Tin House: The narrator of Erased lives in an imagined town called St. Nils, but during the narrative he travels to Cleveland, Ohio, a real place. Why did you choose to move him from an imagined place to a real one? Why not two imagined places, or two real ones?

Jim Krusoe: All my characters seem to inhabit St. Nils at one time or another during their lives, so that part came easily. I stick them there because I’m not a naturalistic writer, and it’s helpful for me to use an unincorporated (so to speak) place setting. I did grow up in Cleveland, however, and left it when I went to college, so the Cleveland in Erased is as imaginary, in its way, as St. Nils, but there is also a note or two of truth: On the one hand, the years I spent in Ohio were the unhappiest of my life, but on the other, I think that for most people, including me, the place where they grow up becomes, when recollected, a kind of Eden, a magic world, because everything happens for the first time. Everything is fresh. Everything makes an impression. Somehow these two conflicting versions of Cleveland have merged inside this novel.