor. That same say, the discovery of a prehistoric monster in the lake brings a media frenzy to the quiet, picture-perfect town her ancestors founded. Smarting from a broken heart, Willie then learns that the story her mother had always told her about her father is a lie. He wasn't the one-night stand Vi had led her to imagine, but someone else entirely. Someone from Templeton.

As Willie puts her archaeological skills to work digging for truth about her lineage, a chorus of voices from the town's past – both sinister and disturbing – rise up around her to tell their sides of the story. Willie discovers the curse of the Temple family runs deep. On the end, dark secrets come to light, past and present blur, old mysteries are finally put to rest, and the surprising truth about more than one monster is revealed.

Lauren Groff

was born in Cooperstown, New York, which is the model for Templetown. She has a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has won fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and Yaddo. Groff's stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and Ploughshares amongst others. She lives in Gainsville, Florida with her husband.

Lauren Groff's q & a

What sparked The Monsters of Templeton?
I was living in the San Francisco Bay area, and was lonely and homesick for Cooperstown, New York, where I was born and raised. I had just thrown out the second novel I'd written (it had failed spectacularly), and I thought that if I were to spend years and years on a project, it may as well be about something I loved passionately. Since I wanted to spend a few hours a day in Cooperstown, I began to write a story where my village was itself a character, and where I could dwell on all the legend and history and magic and beauty of my town .

Where and when is the novel set?
Monsters is set in a fictionalized Cooperstown, New York, throughout the town's two-hundred-year history. James Fenimore Cooper was one of our native sons, and when he wrote of Cooperstown, he called the town 'Templeton', which enabled him to rewrite the history of the town. I wanted to do a similar thing, and just took his idea (and many of his characters). The book is structured around a contemporary story, which is interlaced with voices from the town's past.

Do you have a favourite character in the novel?
I have two: my narrator's mother, Vivienne, who's bitter and wry and tired and a former-hippie-turned-Baptist convert, and the monster (not a scary one, but a more metaphorical one) who lives in the lake. The monster's name is Glimmey, and I miss it immensely now that the book is done.

What's your favourite children's book and why?
I have a very battered copy of the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm that I've lugged around with me since I was little: the stories are exemplars of linguistic precision and are utterly terrifying and timeless. The fairy tales I read when I was tiny haunt me still.