A lot has changed since I started writing The House in the Pines. I turned forty, got married, wrote my first book, then watched with gratitude and wonder as it found its way to so many readers. But the change I want to write about here is one that happened on the page long before anyone else read this story.
The character of Frank.
I always knew (spoiler alert!) that Frank’s house existed only in his mind. But Frank as a character evolved over the course of several years, largely in response to that twist. He had always been capable of leading Maya to a place not quite of this world, but both he and the nature of that place have changed.
First-draft Frank really did have supernatural powers.
He was god-like, capable of revealing other, possibly divine realms and his house was a paradisical home where Maya was reunited with her long-lost father. (The house in that version was more like Pixán’s true home in the ancient text “The Hymn of the Pearl,” which you might remember from the book.)
In this first draft, Frank was more magical, and he wasn’t definitively good nor evil but morally ambiguous. Maya spent more time at his cabin piecing together clues. One clue, for example, was his garden. Walking its lush rows, Maya (even then attuned to plants) saw fruits of all seasons and climates growing at the same time and understood in that moment that this place, though seemingly perfect, was in fact impossible.
I’d planned for the final clue to involve Maya’s father. In that original draft, Maya met him on her first “visit” to the house and seeing him erased all doubt in her mind: Frank’s house was a place where the dead were still alive. She was awestruck, a blend of fear and wonder that I retained in later drafts, though in different ratios.
Original Frank offered her a choice: stay in this mystical realm with him and her father or return to the life she knew with all its heartache and loss. Frank forced Maya to decide which of these places was her true home. She chose life.
This was important to me at the time. Klonopin withdrawal had left me depressed, sleep-deprived, and disoriented. If faced with Maya’s decision at that time, I would have been tempted to escape, to be anywhere but in my own body.
But as Frank evolved, so too did my understanding of that other, more perfect world which may exist beyond our own. It was no longer something I craved but something I was ready to put aside. Now when I look back on those early drafts— the ones in which Maya understands what Frank’s house is and is tempted to stay anyway—a chill runs through me.
The Frank you met in the final version of The House in the Pines was the villain who emerged as the novel developed. Flesh-and-blood, not god-like so much as an extreme version of someone you might recognize. The ex you were so right to cut off. The friend who only wants to see you on their terms. The more time I spent with him, the more convinced I was that his actions were, from Maya’s perspective, equally terrifying and destructive.
To go to Frank’s house, after all, is to leave the world behind even without any magic or supernatural powers. He may present it as the ultimate refuge from the trials of life, from uncertainty, but the truth is no such place exists. Using hypnotism and storytelling, he lures women to their deaths. Not in darkness, but in public, mid-day, and, in the case of Cristina, on camera. By tapping into the imagination, your needs and desires, he gets your head, hacks into the nervous system. He controls not just the mind but the heart. The muscles of the lungs.
The more I worked on the book, the more sinister Frank became. He transformed into a cunning predator, luring his victims with the promise of a better place—victims who like myself at that time, were vulnerable and wished to escape this world.
But the cabin is always the final trap, a false promise of a world that does not exist. Only now have I realized Frank was the voice in my head as I was struggling through withdrawal, telling me to give up, to leave this world and its pain and struggles behind. By seeing Frank for the villain he is, I learned to see his lies, and embrace this wild, chaotic world I call home. I hope you will, too.
