T. Greenwood's "Everything Has Happened"

T. Greenwood grew up in rural Vermont in the 1970s. She began writing stories at seven years old and wrote her first "novel" at nine on her dad's electric typewriter.

Since then, she has published sixteen novels. She has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maryland State Arts Council. She has won three San Diego Book Awards. Five of her novels have been Indie Next picks. Bodies of Water was finalist for a Lambda Foundation award, and Keeping Lucy was a Target Book Club Pick.

Here Greenwod dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Everything Has Happened:

I have been told before that my writing is cinematic, and I think that comes from my deep love of movies. (I often say that in another life, I would have studied film in college.) When I write a novel, I approach each scene like a cinematographer - with a keen eye for detail and physical nuance, with vivid descriptions that help place readers in the moment. I try to create work that provides a sensory experience for the reader rather than a cerebral one.

I don't "cast" my novels per se, but after the novel is done, I often dream about who would play the characters in a film version of the book.

Everything Has Happened is a dual timeline literary mystery about a little boy who goes missing in 1986. The story is narrated by his older sister, Edie, both in the months leading up to his disappearance and nearly forty years later when the cold case is reopened. But in addition to being a mystery, the novel is also a sapphic love story about two young women at the precipice of their lives, and how the secrets they keep change their respective trajectories forever.

Edie Marshall, the narrator, is seventeen in 1986. She's a runner and an aspiring poet obsessed with Sylvia Plath. She comes from a traditional, middle-class family, her mother a pediatric nurse, and her father a carpenter. Trillium Jenkins (Trill) is new to school their senior year, the daughter of counter-culture parents, now living with her mother and older brother, Jericho, on the grounds of a defunct commune. Trill cracks Edie's world wide-open. She is magic. But just as Edie is exploring who she is and who she might be outside the confines of this small town, her little brother disappears, and Trill's brother, Jericho, is the only suspect.

Here is my dream cast for the main roles:

Young Edie: Odessa A'zion

Adult Edie: Pamela Adlon (A'zion's real-life mom!)

Young Trill: Maya Hawke

Adult Trill: Uma Thurman (Hawke's real-life mom!)

Jericho Jenkins: Jesse Plemons (Maybe makeup could make him both young and older.)

Visit Tammy Greenwood's website.

My Book, The Movie: Rust and Stardust.

The Page 69 Test: Rust and Stardust.

Writers Read: T. Greenwood (August 2019).

The Page 69 Test: Keeping Lucy.

My Book, The Movie: Keeping Lucy.

Q&A with T. Greenwood.

The Page 69 Test: Such a Pretty Girl.

My Book, The Movie: The Still Point.

--Marshal Zeringue