Caroline Cleveland, a labor and employment lawyer based in Charleston, will make a stop at Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg to support her debut novel “When Cicadas Cry.”
Building on an idea from nearly a decade ago, Cleveland crafted the story of South Carolina lawyer Zach Strander and Addie Stone, his detective and lover. The novel follows two separate homicide cases, one set in 2017 while the other occurred 34 years earlier. In 2017, Strander is serving as defense counsel to Sam Jenkins, a man accused of bludgeoning a white woman to death with an altar cross in a rural church on Cicada Road in Walterboro. As Strander deals with the trial, Stone investigates a cold case, a 1983 double homicide on Edisto Beach. As the book progresses, Strander’s and Stone’s cases seem to connect and the killer infiltrates their inner circle.
“This book started in my head maybe a decade ago,” Cleveland said. “I had the idea that a young lawyer would be working on a case with no clue whatsoever that it might be related to something older than he was. I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted a male or female lawyer, so I decided to make co-protagonists. They are partners in every way. They met working cases together and blossomed into a romance.”
To help develop the story, Cleveland used first-person narration provided by Strand and Stone. She also allowed the killer to speak in anonymous sidebars to discuss details from the cold case.
“As I was trying to write this book, I was thinking about ways to make that old murder feel new and fresh to readers, and how I was going to use my fairly young main characters to tell a story that happened before they were born,” Cleveland said. “I was trying to figure out the craft of the story and the killer was talking in my head. I need to let the killer talk directly to the reader. I think it keeps the story moving in a way it couldn’t have done with having you go back in time (and) seeing who it was.”
Cleveland will do a reading of “When Cicadas Cry” and sign copies of the novel Sept. 12 from 6-7 p.m. at Hub City Bookshop.
For more information, visit hubcity.org.
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