When people think of country music, they don’t typically think of Chicago. But Chicago and country music do have a history; once upon a time, Chicago was considered a country music capital. Starting in 1924, Chicago was home to the National Barn Dance, a very popular country music radio program that was a precursor to the more famous Grand Ole Opry. There were “hillbilly dives” in the Loop as well as Uptown, one of which is still up and running, Carol’s Pub. That’s just a small taste of the history of the country music scene here in Chicago.
It’s a great setting for Edgar® Award-nominated, Agatha, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author Lori Rader-Day’s newest book Wreck Your Heart, which is her eighth book. Rader-Day has written several thrillers and mysteries, including a historical mystery taking place during the Blitz where Agatha Christie’s home Greenway features prominently. With Wreck Your Heart, she’s bringing the action close to home.
For Dahlia “Doll” Devine, country music is everything. Plus it’s pretty much the only thing going well for her. Mostly. She’s just been evicted thanks to her boyfriend who absconded with the rent and now has to rely on her boss Alex McPhee, owner of McPhee’s Tavern where Dahlia sings, for a place to stay. But things get worse when her estranged mother shows up one day at the pub. Dahlia wants nothing to do with her mother, who left her to fend for herself in the foster system. She finds herself pulled in when a young woman turns up the very next day looking for Dahlia’s mother. Learning that she has a half sister she never knew she had, Dahlia ends up trying to find where her errant mother went. Add a dead body found outside the tavern. It turns out there is no bottom to terrible.
We had a chance to chat with Lori Rader-Day by email about Wreck Your Heart.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Elisa Shoenberger
What was the most surprising thing you discovered while writing this book?
Lori Rader-Day
When I started writing Wreck Your Heart, it was an activity, not a novel. I had signed up to do a monthlong writing challenge but was in between projects. The day before the challenge, I wrote out a list of things I was enjoying, that I might want to spend more time on. The list was basically country music, dogs, and Chicago’s bar scene. Also cereal because I was cutting carbs at the time and really missed cereal. The next morning, I set out to write some words. Country music! Dogs! A bar! The cereal got mostly cut out. I wasn’t going to write a book about country music and dogs, just while away some writing time being a part of a community of writers.
After the month’s experiment, I had 15,000 words, put it away, and wrote another book, The Death of Us, a dark book probably partly dark because I was in treatment for breast cancer at the time. (I’m fine now.) But after the pandemic, breast cancer, some losses among family and friends, I just didn’t want to go write another dark book.
When I rediscovered those 15,000 words in my hard drive, they made me laugh. Somehow, by writing without expectation of finishing or publication, I had stumbled onto my most authentic voice as a writer—one that didn’t mind getting some laughs. Finishing the book was the most fun I’ve had writing.
Writing takes a lot of deep work by the writer and then a pseudo-public performance on the topics of the book. I decided I deserved to have a little fun, and it was a revelation to think I could bring my readers with me.
Part of the inspiration for writing about country music was the Ken Burns documentary on the topic. It’s just utterly fascinating to me how this thing called country music is actually so many different parts, invented by the instruments of enslaved Africans (banjo, drums) and poor immigrants (the fiddle), and tossed around in so many hands, influences trading back and forth between gospel, blues, rock and roll, and never quite just one thing.
Anyway, Chicago isn’t the town people think of when country music is on the table, but as Mark Guarino writes in his book Country and Midwestern, Chicago was the original seat of live country radio with the WLS-AM Barn Dance. The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville was a second draft.
Elisa Shoenberger
What do you want people to know about the country music scene here in Chicago?
Lori Rader-Day
Whatever you’re imagining as Chicago’s country scene, you’re probably both right and wrong. It’s varied, vibrant, very much alive and well. You can see local and touring bands at lots of venues around Chicagoland most weeks, and also catch bigger headliners when they come through town. And they do come through, because country music is very popular, one of the favorite genres of music in most states, not just the states you’re thinking of.
If you’re trying to get connected to the scene, you could follow some of the venues on social media to catch who’s coming through town. Space in Evanston, Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn, The Salt Shed, to name a few. The Evanston Folk Music Festival has been a great new addition to the scene, too.
Elisa Shoenberger
Have you always been a fan of country music? What draws you to the music?
Lori Rader-Day
Country music and I go way back, but it’s been rocky. My first concert was country music. My parents took me, age eight, to see John Schneider at the Indiana State Fair. Yes, Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard had a country music career.
Look, I was eight. I was primed for country music fandom because my family watched Hee Haw. I loved the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter as a kid… The first 45 I bought with my own money was Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys.
As a teen, I fell away from that kind of music, despised it, but then as an adult I was invited to see a show at Space for Brandi Carlile. Brandi was the gateway drug back to country music, and to understanding there was more to country music than twang.
I’m drawn to the stories of country music, to lyrics that pack a punch, to lovely harmonies, and to unique voices. There’s a certain kind of song, lowkey and easy, that I can write to that is often but not always country: Jason Isbell country. Less belt buckle. This sort of thing gets called Americana or alt-country, hard to define stuff that could be called singer-songwriter on a different night. But I love a fiddle, too. I love artists like Rhiannon Giddens and Emmylou Harris and Maren Morris and Lainey Wilson and Kacey Musgraves, all “country” of one kind or another, but very different artists. Like Dahlia, I also like classic country: Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, amen.
Elisa Shoenberger
Where did the character concept of Dahlia “Doll” Devine come from? Is she inspired by someone you know and/or a singer/performer?
Lori Rader-Day
My characters develop over time just like the plots. Dahlia took me some time to find the balance between someone who loves the spotlight but who has a lot of shadows. I could see the outside of her from the beginning, the spangles and shine. I borrowed a little bit of the outward persona for Dahlia from the singer Sierra Ferrell, who I love. A little outlandish, a lot country but also pretty rock and roll, tattoos but also very feminine and showy. Sierra’s voice is also a killer, and that’s Dahlia’s claim to fame.
Elisa Shoenberger
The book explores the stories that we tell ourselves, whether it’s about ourselves, our families, or places, which may not be true or only partially true. What made you want to dive into this phenomenon?
Lori Rader-Day
Country music has been called “three chords and the truth,” so I did want to explore a character who believed, truly believed, that her music was the truth, but who wasn’t living very authentically. And didn’t know it. Characters in the middle of self-delusion are my favorite, personally.
Elisa Shoenberger
You created a playlist for the book. How was it to jump between writing the book and making the list? Did the songs inspire you or do they evoke a mood for readers in the book?
Lori Rader-Day
Much like the influences of music flowing both ways into and out of country, rock and roll, blues, etc., my playlist starts off with a few songs I’m just into, and then is influenced by what’s new, what I’m liking, what helps inspire me to work, what might even feed the story of the novel I’m working on. It’s very much about mood, for me, to find the right mood for the novel and then keep it as I go along.
Sometimes I get literal inspiration from the playlist. The title Wreck Your Heart is pulled from a lyric in a song by Ingrid Andress called “Feeling Things.” As soon as I heard it, I knew that was the title of the book, and what the protagonist, Dahlia, has to grapple with, whether or not to let things in that might hurt her, whether to take the risk of truly living or not.
Elisa Shoenberger
If you had to sing a country song at karaoke, what song would it be?
Lori Rader Day
Well, no one wants to hear that. “Jolene” by Dolly Parton? No one is going to complain if “Jolene” comes on.
Elisa Shoenberger
What else do you want me to know?
Lori Rader-Day
It was important to me to write a book about country music that people who don’t like country music could also like and enjoy. Of course, if they do like country music, there’s an extra layer for them. And lots of name-dropping.
Thanks again to Lori Rader-Day for talking with us. Check out more info about Wreck Your Heart and her other books here: https://loriraderday.com/
Fiction
Wreck Your Heart
By Lori Rader-Day
Minotaur Books
Published January 6, 2026
