Interview with S.A. Morris, Author of The Weight of the Dead

What's the story behind the story? What inspired you to write this book?

The idea started with the old claim that a body loses twenty-one grams at the moment of death, as if the soul itself had weight. I kept turning that over. What if what actually leaves isn’t the soul, but everything a person spent a lifetime trying not to carry?

That idea found its match in Parker’s Gore, where a two-hundred-year-old sealed casket doesn’t hold what it should. Along with the eighteenth-century woman buried there, the casket also contains the body of a modern-day toddler. The woman herself has a documented history: her own child was taken from her at birth. Nate Briggs is called in to make sense of a discovery that shouldn’t exist, and the longer he stays with it, the more he realizes that Parker’s Gore has been carrying that woman’s stolen child for two hundred years without ever calling it what it is.

The question the book keeps asking is: what do we truly owe to history, and what happens when the living try to rewrite the debt rather than pay it?

What's your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

I read everything, and whenever I find an author I like, I keep coming back for more. That includes everything from Stephen King to Dan Brown, and from Louise Penny to Nora Roberts.

What books are on your TBR pile right now?

Too many to list, but at the top of the pile is Open Season by C. J. Box. A friend suggested I’d like the mystery series, and I can’t wait to dive in. I also have Water Witches by Chris Bohjalian at the top of my pile. The whole idea of divination for water is so darn traditional Vermont that I almost feel like reading it will be like reading an old friend. Funny, neither of these books is a new release. Isn’t that the best thing about the written word? It’s there when you’re ready for it!

What scene in your book was your favorite to write?

The scenes with details about what was found in the 18th-century caskets were really interesting to research, but the writing itself? Without a doubt, if you had any of the locals congregating for coffee, or Abigail being Abigail, or Joe and Frank vying to be Nate’s ‘go-to’ for direction, you know I had fun writing that chapter!

Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)

No quirky habits, but I write in my head a lot! Stacking wood, raking leaves- that’s when the imagination runs loose. By the time I sit down at the laptop, I’m just transcribing and refining what is already there.

Do you have a motto, quote or philosophy you live by?

Not one. Maybe a hundred. If Pooh said it, it’s golden. If John Muir said it, it’s gospel. And if it’s Van Morrison, I’m already nodding along with my eyes half closed.

If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?

If readers remember one thing after reading The Weight of the Dead, I hope it's that we never truly know what another person is carrying. Grief and regret have a weight that often can't be seen. People’s lives are shaped by experiences, both wonderful and tragic. We can’t change or correct the past, for others or for ourselves; we can only learn from it and move forward. I hope the novel leaves readers a little more willing to look beneath the surface and withhold judgment, recognizing that sometimes the heaviest burdens are the ones carried in silence.