What is the title of your latest release?
MERCY HILL
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A debut family novel about four sisters growing up on the campus of the underfunded state mental hospital where their strong-willed mother serves as head of psychiatry. A richly moving story of sisterhood, loyalty, and mental health in America.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The inspiration for MERCY HILL came from lived experience: I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, just about a mile away from Dorthea Dix, North Carolina’s last remaining state psychiatric institution. Like many state-run mental hospitals, it had a long history, vast grounds, and by the time I was a teenager in the early 2000’s, was often in the news as it was in the process of being shut down.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Denise is smart and compassionate – but she’s also a loner. I’d like to hang out with her but I don’t know if she’d deign to hang out with me.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Observant, conflicted, changing.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Over many rounds of revision, I learned the importance of a good “hook” to start the book off strong. So often in writing workshops, people tell you to “cut the first half” or “cut the first 30 pages” and that always seems like a bit of a cliché until you do it and realize that you just needed to get into the action sooner.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I drafted then edited, drafted then edited… this book took so many forms over so many years that it has felt like just an unending cycle of revision.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
For the past 11 years, a group of friends and I have made it our mission to eat at one three-Michelin star restaurant every year. We spend the rest of the year arguing about which one we are going to hit up. Next up: Jungsik!
Describe your writing space/office!
I live in a tiny Brooklyn apartment and write before my 5-year-old wakes up on the couch in our living room.
Who is an author you admire?
I am in awe of both Lauren Groff’s talent as well as her work ethic.
Is there a book that changed your life?
When I met my husband, we had both recently finished reading Richard Russo’s “Straight Man” – an excellent book and a wonderful first-date topic.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I got a text from my agent that Carolyn Williams at Doubleday was very excited about my book two minutes before having to present a very complicated PowerPoint presentation at work (I work in a healthcare marketing agency and was filling in for a medical strategist that morning). I do not think that presentation went over very well!!
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Literary fiction
What’s your favorite movie?
A League of Their Own
What is your favorite season?
Ugh I used to always say summer, but it’s gotten so hot in recent years I’m gonna be a basic bitch and say fall.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
My birthday usually falls over Memorial Day Weekend, so at least twice in the last five years I’ve been traveling internationally day-of, and woken up on my birthday with an Ambien hangover in a European customs line.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I need more people to watch Severance so we can talk about Severance together.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
The best thing about living in NYC is never having to choose a favorite!
What do you do when you have free time?
Calling my best friend “Whitney United Healthcare – Actually Helpful” (that’s what she’s saved as in my phone). I’m going to get them to approve my out of network acupuncture or die trying!!
What can readers expect from you next?
Doubleday just bought my second book, THIN SKIN, a coming-of-age novel which centers around the complicated loves, and losses of two best friends from their high school years into adulthood when they become teachers at the school where they first met. Slated for spring 2028!
Narrator: Christine Lakin
A debut family novel about four sisters growing up on the campus of the underfunded state mental hospital where their strong-willed mother serves as head of psychiatry. A richly moving story of sisterhood, loyalty, and mental health in America.
The Cross sisters have lived their entire lives on the sprawling grounds of Mercy Hill, the embattled Raleigh mental hospital run by their formidable mother. Since childhood, JJ, Caro, Mimi, and Denise have been inculcated with their mother's mission: they'll work alongside her to protect Mercy Hill from the fate of other state hospitals across the country, which are being gutted and closed, one by one.
After an incident involving the highest-security ward, Mercy Hill faces greater scrutiny than ever, and Lisa Cross pushes each of her daughters even harder in the name of her mission. As the sisters cross into adulthood, the pressures of their isolated environment and mercurial mother set them on different—and perilous—paths. And as the battle wages on, youngest sister and narrator Denise grapples with the added responsibility that comes from being the last hope for their mother’s dreams.
Set in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with Mercy Hill’s fate hanging in the balance, Denise recounts the transformations that shape and destroy her family, along with the landscape of mental healthcare in the United States. With sharp insight and real humor, debut novelist Hannah Thurman captures the turmoil of growing up, the true meaning of a calling, and the indelible bonds of family.
Coming of Age | Fiction Family Life [ Doubleday, On Sale: May 5, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780385551823 / eISBN: 9780385551830 ]
Hannah Thurman is a Brooklyn-based writer originally from Raleigh, NC whose fiction has been published widely. In 2024 she was named a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Fiction. Winner of the 2023 Florida Review Editor's Prize, she's been chosen for conferences/residencies at Bread Loaf, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, VCCA, and Yaddo.
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