Libba Bray, the bestselling, award-winning author of many utterly original YA novels, returns this month with Under the Same Stars (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Feb. 4), a devastating yet empowering tale of young people navigating life in Germany during World War II, West Berlin during the Cold War, and New York City during the Covid-19 lockdowns. The three storylines (interspersed with fairy tales about a hare and a deer) intertwine around a central mystery that’s connected to the Bridegroom’s Oak, a real tree in Germany whose knothole has long been used by people seeking love to exchange letters. Bray explores evergreen themes of trust and betrayal, oppression and rebellion, and grace and redemption in this powerful tale that transcends time but is deeply rooted in its well-realized settings. Bray spoke with us over the phone from her home in Brooklyn; the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The heart of Stars feels universal and timeless; how did you choose its specific time periods and locales?

[Editor] Grace Kendall sent me this article from the Atlantic about the Bridegroom’s Oak, which I’d never heard of before. I thought, This is fascinating, there’s this analog Tinder that has existed for quite some time. This reads like a fairy tale, but it’s real. Because it was in the Dodauer Forest in northern Germany, I immediately went to what happened during the war? What if the resistance was using it to move documents or send coded messages? And then, because we were in 2020, and we’d had four years of Trump, I’d been thinking about fascism and authoritarianism. I leapt forward and thought about divided Berlin—we’ve got this other form of authoritarianism with the Stasi. I knew that I wanted there to be connections between these stories, so where does that timeline lead? That brought me to the present: We were living through Covid-19, and the world was still, and yet so frantic at the same time. We were isolated and so desperate for connection. That brought some things into sharp relief.

How did you track everything as you wrote? All the moving parts meshed so beautifully!

Well, first of all, I love to hear that it all came together, because I am so free-range. I refer to my ADHD mind as “the symphonic mind”; it makes it sound prettier. But linear thought escapes me. [Even with] the Diviners, which was this sprawling four-book series, I could not do an outline. I had to write my way through. But with this one, because I knew that there needed to be these connections, I did a 25,000-word synopsis; I told myself the story. I always quote that e.e. cummings poem: “since feeling is first / who pays any attention / to the syntax of things.” That’s very much the way that I write: What’s going on emotionally in the lives of these characters? There was a lot of cleanup, because I don’t write sequentially—it’s just a big old junk drawer, and then I have to stitch it together. It was a lot of trial and error—and I was lucky to have a terrific editor in Grace and assistant editor in Asia Harden, which helped tremendously.

I’m sure there were many rounds of revision!

Oh my gosh. And I love revision—to me, that’s when it really starts to cook. But yes, revision upon revision upon revision.

When I was a school librarian, I loved asking visiting authors how many revisions they did on each book. It blew the kids’ minds!

I remember that so vividly when I was a young writer. Like, What do you mean, “do it over”? You see, I wrote THE END! It really is one of those things that one learns as one goes: Here we go! Time to make the donuts!

Did you have a certain sort of reader in mind as you were writing?

I don’t generally think about a particular reader. I’m always questioning myself; it’s about hoping to make connections, wanting to bring history to life and show that it ripples. Barbara Kingsolver said: “Close the door. Write with nobody looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you.” That holds true for me. I’m always trying to dig and find who these characters are and, I hope, view them with all the lovely little complications that make us human. I’m not thinking about trying to appeal to someone; I’m thinking about trying to share with someone and also reveal [things] for myself. I interrogate myself: What are the myths that I’ve wanted to buy into? When have I chosen comfort and complacency over having to make a choice that might make me less comfortable? Honestly, the more I get into something, the more I realize I don’t know.

Stars encourages readers to consider the bigger arc of history and how any one person can have a positive impact.

I have a dodgy relationship with the word hope, because it can be a bromide, and it can be toothless. The best kind of hope is the kind that’s combined with action, and that is, to me, about a sense of faith in something better that you’re willing to work for, even if you yourself may not see that day. We’re having to fight against nihilism and cynicism. Especially young people who, I think, often have a certain kind of optimism—it can feel overwhelming. You look at everything and think, I am one tiny person, and it’s easy to shut down. Find something good you can do—sometimes that’s as simple as helping someone who’s struggling with their groceries, and sometimes it’s volunteering at Planned Parenthood. It’s anything that reinforces not tribalism but human connection.

I appreciate how you highlight the power of stories for both good and bad.

We Americans seem very invested in this idea of the shining city on the hill, to the point of creating our own mythology. It’s not that other nations haven’t done this, but I think about the difference between story as a means of denial—and sometimes collective delusion to keep us in a place of comfort rather than change—and story as a means of pulling us toward hope, of being able to give us truth that might be hard in a way that allows us to sit with it. That was also one of the reasons I wanted to bring in fairy tales. We give children fairy tales so that we can prepare them for some of life’s harsher, darker truths. But they also give children the means to recognize, fight, and defeat the monster—and usually that’s the monster within. Story can be propagandized, obviously—Hitler did it, Donald Trump is a master at it; but there has to be a willing audience that wants to identify with the aggressor. Fiction allows one to enter into an almost sacred space, in the same way that you can sit in a church or something and feel away from the world. Stories offer us that sacred, safe place in which to wrestle with truths and start asking ourselves questions. I would say stories are how we human. 

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.