Elizabeth Strout has much to say about 'Things We Never Say'

"You know, a lot of people out here like you a lot," Elizabeth Strout's ex-husband, who lives in Amagansett and remains a good friend, told the author not long ago.

Strout, a native Mainer, has set most of her fiction in her home state, including her Pulitzer Prize winner, "Olive Kittredge." But the author's special connection to Long Island was affirmed in 2017, when she placed "Oh, William," the third novel in her Lucy Barton series, in Montauk.

After delighting the faithful by bringing the characters of both the Olive series and the Lucy series together in 2024's "Tell Me Everything," Strout found she was ready for something new. "I thought, OK! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye! I was ready to get up and get out."

And thus we have "The Things We Never Say" (Random House, $29) set in coastal Massachusetts and introducing a new cast of characters. She discussed it with Newsday in advance of her appearance at The Next Chapter in Huntington on May 4 at 7 p.m.

At the center of the new novel is a very endearing character, high school history teacher Artie Dam. While teaching is often depicted as a challenging profession, particularly in high school, Artie loves his students and his work.

I taught at a community college for 13 years, and I loved those students so much. They had come up through the public schools of New York City, they were often the first people in their family to go beyond high school, they were just the salt of the earth. I channeled the excitement and enthusiasm I felt back then for Artie.

The other best thing in Artie's life — Long Island weekend sailors will relate to this — is his boat. But despite the joy he gets from teaching and sailing, when we meet Artie he is so depressed that he is considering suicide.

At the beginning of the book, Artie is feeling so lonely, and he doesn't understand why. He doesn't understand why his wife has moved away from him, or why his son has grown distant. It takes a near-fatal accident with his sailboat for him to realize that he doesn't actually want to die. He just doesn't want to live the way he is living.

He is saved from drowning by another weekend sailor, and the friendship he forms with Ken is a lifesaver in itself. But there's a problem.

Right. I don't plan my books ahead of time, and very often what I learn about the characters as the story unfolds surprises me. I was very surprised to learn that Ken was a supporter of our current President. Artie is very much on the other side, in fact it's contributed to his depression. But by the time his wife tells him about Ken's politics, he already loves the guy, has shared all his inner thoughts with him. Ken has been so kind.

This is one of the first novels I've seen that deals head on with the sometimes terrible effects of the political divide in this country on people's personal lives. With Ken and Artie, you seem to be suggesting that there could be a better way to get through it.

For me, literature is about place and time. If you take a time in history, and a place, and you throw in a character, you'll get a story. And this is Artie's. Because he's a history teacher, he's going to be very aware and affected by everything that's going on at his particular time in history. I concentrated on his character. I thought, Artie, Artie, Artie. Show me what it is. I'm always looking for what I call moments of grace in my work, moments where people make connections, big connections or small connections, and it keeps them going.

He has another one of those moments with his son Rob, right? When Rob gets the courage to tell him a very big secret he's been keeping for a long time.

That secret was another one of those things that really surprised me. When I started, I really didn't know what was wrong between Artie and Rob, so I just kept focusing on it. OK, Rob, what is wrong with you? Why are you pulling further and further away from Artie? Then all of a sudden, I realized. And then I could see that I had been almost putting down breadcrumbs for myself without knowing it, because it explained some of the questions that were raised in the very first scene I wrote — when I had no idea of what was really going on.