WA author’s debut adult thriller set in Long Beach-inspired town

In early 2022, The New York Times published an article examining what would happen if a tsunami hit the West Coast. Long Beach, Pacific County, specifically, it said, would be completely underwater. 

Emiko Jean, bestselling author of “Tokyo Ever After,” “Tokyo Dreaming” and “Mika in Real Life,” has family in Long Beach, and was inspired by this concept. It led the Vancouver, Wash.-based writer to make a fictional version of the small coastal town — dubbed Coldwell Beach — the backdrop for her first adult thriller novel, “The Return of Ellie Black.”

“Long Beach is exactly how it sounds,” Jean explains. “It’s a very narrow strip of land, and there’s only one way in, and one way out. I really liked the setting for this novel because the novel deals with a lot of survival themes, and I liked the idea of there always being this existential threat looming over the inhabitants of this town.”

There’s another existential threat looming in the novel: being a woman.

“The Return of Ellie Black” is a gripping, psychological thriller illustrating the all too common violence women face and the perseverance required to carry on when all odds are stacked against them. 

Ahead of the novel’s May 7 release, Jean spoke with The Seattle Times about survival instincts, true crime and writing her debut adult thriller — which received Stephen King’s seal of approval. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

More than a simple whodunit searching for predators, “The Return of Ellie Black” focuses more on the violence extended to women and the resulting trauma. Why was this an important theme to emphasize? 

I have a fascination with true crime, and [the majority] of the people who like true crime and read true crime are women. I think one of the reasons for that is because we’re so many times the victims. Studying true crime and ways not to be killed is driven by our survival instincts. We’re set up from a very young age with very specific rules as young women for things not to do, and how to conduct ourselves, like don’t wear this, don’t walk alone at night; all these rules for women on how not to be hurt. 

I wanted to challenge those rules. I’m not the first to do that, but it shouldn’t be this way. In the story, we have Ellie, who’s a teenager who does some things, but they’re things I feel we’ve all done as teens, that are questionable, but they’re not things that should have landed her where she ended up in the book, which is being kidnapped. It was fairly innocuous, she went to go find an empty restroom to use and was taken. I wanted to challenge that belief system that these girls are doing something wrong and deserve to have what happened to them happen.

Much of the book is written in the third person, which I felt added an air of detachment but also made it feel more like a true crime story because often, with that type of content, you’re not hearing the perspective from the person who experienced it themselves. What went into that decision?

I really wanted Ellie’s voice to stand out the most, and that’s written from a first-person perspective. So you get all the other perspectives from that third-person narration. I feel like it really elevated her voice, so when you hear her story, it’s all that more poignant because you feel so much more close to it. 

When you have these third-person narratives, you’re right, it does feel a little more distant, but I feel like you can still connect with each character — there’s emotion, there’s drive, they all have their own arcs, but in essence, it was just to really elevate Ellie’s voice.

This was your first adult thriller. What was it like penning this novel, and how did it compare to writing young adult novels or even just general fiction?

I’ve been really fortunate enough to have the opportunity to publish young adult and adult fiction, and that’s purely a reflection of what I enjoy and what I’m interested in. I read across the board and enjoy light and dark fare. Flipping through these genres allows me to keep things fresh. I started in YA and codified a routine, but I always planned to expand into adult. They’re different experiences. Of course, there’s the age of the protagonist and the state of the relationships, and you have to access different voices. If I had to distill the differences, when I write young adult, it’s a reflection of the present day. When I write adult, it’s a reflection of the past. 

Can you dig into that a little bit more? The past versus the present?

Something I like to get into with adult characters is them examining their past. For example, in this novel, there’s the survival theme, there’s feminism, and how society treats victims, but a big part of the book is trauma and how we wade through that. So it’s looking at our past and learning how to heal from that trauma. There’s a line in the book towards the end where Ellie talks about how she’s going to learn to carry hope in one hand and grief in the other. Trauma is not as easily explored in a young adult novel. Those tend to focus more on the present day and what’s happening currently in the person’s life. 

This all pairs along too, with me becoming a mom six years ago, and I’ve thought a lot about my own past, and my relationship with my parents, and this nudged me even more firmly into adult writing.

Is there anything else you would like readers to know?

I hope they enjoy the novel and find it really thrilling. One of the things that I’m most passionate about in my work is always showcasing Japanese Americans and putting them at the forefront of a narrative … It might seem like I’m genre-jumping, but if you look closely at my work, you’ll see there’s this core of putting Japanese Americans in the spotlight and in all different walks of life. That’s the most important thing to me as a writer, and that’s what I’d love for readers to see.