Most people imagine tropical drinks and white sand beaches when they think of Jamaica, but Trisha Tobias’ Honeysuckle and Bone (Sweet July/Zando, Jan. 14) paints a different picture of the Caribbean island.  The novel centers on 18-year-old Carina, a Jamaican American fleeing from her past in New York to a rambling manor in the hills of Jamaica. Carina has been hired as an au pair by the wealthy Hall family, whose patriarch, Ian, is running for prime minister. Carina spends her days watching over the two young children, Jada and Luis, but at night, she’s haunted by a ghost (or duppy), who, for some reason, wants her gone. The book follows Carina as she tries to identify who (or what) is after her. In the process, she becomes entangled in the Halls’ dangerous family drama while trying to avoid falling in love with Aaron, the handsome gardener, or exposing her own dark secret

In a starred review, Kirkus calls Honeysuckle and Bone “a deliciously dark and mysterious debut.” Tobias recently spoke to Kirkus by phone about her first book; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The novel weaves together themes of horror, romance, teenage friendships, and Jamaican folklore. Was it inspired by any real-life events?

The idea for the book originally came to me about a year after my father passed away. My dad’s passing was really disorienting, and I was looking for ways to ground myself. One way I did that was by turning to my mother, who’s Jamaican. I asked her to tell me about her childhood on the island.

As part of talking to my mother during this time, I also noticed that the two of us were tackling the grief of losing my father a little bit differently. She was treating my father as if he were a duppy, like he was still here in the house, which reminded me of the stories she used to tell me growing up. This period also culminated in many questions I was asking myself about identity, regrets in life, how we relate to each other, and how we deal with difficult, challenging themes.

Debut YA authors often identify closely with their protagonists. Carina is a young adult trying to figure out who she is and how to define herself on her own terms. Do you see yourself in her?

There are definitely some things that Carina and I have in common. The biggest thing is her question mark around her identity as a Jamaican American. That’s definitely a shared experience. The world and the life in Jamaica my mom had described to me over the years felt very foreign to me, a suburban kid from Long Island. There’s some embarrassment that starts to develop when trying to engage with that culture and identity. I felt shame about all the stuff I didn’t know. So this was me working out some of the stuff I was feeling. Carina has been very instrumental in me being able to talk through and work through those things.

One of the novel’s themes is breaking generational cycles and how girls are often held to different standards than boys regarding dating and relationships. What changes still need to be made about relationship double standards?

There’s such strong policing around women and their bodies and their morality. Men don’t have to suffer in the same way, because we just culturally anticipate and expect that men are going to make mistakes. Women are not supposed to have feelings, make mistakes, or anything like that. It’s very unfortunate that the women in this book who made the decisions they made and had the relationships they had were ultimately punished. It’s such a common story, and there’s absolutely a double standard. It was also played out by my conversations with my mom about growing up in Jamaica. Culturally, there are behaviors Jamaican men—quote, unquote—get away with. And it’s not that different from how things are here in the States. There’s this idea that boys will be boys, and if you’re a girl and you do anything even similar to that, you will be shamed.

In the book, you also acknowledge some of the stereotypes around Jamaica, like Bob Marley, marijuana, and the hats with the fake dreads. In what ways does this book provide a more nuanced perspective on the place?

The story is told from Carina’s point of view; she’s a semi-outsider, which allows for a more complex view of the island. She has that almost-touristy perspective coming in, but she also has some [experience] interacting with the culture via her parents in a way that a wholly American character may not. Carina’s mother has seeded a lot of negative feelings about Jamaica, but Carina doesn’t understand what could possibly be so bad about this world, and she has this kind of fantastical view of it, which is very relatable to a lot of people who haven’t been to Jamaica or have no connection to the island. There’s this image of it as paradise—that it’s all good, that nothing can go wrong here, and that everyone’s really chill. But Carina has some background on the island, which allows her to be a little more aware of when things start to get spooky.

You also write about the extreme class divide that exists in Jamaica. Why was it important for you to write about this?

Carina is figuring out her place between being American and Jamaican and feeling like neither is quite enough. She’s also in this really interesting in-between place of being an American working as an au pair for this wealthy Jamaican family. Her friends in Jamaica are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and they have their own lives outside of what’s happening at Blackbead House. I wanted to explore how starkly different their lives are compared to what is happening with the Hall family, and how Carina goes back and forth between those two worlds. She’s not from this wealthy world back home, either, so she’s walking into all this wealth and excess. Carina is living in this elite space that she doesn’t have access to back home, and she’s trying to figure out how she fits into all of these different spaces.

You’ve done interviews where you’ve talked about the importance of representation, including often-overlooked perspectives. What does this book offer young Black readers?

I hope readers understand they don’t have to be this perfect person who fits a perfect mold. It sometimes feels like for people of color there’s this standard that you’re being held to that’s exceptionally high and that makes you feel like you can’t make mistakes. The characters in the novel are flawed, and I’m hoping [readers] understand, especially through Carina’s story, that you can mess up and come back. I love Carina; she’s a mess but learns through her mistakes. We’re not perfect and should not be expected to be perfect. I think the message is to keep showing up and keep making mistakes.

Mariette Williams is a writer in South Florida.