WHERE ARE YOU, ECHO BLUE?
Hayley Krischer
Dutton | Hardcover |7/16/24| $28.00 | 9780593473511
Also available as an eBook and Audiobook
Award-winning journalist and YA novelist Hayley Krischer makes her adult novel debut with WHERE ARE YOU, ECHO BLUE? (Dutton; on sale July 16, 2024), a whirlwind tale of celebrity, fandom, and the price of ambition. The novel follows both Goldie Klein, a scrappy young journalist trying to make it in the New York magazine world, and the object of her admiration, Echo Blue, the most famous child star of the nineties who goes missing on the eve of the millennium.
Krischer talks to Authorlink’s Doris Booth about the challenges of writing ECHO BLUE, and moving from a journalist career into adult novel writing. Haley first started brainstorming the idea for Echo with her agent, Emily Sylvan at Prospect Agency. The author wrote diligently for ten months, followed by another eight months of editing with her agent and publisher. One doesn’t have to have an MFA to write a novel, she says. But it does give you a leg up in publishing. See the full interview.
In Krischer’s novel, when Echo disappears ahead of a highly publicized New Year’s Eve television appearance, most people assume it’s because she’s gotten herself into trouble. After all, between strained family relationships, a high-profile relationship with a Hollywood “bad boy,” and a stint in rehab, she’s no stranger to drama. But Goldie is Echo’s biggest fan and knows there must be more to the story. Determined to make this investigation her big media break, she sets off for L.A. in search of Echo—and the truth.
Goldie, and readers, fall deep into Echo’s complicated past, following her rise from plucky child star to ingenue to rebel. The more Goldie unearths, the more she questions her own complicity in the young star’s downfall, but it becomes impossible to pull herself away. Alternating perspectives between the two women until their twin journeys collide, WHERE ARE YOU, ECHO BLUE? is a sharp interrogation of celebrity culture, the thin line between admiration and obsession, and what it means to tell other peoples’ stories.
Hayley Krischer has earned critical acclaim for her moving YA novels, Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf and The Falling Girls (optioned by Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories production company, known for Big Little Lies and The Luckiest Girl Alive). She also spent two decades as a journalist, examining culture and interviewing celebrities—including Gabrielle Union, Celine Dion, and former child star Tatum O’Neal—for publications like the New York Times, Marie Claire, and the Atlantic. These experiences contribute to the complicated, richly textured world she brings to life in WHERE ARE YOU, ECHO BLUE?, a sharp, nostalgic, fast-paced thrill ride for our celebrity-obsessed times.
