Photo via Andrea Bartz - Facebook
Andrea Bartz - The Last Ferry Out
Andrea Bartz poses with the cover art of her new book 'The Last Ferry Out'
Andrea Bartz never seriously thought she’d become a New York Times bestselling author when she left Milwaukee for Manhattan. She pursued magazine journalism in New York, worked in that field for nearly eight years and found that the job market was shaky.
“After I was laid off for the third (or was it fourth?) time, I decided to finish the novel (a whodunit set in the Brooklyn hipster party scene) and try to get it published,” she says. “When the manuscript was in decent shape, I queried literary agents and got a few offers. The agent I signed with took the manuscript out on submission and got me a book deal for my debut, The Lost Night. I’m still working with the same agent and editor now, as my fifth novel hits shelves.”
In that fifth novel, The Last Ferry Out, a Wisconsin woman, Abby, travels to a remote Mexican resort to learn about the mysterious accident that took the life of her fiancé. She discovers a small colony of expats at that resort, half-abandoned after a hurricane from a few years back. It’s a tropical purgatory of abandoned buildings and indifferent locals. The expats appear to be a cool crowd, but the energizing sensation of meeting new people is undercut by anxiety. “We love secrets here. We’re all escaping something,” one of them tells Abby.
“Well, they wouldn’t be very good thrillers if the protagonists didn’t find themselves in imminent danger, would they?” Bartz says. “I write books that fail the Bechdel Test in reverse: The vast majority of my characters are women, and the stories center the complex relationships between them. In turn, my books highlight aspects of the female experience that aren’t often in the limelight: anger, shame, terror.”
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The through-line of her five novels titles are their settings in “close-knit, closed-door social milieux, whether that’s the rooftop parties of circa-2009 Brooklyn (in The Lost Night), a bougie, all-female coworking space (in The Herd), or the dangerously intimate relationship between lifelong frenemies (in We Were Never Here) and a throuple isolating together during lockdown (in The Spare Room),” she says.
The Last Ferry Out
'The Last Ferry Out' by Andrea Bartz
Bartz, a onetime Shepherd Express editorial intern, brings a female perspective into her thrillers, a genre uniquely suited for reflecting the uncertainties of contemporary life. “I write smart, bingeable, feminist psychological thrillers that lean literary or slow burn, depending on whom you ask,” she explains. “The Last Ferry Out is also a puzzle-box mystery with a sapphic love story at its center. I can’t wait for readers to jump in.”
Boswell Books presents Andrea Bartz at the Brookfield Public Library, 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 3. Registration for this event is At Capacity. There is a waiting list you can join, but please be aware that joining the waiting list does not guarantee entry into this event. People on the waiting list who are able to attend will be notified via email prior to the event. Please click here and visit the Brookfield Library join the waiting list for this event.
Buy The Last Ferry Out on Amazon here.
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