An author’s debut is so much more than a welcoming of a new voice into the literary world; it’s a widening of new perspectives for readers. This is especially true when that author’s novel introduces readers not only to such emotionally wrought characters, but also to the world and circumstances that shape them.
In A Good Animal, Sara Maurer throws open the doors on Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, a small community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, showing her readers the intricacies of a midwestern/border town/international seaport. Ushering us through this seemingly contradictory place are young lovers Everett and Mary: a boy who wants to stay and a girl who—like the countless ships coming and going through port—wants to move on.
Below, Maurer speaks about the very human desires that drive her characters, the struggles and opportunities brought on by tradition, and brilliance that is alive in rural spaces.
RS Deeren:
Rural spaces and communities are often depicted as places to get out from, to leave behind. In the book, Mary holds this same feeling while Everett says, “people say you got to be born here to love it.” What assumptions about rural spaces, communities, and people are you tackling with this book?
Sara Maurer:
Often? I’d say always. The pressure to leave comes from everywhere: the media, well-intentioned teachers, parents, and friends. Leave, go make something of yourself, achieve something. But it implies that rural places and rural lives hold less value. The ones who leave see themselves as having made it, as having gotten out, and they look down on those who stayed—after all, they must not have gotten out because they were too stupid, too scared, or too lazy, and their lives don’t matter as much anyway.
I internalized this mentality wholeheartedly as a young person; I couldn’t wait to leave Sault Ste. Marie. Then, when my husband and I had the opportunity to work from home and raise our kids near family, we jumped at the chance. But those old feelings, those old pressures came back to me. At times, I felt ashamed to be a hometown girl who left and came back. I realized I had to lean into the discomfort I was feeling and create something out of it. A Good Animal would not exist if I had not returned home.
I intentionally created a character who loves where he lives and has no desire whatsoever to leave. Everett’s leave-taking, instead, is an internal one. Through the course of the book, he gradually leaves his old self behind, all while physically staying put.
RS Deeren:
What do you think people outside of rural spaces get wrong about country living?
Sara Maurer:
Rural spaces, especially agricultural ones, never let you forget that you exist in a body, that you won’t be around forever. You’re constantly reminded that you’re not so different from the animals around you. They cry, they poop, they die, they look at you. Death and birth are right there, living on both your shoulders. I think it’s easier to forget that fact in urban and suburban spaces where the stuff of life seems one step removed and all the blood and guts are hidden. In rural spaces, it’s possible to get right up close to the bigness and oldness of nature and remember just how small you are. That’s humbling, and it’s something rural people get to feel every day.
RS Deeren:
“Tradition” gets associated with small towns and those living in them. Everett is constantly faced with this, from annual 4-H shows to the lineage of his own family and the pedigree of his father’s sheep. Even the foundation of his grandparents’ house can still be seen on his family’s property, with Everett stating, “I feel generations beside me.” How did you use the idea of traditions to guide Everett and Mary through their story?
Sara Maurer:
It’s impossible to understate the weight of tradition in Everett’s life. Part of it is based on family and community habits, and part of it is based on the rhythms of nature itself. Hay is harvested according to season, and ewes give birth seasonally, too. Beyond that, he’s the oldest son of a farming family in a very conservative, patriarchal corner of the world, so he’s living under that set of expectations. He’s the product of an unplanned pregnancy—which his father seems to remind him of constantly—and this weighs on Everett too, the feeling that he has to be worthy of the sacrifices his parents made.
When Mary shows up, she’s unfamiliar with these traditions and doesn’t seem to have any of her own; this emphasizes her outsider status. You have a character completely bound by tradition and expectations and one who rejects them completely. The result is a small-scale clash of cultures. For example, Everett wants to meet Mary’s dad so that he knows Everett is honorable. Mary says, “Honorable? Are you kidding me?” Everett tries to make the patterns of his life appeal to her. He gives her a tour of the farm, he tries to get her to like the sheep, he wants her to meet his mother. But she just shrugs him off, and they seek out—ahem—“new” pastimes.
RS Deeren:
Many times, rural fiction gets described as having a “strong sense of place.” This is usually code for, “it’s so different from [more common urban/coastal] settings.” Sault Ste. Marie, though, is a unique place not just in Michigan, but the whole country. It’s a border town with Canada, but it’s also a coastal port town on the shores of one of the world’s largest lakes. The setting is a place of constant arrival and departure. How does this impact the lives of your characters?
Sara Maurer:
The St. Marys River is always flowing, and people are always coming and going. Even before there was a border or the Soo Locks or the City of Sault Ste. Marie, the Anishinaabeg called it the gathering place because it was where they traveled in the summers to fish the rapids.
In contrast to all this movement is Everett, who is single-mindedly determined to stay put. The same character in a different setting, maybe a landlocked one or one in the interior, might not have his beliefs and desires so challenged, but it’s exactly because of the Sault’s location on the water and the border that Mary enters the scene.
Her dad’s position in the Coast Guard brings them here. She wants to depart almost as soon as she arrives, but she has to graduate from high school first. Everett also sees the last year of high school as a final hurdle before [he can get on with] his real life. They are stationary in this place of arrival and departure, waiting for the next stage of life to begin.
RS Deeren:
A through line of the book is the comparison of people and sheep. Everett, fixated at seventeen on a future as a sheep farmer, sees the world, relationships, love, connection, and his own urges through this lens he understands. Were these comparisons something you had in early drafts? How do these comparisons serve him and how do they hinder him?
Sara Maurer:
A Good Animal is my MFA. Everything I know about writing I learned while writing this book. In an early draft, I got a very valuable critique from a fellow student in the Stanford Continuing Studies novel certificate program. I had described the character Kylie’s hair using the word nimbus, and was asked, “What seventeen-year-old farm kid who’s never left Michigan’s Upper Peninsula would use the word nimbus?” I felt really stupid for about ten minutes, but then I was so grateful. The question was an epiphany for me, an instant character lesson.
I needed to craft the narrative through Everett’s eyes. It made me think about his frame of reference. What does he know? What does he see and hear and smell and touch every day? The answer, of course, was sheep, soil, and hay. Those became my earliest metaphors and similes, but they quickly led to deeper questions. How does growing up and living in proximity to animals affect one’s worldview? Which led to, how does a lifestyle centered around evaluating the reproductive qualities of livestock affect how someone views other people, specifically women? These questions began to guide the narrative.
RS Deeren:
The book starts with a prologue told from the perspective of an older Everett, looking back on the novel’s events. We discover he knows a lot for a teenager, especially about farming and reading people. However, like any kid, he’s still learning who he is. What lessons does Everett learn in this book and do you think he learns them in time?
Sara Maurer:
Early in the book, Everett describes how hard it is for kids to sell their animals at the fair for the first time. They know the fair is coming and that the animal will go to the slaughterhouse, and yet they put that fact into a little compartment and love the animal and go through the motions of training and feeding and caring for it. Then the fair arrives and, as Everett puts it, “All the compartments smash together and reality hits. Hard.”
In a sense, Everett goes through the same series of events with his relationship with Mary. He knows she doesn’t want to stay in the Sault, and yet he pursues her. Meanwhile, graduation day is getting closer and closer. When reality does hit, when the compartments in his mind smash together, he has faced truths about himself and has demanded truths from his family.
Does this happen in time? No, I don’t think so. Not for this story, and not for Mary, but hopefully for the rest of Everett’s life.
RS Deeren:
Pride comes through in the identities of these characters. Everett and his father take pride in the stock they raise. Everett’s best friend, Charlie, takes pride in almost everything he does. Mary takes pride in her art. From this pride comes a lot of labeling. Charlie takes pride in being a “redneck” while simultaneously labeling Mary as “Fancy Pants.” Still, pride has its limits and we see that with these characters. How does pride guide them and what do they do when pride fails them?
Sara Maurer:
Interesting, I didn’t really see pride as a core tenet of their identities. In fact, I see Everett quite the opposite. But I agree that he takes pride in his work, his straight windrows. And he’s proud of his livestock judging skills and the fact that he earns his own money through hard, physical labor. Same with Mary; she doesn’t take pride in her art so much as she sees it as a means to an end: It will get her into art school, which means escape.
To me, Charlie is the closest to prideful. He is a bit in love with himself, and he is the only one who uses the labels you mentioned. These labels are important to him because they help him navigate his world. To him, redneck equals insider and Fancy Pants equals outsider. If he can identify people, if he can put them in boxes, then he knows what to expect, he knows what’s safe, he knows what to do. Calling Everett a redneck in front of Mary is his way of reminding Everett who he is; calling Mary “Fancy Pants” is his way of reminding Everett who Mary is. At one point, when he starts to feel Everett pulling away, he warns him that Mary thinks she’s too good for them and that he better be careful or he’ll start thinking he is too.
To add to your earlier question about what lessons Everett learns, I would say that part of Everett’s growth is that he begins to see himself outside of the boxes he’s always inhabited. He realizes he’s not just a sidekick, that he doesn’t have to follow tradition. He realizes he can let go. This leads to a major confrontation with Charlie and to Everett’s “coming of age.”
RS Deeren:
From the start, you’ve got two very motivated characters. Everett wants to stay. Mary can’t wait to leave. To one, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is the entire world, to the other, it’s barely worth remembering. An unfair question: who is right?
Sara Maurer:
Everett! (Though of course I’m extremely biased.) I think the question you’re really asking – and it’s one A Good Animal also asks – is who gets to follow their dreams? Both Everett and Mary question each other’s future plans, but it’s Everett who goes to such great, great lengths to usurp Mary’s. One of my hopes for the book is that readers come away from it less inclined to make others conform to their ways of thinking, whether that’s parents, teachers, or the media telling rural kids they have to leave for their lives to have value, or whether it’s the way people vote and who they put in office.
FICTION
A Good Animal
By Sara Maurer
St. Martin’s Press
Published February 24, 2026
