
“The Cliffs,” jacket design courtesy of Jenny Carrow, against a backdrop of Hermit Island in Phippsburg. Laura Sitterly/ The Times Record
J. Courtney Sullivan’s sixth novel, “The Cliffs,” was released in July. It features an abandoned Ogunquit home she discovered, fell in love with and later found bulldozed — the foundation of a future “McMansion” in its place.
The purple house in the fictional town of Awadapquit, which in the Abenaki language means “where the beautiful cliffs meet the sea,” serves as the book’s gravitational center: Its structure holds a respiratory of secrets from those who lived in it before.
Jane Flanagan first sees the house from the water while on a lobster boat. To escape her home life, tainted by alcoholism and poor choices, she spends her teenage years exploring the house’s nooks and reading beneath the hemlock stands that dot the property.
After attending Wesleyan and Yale, she acquires her dream job as a women’s studies archivist at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library and meets her dream boyfriend, David, who she reluctantly invites home to meet her family. Naturally, the purple house tugs her to visit, so she walks the premises with her beau, hand in hand, envisioning a life together in a similar home, with toddlers darting down the stairs.
Jane returns to Maine after an alcohol-related incident jeopardizes her career and relationship. During a summer spent cleaning her late mother’s home, she is beckoned to the purple home again — this time at the request of the current owners, Genevieve and Paul, concerned about their son’s claim of a ghost on the premises. Enticed by a lofty commission and the desire to avoid the upheaval in her own life, Jane throws herself into discovering the site’s history.
Sullivan uses the house as a tool for character development. The structure remains the same, compared to a character who changes significantly, illustrating the arc of her growth. She also connects past and present through chapters alternating back and forth in time.
In the novel, ghosts are considered real. After an eerily accurate session with a medium, Jane dives into different avenues of research: the history of the Abenaki and the Shakers in New England. Spirituality and research coalesce to tell a more accurate story of place.
In an interview with The Times Record, Sullivan discussed how, like the art of basket weaving, tying loose threads from history can help us better understand the land we call home. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Like the purple house is to Jane, has there ever been a “constant” in your life — a person, place or thing you find yourself returning to?
The first place that comes to mind is Ogunquit — where I found the now-fictional purple house in real life.
My family is from the Boston area, and my mom first fell in [love with] Maine when she was in college. I have visited every summer of my life — first with my parents and little sister and now with my husband and our two children. I find that when I’m there I can so clearly experience the unfolding chapters of my life.
There is a bit of sand along Marginal Way, and I remember (I even put this in “The Cliffs”) being on the beach with my grandmother when I was 12. I was reading a novel, and she was reading another, and we both finished at the same time, so we switched. On those walks, she is no longer with us; I remember those moments and am reminded that this place holds such deep meaning.
Some places hold a stronger emotional connection for people than others. While writing “Maine,” published in 2011, I found that many who are from the state or visit annually feel this intense attachment to it — maybe even more so than where they grew up.
This novel was a years-long process, during which you relied on research from the Old York Historical Society and Historical Society of Wells and Ogunquit. How did local knowledge enhance Jane’s as a fictional archivist?
Before I was writing fiction full time, I was a researcher at The New York Times. I love diving deep into a subject I don’t know much about. Jane agonizes over this in the novel; there are just so many stories, it’s impossible to contain them all. It’s a privilege to bring something once forgotten back to life.
Writing my novel “The Engagements,” about Mary Frances Gerety, who created the slogan “a diamond is forever” for De Beers in the 1940s, I first began conceptualizing “The Cliffs.” I did much research at the Schlesinger Library since they have a collection on women in advertising. What I love about that archive is that it has the papers of Julia Child and Amelia Earhart, but it also has women none of us would otherwise ever hear about; it aims to include as many female voices as possible to tell a more complete version of history.

“The Cliffs” spotted in the front window at Brunswick’s Gulf of Maine Books. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record
The common thread between all my books is that the moment a woman is born will determine so much of who she is allowed to become. Of course, Jane, who is an archivist at Schlesinger, becomes the vessel for that message — she is the decider of what stories get to stay alive — so in “The Cliffs,” I finally got to explore that notion.
When I began writing the novel, it was 2020. My kids were 1 and 2 years old, and we, like the rest of the world, were housebound. Living in suburban Albany during the pandemic, everything was closed. The only spots I could take my kids to were the cemetery and the old Shaker village.
During that time, I read “The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna“ by Mira Ptacin, who lives on Peaks Island in Maine. She wrote about Camp Etna, a spiritualist gathering place in Maine. Eventually, when the world opened back up, we went to the camp together.
An intersection came into view between the Shaker religion — led by a woman [Mother Ann Lee] and based on the belief that the second coming of Christ would come in the form of a woman — and Camp Etna, a spiritual, female-based religion. Those two ideas meshed together, and I knew I also wanted to tie in Indigenous history.
My early research included reading books about native traditions and watching online panels held by the Abbe Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate spotlighting Wabanaki art, history and culture. When the world opened back up, I met Donna Loring, a Penobscot tribal elder, who played a key role in developing “The Cliffs” and, more than that, became a dear friend.
“The Cliffs” examines how a place carries not just stories but also energetic records. You note that according to the study of Native American epigenetics, mass trauma — genocide, slavery and colonialism — is passed down through generations on the cellular level; known as a “soul wound.” Can trauma infect the land on which it happened; is that a form of haunting all on its own?
Writing this book, I thought about the difference between haunting and history and how often those two are the same, especially in New England. This part of the country carries the weight of being the first spot colonists made contact, but the story gets told in a sanitized way — the idea that Native people showed the English how to harvest and then kindly disappeared. Today, we know there was a violent history of displacement, and the Abenaki people are still fighting for tribal sovereignty.

J. Courtney Sullivan and Donna Loring hold a panel discussion on July 29 at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record
I have always loved historical societies and house museums, and I’ve noticed many in Maine now grapple with these tough questions — looking at history from many angles, including the Indigenous perspective.
In “The Cliffs,” Jane cares about telling a more complete history story as an archivist. At one point, she visits Andrew Jackson’s homestead — which is based on a real experience. I went on a tour, and the guide was talking about the brutal legacy of slavery. No one seemed to react until he said, that back then, people would only wash their hair once a year, and of course, everyone shrieked. What I learned from that is history can only ever be as powerful as the people who are there receiving it and how much others are willing to acknowledge their part in it.
When you discuss moving forward, you refer to the process of learning and unlearning, push-and-pull progress. How did conversations with Indigenous women shape your approach to this novel?
I had two women who helped me enormously. Donna Loring, a local Wabanaki person, and Jenn Ashton, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh author, who works as a historical consultant for books — like “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Jenn offered some pushback. I had seen, in a documentary, the process of birch bark being stripped off a tree to make a canoe. I put this into the novel and was advised to remove it. My first reaction was confusion — it was already public knowledge — but then I realized the most important thing to do was to listen. I respected her parameters and removed that detail from the book.
Have you thought of future novels? What inspires you to keep producing?
In terms of the next steps, Donna and I have devised an idea for a podcast, which we hope to bring to fruition.
I like to get the ball rolling before a novel gets published, so I feel grounded knowing there will be another story to come and have already started writing my seventh novel. But I’m so busy promoting “The Cliffs” that I’ll return to that in a few months.
My creative process is intuitive. I have a lot of ideas but have found that some just stick with me and won’t let go. All the ideas are in my mind, but it’s just a matter of timing. “The Cliffs” is a great example. I saw the house 12 summers ago, and I thought it’d make for an exciting novel. I mentioned the idea to my husband and the friends we were staying with then, and no one was too thrilled. But the thought stuck with me, and years later, everything clicked; it felt like the right time to tell the story.
On my desk, I keep a picture of my friend and me making a snowman when we were 7 years old. It reminds me why I used to write stories when I was younger — it wasn’t to be published or win a Pulitzer; it was, like making a snowman, just something I found fun to do. At its core, this job is about getting the right message out at the right time in a way people can relate to, and I find great joy and responsibility in doing that.
What do you hope readers keep in mind when discussing this novel in book clubs or conversations with friends?
In the few weeks the book has been out, I’ve already heard from Mainers claiming that after reading the novel, they have a deeper understanding of the place they’ve known their whole lives. That’s huge. On the homepage of the Abbe Museum, it says, “More than vacationland, homeland.” I think of that a lot because for me, and many readers, Maine is where we go on vacation — it’s our happy place — but there’s so much more to it.
I hope that after people read “The Cliffs,” they visit Maine with a new perspective. It’s one thing to love a place for its beauty and your personal history with it but to understand its own history is another. Right now, life is stranger than fiction. It’s a hard time for everyone, and my goal is not to educate the reader, it’s to transport them elsewhere, to invite them to live within the world of my books.
If I can do that, to submerge them in a different time and place, I feel I’ve done well.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
We invite you to add your comments. We encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas and information on this website. By joining the conversation, you are agreeing to our commenting policy and terms of use. More information is found on our FAQs. You can modify your screen name here.
Comments are managed by our staff during regular business hours Monday through Friday as well as limited hours on Saturday and Sunday. Comments held for moderation outside of those hours may take longer to approve.
Join the Conversation
Please sign into your Press Herald account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can register or subscribe. Questions? Please see our FAQs.