9/10 EMBARGO New Novel “Bright Stars” Reflects on Coming of Age During 9/11

Author Kimberley Tait had just started her first real job, freshly graduated from Dartmouth University and living in Chicago, when the tragedy of 9/11 unfolded and changed the trajectory of her adult life.

Tait, now 47, was late to work that morning and was unaware that the Twin Towers had been hit until she entered her office, where her coworkers were watching the calamity from the conference room.

The scene is familiar to Tait’s sophomore novel, “Bright Stars,” a tale of young 2001 graduates of an elite Northeast university launching into the real world, only to have their milestone rocked by disaster.

Cate Halliday, the novel’s main character, was loosely inspired by Tait’s experience—both Canadian-born literature lovers living in Chicago at the time.

“I wanted that authenticity and that actual first-hand experience to be able to inform those pieces of the story,” Tait said. “I also wanted to show what it was like outside of New York as well because of how far-reaching the shock waves were, and the disbelief, and the aftereffects.”

“Bright Stars,” which was released on Sept. 10, begins at the tail end of Cate’s junior year of college in 2000. Her weeks are full of idyllically studying the works of Thomas Hardy and William Makepeace Thackeray and spending her nights in the attic of a fraternity house with her boyfriend and his chocolate Labrador retriever.

However, this perfect narrative quickly sours as family financial troubles, the dot-com bubble collapse, and a breakup with her first love catapult her past graduation and towards a greater heartbreak.

Cate is with Teddy Lively, her wealthy friend who has everything he needs but nothing he wants, when the two watch the towers fall, “pulverized into billions of particles blanketing downtown Manhattan in a layer of devastating snow.”

Meanwhile, Tait carefully weaves in the perspective of Ames McQuillan, one of Cate and Teddy’s mysterious peers with whom Cate has a short but complicated past. Unlike the other two, Ames is in New York, on the 18th floor of the North Tower, when the first plane hits.

While he is able to make it out, all he can think of is the illustrious Sloane Westwick, his ex-girlfriend and Cate’s sorority sister, who he knows is somewhere out in the city.

“In the writing of those passages, I re-watched days’ worth of footage from that time,” Tait said. “The actual live broadcast that happened that morning to the sections where the broadcaster describes what’s happening. And I wove in things that really struck me, like observations that the force of the planes caused both towers to tip to one side. It’s just things you couldn’t even imagine.”

Several of the details that Tait infuses in these passages—even down to a charm from a Tiffany’s bracelet—are inspired by firsthand accounts she has heard over the years.

As the aftermath begins to play out, Cate, Teddy, Ames, and Sloane’s lives intersect in increasingly complex ways, especially as Cate and Teddy relocate to New York in the spring of 2002. The characters struggle mentally to cope with loss, both of their peers and of their purposes in life.

While Cate battles with unrequited love, the loneliness of NYC, and a career in the communications world when what she really wants is to regain her writer’s spark, she is tasked with an important mission reflective of 9/11’s enduring impacts.

Tait builds this narrative out with a lyrical prose reminiscent of a more wistful literary time period, which Tait’s brother has described as neo-Fitzgeraldian.

“I had some fun with some descriptions and just New York as a backdrop, because I think it’s always ignited something in me,” Tait said. “I think it’s the romance and the cinema of it.”

Though this is Tait’s second novel, it’s been a long time coming. “It’s true when Capote says if a story is really yours, it’ll haunt you,” Tait said. “This one has haunted me for the better part of 20-plus years since.”

Tait has a unique personal connection to the story. In early 2002, she moved to New York to assist the 9/11 United Services Group as a crisis communicator. Part of this role entailed getting information out to those affected on how they could get help.

But another part was partnering with McKinsey to conduct studies on where their needs were being unmet. Often, these unmet needs centered on the mental toll on those who were in the towers and made it out, a theme Tait touches on throughout the novel.

“I wanted to reference some of those things, and just these agonizing positions that people were in,” Tait said. “I’ve obviously endeavored to do it with great sensitivity and care because it means so much to me. It was not easy to write about any of those things.”

“Bright Stars” is Tait’s love letter to her generation, “The Last of the Innocents.” They were the last to experience the analog life before being thrust into the real world amidst tragedy.

“What I wanted to convey with ‘Bright Stars’ is this idea that through tragedy, through the most unfathomable things, there is a human spirit, and ultimately, obviously, this book is very much an exaltation of love,” Tait said.

Tait now lives in New Hampshire, but lived in Murray Hill and then on the Upper West Side for several years. Tait debuted with her first novel, “Fake Plastic Love,” in 2017. “Bright Stars” was published with Dogstar Press, a new endeavor Tait has started that solely publishes 100% human work and is aimed at re-inspiring a love for the art of literature.