Midway through writing her second novel, “Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance,” an idea for a third book arrived in Alison Espach’s head like an uninvited guest.
She pictured a woman walking into a fancy hotel in Rhode Island. Espach knew the woman was an interloper — all the other hotel guests were gathered for a wedding — but couldn’t figure out what brought this character, Phoebe, to the stately oceanfront spread. Was she there to have an affair? To assassinate someone? Then it hit her: Phoebe was there to kill herself.
“As soon as I wrote that scene, I was thinking, Oh crap, that’s the plot,” Espach said. “I am not going to write this book. That’s not fun.”
But several years later, Espach did write “The Wedding People.” It spent 39 weeks on the best-seller list. It sold more than 520,000 hardcovers, according to Circana Bookscan, exponentially more than “Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance” (2022) and Espach’s debut, “The Adults” (2011). The “Today” show’s Read with Jenna Book Club made it a pick. Now, almost two years later, “The Wedding People” is coming out in paperback on July 28.
“Alison balances light and dark, humor and heartbreak, in a profound way,” Jenna Bush Hager said in an interview, describing the “The Wedding People” as “lightning in a bottle.”
During a rambling, spirited conversation at Seven Stars Bakery near her house in Providence, R.I., Espach, 41, was sanguine about her career — proud of her success but honest about the loss that infuses her work.
“If I ever write about this experience the title is going to be, ‘It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times,’ ” she said, sipping a latte as a foursome at our communal table bickered over a game of Scrabble.
There was a reason Espach needed a break from “Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance,” which took about a decade to write: Set in the 1990s in suburban Connecticut, where Espach grew up, the novel follows a 13-year-old in the aftermath of the death of her older sister. It was loosely based on Espach’s 16-year-old brother, Michael, who died in a car accident when she was 14.
“Inspiration is the wrong word,” Espach said, “It’s too positive.” She prefers jumping-off point.
“You disappeared on a school night,” reads the opening line. “Nobody was more surprised than me.” The book is dedicated to Espach’s brother, whom she described as well-liked, tall and just beginning to grow into himself.
“That tragedy kind of froze me in time,” Espach said. She spoke softly, commanding more attention with graceful hand gestures than with her voice. “It made me feel closer to my brother, but it also helped me look away for the first time.”
When she wrote “The Adults,” which also had a teen protagonist, Espach said, “people asked, ‘How do you remember this stuff?’ And I was like, ‘How could you not remember?’”
She added, “I love writing teenagers because I feel like they’re like 80-year-olds and 2-year-olds smooshed together.”
After graduating from Providence College, where she now teaches creative writing, Espach earned an M.F.A. at Washington University in St. Louis. “The Adults” was her thesis; it came out when she was 26.
“I felt such an urgency to go to grad school, to write a book,” she said, “Because my brother died young, I thought I would die young. I couldn’t imagine myself living past 30.”
Humor was a lifeline. Espach recalled the first time she laughed after her brother died — realizing, “Oh, you’re still you.” Even though she kept returning to the subject of loss, she wove a certain dry wit into her work. Her books call to mind an Arnold Palmer, equal parts bitter and sweet.
While living in St. Louis, she had what she described as “the best job in the world” as a photo booth attendant at weddings and other celebrations. She kept track of props (assorted hats, wacky glasses) and made sure hosts got copies of their guests’ pictures on a C.D.
“You got to talk to people but you also got to watch them,” Espach said. “I didn’t need to know anybody, I would still cry if the speech was good or the dance between the mother and the son was especially joyful.”
That voyeuristic spirit made its way into “The Wedding People.”
Spoiler alert: Phoebe does not end her life but instead insinuates herself into the week’s festivities, from rehearsal dinner to bridal brunch. Espach, who is in a relationship but isn’t married, has an eye for the spectrum of personalities that converge at weddings: the misunderstood mother, the recalcitrant teenager, the self-involved bride.
She was surprised by her affinity for Lila, a complicated human in bridezilla’s clothing.
“Her refusal to allow Phoebe to feel what she wanted to feel and be the way she wanted to be was basically the same voice I had in my head being like, ‘Writing must be fun,’” Espach said. “‘Books must be light. Happiness happiness happiness.’”
One obstacle stood between Espach and the completion of the book: How could she tell a convincing story set at a luxury hotel when she’d never stayed at such a place?
“My dad was always a Hampton Inn/Hilton guy,” Espach laughed. “Everything I described felt fraudulent — the curtains are shiny! The floor is fancy! Bad writing.”
She applied for an academic research grant from Providence College and used around $4,000 of it to stay at two posh hotels in Newport, R.I., the Vanderbilt and the Cliffside Inn.
“I was nervous when I got there,” Espach said. “It felt like they were going to know I was on a scholarship.” She almost declined turn-down service, having never heard of it, but wound up feeling strangely soothed when a hotel employee folded the comforter and closed the drapes.
Eventually Espach settled in. “I put on the robes, put on the slippers, did it all.” When the bellman delivered her luggage, she asked whether the water bottles were free. “And they’re like, ‘You’re a weird rich person.’”
Espach eked out two more nights in another hotel, this one in Times Square before her two “Today” show appearances. Back in Providence, she’d learned that “The Wedding People” was a Read with Jenna pick while at the hardware store buying sage green paint for her bathroom.
She recalled the email from her publisher, Holt., saying “‘This is a big secret and you cannot tell a single person,’ or something like that.” She kept the secret for several months, preparing for her “Today” show appearance by taking a makeup lesson at Sephora.
Caroline Zancan, Espach’s editor at Holt, who is now editorial director of fiction at Mariner Books, said that enthusiasm for “The Wedding People” drew readers to Espach’s earlier novels, which doesn’t always happen.
Zancan wasn’t surprised. “Alison puts so much of herself into her work,” she said, “Her worldview, her good humor, her deep wisdom. It all just feels like who she comes from, who she is as a person.”
The success of “The Wedding People” was “fun,” Espach said. (She used this word 15 times in our interview.) But while “the dream was happening,” she explained, “I was dealing with some medical issues. I was sick and I was in pain.”
She preferred not share details but did recommend cookbooks as bedtime reading for the worried. The morning of our visit, Espach accidentally texted a recipe she planned to cook that night from Smitten Kitchen. It was for kale and quinoa salad with ricotta salata.
Recently, Espach has been adjusting to motherhood. Her 8-month-old son has endured his own medical odyssey, including time in hospitals in Providence and Boston. She doesn’t remember much about the day her son was moved from one place to the other, except eating chicken fingers and receiving a message that read, “Please rate your I.C.U. transport.”
Espach said, “That’s the first thing I found funny. It was a moment of relief. It shouldn’t have been surprising because I feel like my whole life and career is built off this tension between tragedy and comedy.”
Now Espach is tinkering with a new novel “in the way that I work on novels, which is to say, I’m trying out novel ideas.”
She’s never written from the perspective of a mother before. She might be ready to attempt it.