Interview

Jodi Compton Answers Questions About Her First Book, The 37th Hour

The 37th Hour is much more than a suspense novel. It is also a novel that moves beyond genre classifications by focusing on two people ---Sarah and Shiloh --- who are flawed and damaged in deep and dangerous ways that neither of them suspects. What was your inspiration for the characterizations of, and the relationship between, Sarah and Shiloh?
With Sarah and Shiloh, I wanted to make people believe in a relationship that is really unsentimental and unconventional. Early in the book, Sarah refers to Shiloh as 'you son of a bitch.' Later, in flashbacks, the reader finds that they met through a one-night stand. There's no roses or candlelight in this marriage; it's an alliance between two soldiers. While I was writing it, I sometimes wondered, 'I am going too far with this?' But I really wanted to make people feel the powerful kinship-between-outsiders that bonds them. I knew I'd succeeded when female early readers weighed in with a lot of anxiety over whether Shiloh would survive the events of The 37th Hour to be featured in upcoming novels.

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