Dan asked Allison Larkin:

Hello, I just finished "The People We Keep" and enjoyed it very much. The title is what grabbed me at first. Did the title come before the story? Your book combined my interest in coming of age stories with music. The artist Jewel popped into my head a few times while I was reading it because I read where she lived out of a car. I'll be recommending this one to a lot of different people I know. Thanks!

Allison Larkin Hi Dan! Thank you so much! The working title of The People We Keep was Mayflower, but unfortunately that made everyone think it was a book about pilgrims. The title came pretty late in the process and was taken from a line at the end of the book. I have to admit that at first I wasn't a fan -- after spending most of 15 years thinking of this book as Mayflower, it was hard to adjust. But The People We Keep really is the perfect title for the book, and I can't imagine it any other way now.

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