Chicago novelist explores why we can't move on

When 16–year–old Nora Lindell goes missing, her fates impacts those who knew her, in some ways stopping their capability to age, at least emotionally, beyond the years of Lindell's own life. What happens next is chronicled in author Hannah Pittard's first novel, "The Fates Will Find Their Way" (Ecco/HarperCollins 2011; $$22.99).

"The most basic premise of the book is a girl goes missing," says Pittard, a professor at DePaul University in Chicago where she teaches fiction. "I think a lot of people are reading or have read books about a girl going missing but I would argue that this book is much more about the narrators -- a group of boys who have become men and about their inability to access adulthood as easily as they might have. They keep pointing to the girl as a reason for this."

Pittard, whose previous work was included in the 2008 Best American Short Stories' 100 Distinguished Stories, was also the recipient of the 2006 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award. A graduate of both the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia's MFA program, Pittard says she's always loved writing about men and boys.

"I'm fascinated by male friendships," says Pittard who counts men among her best of friends and also has a brother. "I like the way they talk about the pasts. Women scare the bejesus out of me, we can be very smart but also duplicitous. With men, it's what you see is what you get. Knowing about men, wanting to talk about their obsessive natures is one reason for this book."

Missing or lost characters are a common theme in Pittard's writing.

"Every short story I have written is about things like a father dies, a dog goes missing," she says.

Pittard sees these missing characters as a metaphor, in ways, for those of us having difficulty growing up.

"Men share with me the difficulties of moving into adulthood but then maybe we all do" she says. "It started to occur to me one day when I was talking to my mother that uh–oh she hasn't grown up yet either. Neither have I. And so the book is in ways about our struggling to find meaning in this world, to be able to move into adulthood and how scary that can be."