Megan Abbott

Like, I see your this and I raise you this, you know, which I think is something people can relate to the struggle commiserating women, women talk a lot, right?

We typically have friendships, we typically commiserate with our with our friends.

And the idea of like, I need money, I don't know where I'm going to find money can be very scary.

And of course, that's where the novel's plot comes in the pyramid scheme.

I mean, is it a pyramid?

Yes.

I don't know.

The wheel, you know, the wheel, which promises financial freedom.

And you mentioned it's based on a real life idea.

So can you walk us through like how the genesis of the story went from idea to full-fledged plot?

Yes, yes.

That's always the question too, because you have so many ideas that don't become a book that you think might, and you sort of, you know, toy with them sometimes for a long amount of time, but you can't really, you know,

There's a true crime that is the initial inspiration, and then I take it somewhere.

And in this case, the real story, there was this documentary on HBO called Murder at Middle Beach, which is about a woman who was involved and lived in this very nice Connecticut community, but had a really bad divorce and was in prison.

dire financial straits.

And so she became involved in what this essentially turned out to be a pyramid scheme.

It ends up to be a much more complicated story about her family relationships, her relationship to substance abuse and her children and all elements that kind of float through the book in a different way.

But I was really interested in how the women interacted with each other in this club.

And I really wanted to explore that and sort of having the three sisters that grew up in the same

they had to share the same childhood, but the, the, how money was treated in their childhood affected them very differently.