Mindy Mejia was only at the University of Iowa for one year of undergrad, but she still remembers the storm.
“During one trip back [to UI] to visit friends, I actually got caught in an ice storm, so very similar to the setting of the book,” the Minnesota-based author recalled. “Everything was shut down, only 35 and 80 were open, there were hundreds of wrecks, semis turned over, I thought I was going to die and I didn’t know if I was ever gonna get out of Iowa.
“I think the trauma of that trip sat in the back of my head for years and years,” she added with a chuckle, “and I just realized, eventually, I was gonna have to write a book about it.”
Nearly 20 years later, that experience has been channeled into her latest book.
To Catch a Storm is Mejia’s fifth novel. Released in early August, this new thriller follows physicist Eve Roth whose husband, a University of Iowa professor suspended for inappropriate conduct with a student, goes missing. The last trace of him is his abandoned, burning car, and Eve is the investigators’ top suspect.
Eve’s search to find her husband and prove her innocence finds her paired up with one Jonah Kendrick, a man who claims to be a psychic detective and has been having dreams of Eve’s husband bleeding in a barn. As Eve reluctantly joins forces with Jonah, the pair rush to find answers in Iowa as the state freezes over.
This latest publication is unique among Mejia’s books — which include Everything You Want Me To Be and Leave No Trace — in that To Catch a Storm is part of a series. Mejia is already at work on the second book.
“It’s in the same world, we follow the same characters, it’s very much a follow-up,” she said. “All of our major plot points are wrapped up [in the first book] but there’s a lot to get into here. There are two different characters narrating this next book, and I can’t tell you who those are because I don’t want you to know who survives book one.”
Mejia’s upcoming appearance is part of Iowa City’s annual Book Festival. This year’s lineup also includes — among others — John Irving (The World According to Garp), Daniel Kraus (Whalefall) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (A Critique of Postcolonial Reason).
The festival runs from Oct. 8 to 15 with Mejia’s event scheduled for Oct. 14 at Prairie Lights Books. More information about Mejia’s appearance and other Book Festival events can be found at iowacityofliterature.org.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s September 2023 issue.
