Emily Arsenault reads the tea leaves...

HALLIE EPHRON: I was blown away by Emily Arsenault's clever and brilliant (really) THE BROKEN TEAGLASS in which a pair of lexicographers find mysterious clues in old files. She's a literary writer who knows how to spinout suspense. Now she's out with THE LEAF READER, a young adult mystery about a high school girl whose tea-leaf reading abilities draw her into a missing person case and deep into danger. 

Here's what Kirkus had to say in a starred review:

“Arsenault’s page-ripping whodunit not only will send readers running for their tea kettles, but packs the thrill of self-discovery and acceptance amid base adversity: a rich, rewarding teen debut.” – Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Welcome to Jungle Red, Emily! Please tell us about tea-leaf reading. So fascinating. How did you get interested in it?

EMILY ARSENAULT: My first introduction to tea-leaf reading was in 1999, when my husband (then boyfriend) introduced me to his grandmother Ruth in Arizona. He remembered that she did readings when he was a kid, and asked her to demonstrate for me.  

We tore open Lipton teabags and made tea with their contents. (I know tea connoisseurs and practiced tea-leaf readers might be a little aghast that we didn’t use real loose-leaf tea.) When we were done drinking, Ruth studied our tea dregs. 

“I see a lot of dogs,” she said of the clumped formations in my cup. “You must have good friends.” I would later learn that she said this to almost everyone, in almost every reading she gave.

We didn’t get to see Ruth that often, because we lived on the other side of the country, in Massachusetts. But from that time until her death in 2007, whenever we’d visit, we’d ask for a reading. Sometimes she seemed embarrassed by the request, and often seemed to rely on stock predictions (It looks like you’re going to get your wish. But not exactly in the way you wanted it . . .  It looks like you’re going on a trip . . . probably going home.  . . . I see a lot of dogs . . . ). 

But almost every time, she’d look deep into the cup, her eyes would light up, and she’d say something that would later turn out to be uncannily prophetic.

Most memorable to me was a time she said, I think you’re going to have a dispute about a pet. But it’s not really the pet’s fault.

A few weeks later an eccentric neighbor of ours started coming unhinged because our cat was sneaking onto her porch and eating her cats’ food. She’d call us up to scream about how mean our cat was to her cats. She was going to call the pound, she said, or take our cat “for a ride” if he kept coming onto her porch.

One of the last times we saw her, Ruth gave us a small, battered paperback—How to Read Tea Leaves, by Joyce Wilson, published in 1969—and told us we could keep it. Over the following years, my husband and I would occasionally give each other tea leaf readings. We’d have fun joking around with it, but neither of us seemed to have the instinct for it that Ruth had.

Wikimedia 

Like many tea leaf reading guides, Wilson’s book lists all kinds of possible symbols one might find in a cup. (E.g. a fish might mean good news, an hourglass could mean imminent danger, a moon crescent can symbolize good luck.) And from this book we picked up this very basic way of reading a cup: symbols on the rim represent things happening in the immediate future, while symbols in the bottom of the forecast farther into the future. 

I’ve read several tea leaf-reading guides, and this is absolutely not the only way of looking at a cup—but it’s the general principle I’ve used, in real and fictional readings.

Over the years, I would come across Wilson’s book on our shelf and flip through it, thinking: I’d like to have a character who does tea leaf readings in a book someday. But I couldn’t quite decide how to make it work. Until I tried it in a YA novel.

I’ve always been interested in YA. In fact, my first completed (unpublished) manuscript was a YA book. But the result was a story more depressing than I ultimately wanted to inflict on young readers. You see, I was a fairly miserable teenager and didn’t really know how to write teenagers any other way.

I’ve often thought of my sullen high school years and wondered, Wouldn’t I have been a lot happier if I’d just gotten a hobby? (A hobby besides writing gloomy poems, to be clear.)

So the next time I tried to write a YA book—more than a decade after my first attempt—I gave my main character a hobby. A weird hobby—tea leaf reading. But a hobby nonetheless. And from there I was able to develop a character whom I thought wouldn’t completely depress my readers.

I gave Marnie a lot of circumstances that resemble my own in high school. I grew up in a Connecticut town that bears some resemblance to Marnie’s.  My position within that town resembled Marnie’s in some vague ways. I’d rather keep the comparisons vague, but Marnie’s house is a little worn down, and her family is a little offbeat. But she is far more laid back about these things than I ever was. Her tea leaf reading is her way of saying, “Yes, I’m a bit of a weirdo in this town. But I’m just going to bide my time and embrace that.” She has a sense of humor about her situation. She realizes she can have fun with it, and manages to see past it. In addition to her hobby, I gave Marnie Ruth’s gift of perception.

Of course, Marnie’s gives her friends and classmates tea leaf readings for fun—and maybe for a little bit of attention. But when a guy named Matt Cotrell—whose best friend disappeared last year—asks for a reading, things get a little more serious. As Marnie’s readings become darker and more prescient, she is pulled into a mystery—a mystery that appears to involve murder.

HALLIE: Does this sound irresistible or what? Have any of you out there had your tea leaves read? Or Tarot cards? Or even your palm? I hope it didn't lead to a murder, but were there any epiphanies? 

Note from yesterday: Libby Dodd is the winner of Edith Maxwell's new book!