Meet author Cate Touryan
Cate Touryan’s storytelling is deeply rooted in coasts—from the Mediterranean coast of her birth to the Central California coast, where she lives near the beach that inspired her first novel. With a career in education and editing, she brings a lyrical, literary voice to her work. When she’s not writing, she enjoys walking seaside trails, reading old classics and discovering new ones, conjuring joy with loved ones, and looking for stars to put in her pocket. Both her fiction and creative nonfiction are marked by rich atmosphere, compassion for conflicted characters, and a faith that sees the invisible.
Tell us about your newest book.
Turning Toward Eden is my debut coming-of-age novel, a historical mystery. Set in Harford Beach, California, the story unfolds during the summer of 1971 when a rash of petty crimes escalates to bloodshed on the beach and suspicion falls on a strange girl with a Soviet past. It’s a summer infused with Cold War intrigue, both in the small coastal town and in Eden’s family, newly displaced from the South.
What inspired you to write your story?
While not autobiographical, Eden’s story does draw from my own. I grew up on California’s central coast in the 70s, the Cold War casting a chill over summer fun. Like Eden’s parents, my father was a university professor, my mother a nurse. Harford Beach is modeled on Avila Beach, a ten-minute drive from my home, though I reshaped the geography to create the shantytown of Gulch Run and the estates of Vintage Heights. Both Raven and Dex are spun from actual people, Raven from a mysterious high school classmate, Dex from my disabled half-brother, to whom I dedicate the novel. Though rooted in the real, their stories took on lives of their own. In certain ways, I wanted to right the wrongs they suffered through story.
What genre do you focus on?
Although it took me three decades to complete my first novel, I wrote continually over the years, submitting a historical novella as my master’s thesis in English. I especially like the challenge of flash fiction and enjoy writing short stories and creative nonfiction essays.
My stories rarely arise from plot ideas. Instead, they arise from characters and the choices they make. It’s people I love to write, and if I do that well, these characters will write the plot. They need to—I haven’t nearly the imagination I’d like. But I do have an endless fascination with the intricacies of the human heart. To encourage reflection, Turning Toward Eden includes discussion questions for parents, teachers, and book clubs.
Why do you write?
No matter the format, I write to discover—and share—the Story beyond the story. My writing motto stems from Colossians 1:17: for in Him all stories hold together. Sometimes I write to make sense of the world. Sometimes to make sense of others, of their worlds. Other times to make sense of myself.
What’s the best part of your author’s life?
The settling into hours without time or care, the immersing into a quiet that is a special kind of creative communion with the Lord. Writing is almost a sacred act—apart from the frequent temper tantrum, cries of despair, and wringing of hands. It’s my happy place, where I can leave myself behind and invite discovery and creativity, like a child before a sprawl of butcher paper and fingerpaints. The second-best part is engaging with readers, learning their stories, sharing mine, and encouraging them toward something deeper, that Story beyond the story.
What’s one thing your readers should know about you?
I live in a house made of glass. I mean that both metaphorically and literally. When we bought our 1950s house, we remodeled it, adding an upstairs with more windows than walls so that the sun would pour in by day and the moon by night. I live for light. When I write, I shine a light on it all—the truth of the human experience, the good, the bad, and the ugly. For without seeing ourselves as we truly are—that’s the bad and the ugly—we have no hope of seeing the Good.
What is your favorite pastime?
Playing Scrabble on the ScrabbleGO app with my younger daughter who lives in Austria, a 9-hour time difference. Though we can’t do daily life together, we can reach out across the globe with a Scrabble word, anticipate the return play, reply with another (and usually unknown) word, the letters a kind of bridge between us throughout the week. She started me on it about five years ago, saying, “I will not allow you to get Alzheimer’s.” She’s trying to keep my brain sharp, but it’s our hearts that are connected.
Do you have other books? We’d love to know.
Not yet. But I do have many short stories and essays available to subscribers on my website, including “The Gulch Run Gangster,” which tells the story of Anna and Jake as children.
What are you working on now?
The novel I’m shaping in my head (and on scraps of paper littering my desk) is another historical mystery, set in the 1960s. The novel I’m writing on my computer is an adult coming-of-age retrospective, with a precocious narrator (much like Eden), blending humor and self-acceptance. Then there’s the creative nonfiction piece in which I rail against the third-party intruder now present in every interaction with my mother: dementia. It may have the last earthly word, but the Story beyond the story promises an ending redeemed.
Website: https://catetouryan.com/
Link to book: https://a.co/d/046hDiBI
Social media links: https://www.facebook.com/CateTouryan
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https://www.instagram.com/catetouryan/
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