
In his debut adult novel, The In-Between Bookstore (Avon Books, 2025), Edward Underhill asks the question – what would you tell your younger self if you could go back in time? Following Darby, a trans man, as he moves back to his small Illinois hometown, The In-Between Bookstore, is a heart-touching exploration of the choices we make and the choices we need to make to find our place in the world. Visiting his hometown bookstore, In Between Books, Darby is transported back in time to meet his teenage self, setting him on a journey to understand the past and to try to change the future.
In conversation with PEN America’s Director, World Voices Festival & Literary Programs, Sabir Sultan, for this week’s PEN Ten, Underhill speaks about his inspiration for the novel, his love of bookstores, and growing up queer and trans in the midwest. (Barnes & Noble, Bookshop)
The In-Between Bookstore tells the story of Darby, who is about to turn thirty and is currently unemployed, leaving NYC and returning to his hometown of Oak Falls, Illinois. There, he visits the bookstore he worked at in high school and travels through time to meet his pre-transition teenage self. What inspired this story?
Years ago, I saw a question going around Twitter that was something like, “if you could tell your younger self anything, what would it be?” A lot of the answers were joking—like I’d tell my younger self the winning lottery numbers—but I was really struck by just how many queer people I saw saying, “I’d tell my younger self we’re gay (or trans, or what have you) and we’re going to be fine.” This was something I’d certainly thought about myself—this desire to go back in time and tell my teenage self that I was trans, before I had language to understand why I felt fundamentally wrong somehow. I came out when I was 21, and I’m not sure I’ll ever shake the feeling that maybe if I could have figured things out earlier, I could have saved myself a lot of pain and struggle. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but that maybe will always be there. This book really came from that maybe—and from realizing, after seeing this question on Twitter, that this desire might be more universal than I realized, and it would be fascinating to explore through a specifically queer and trans lens.
Books and bookstores are in many ways the perfect setting for a time travel story. One of the ways older Darby connects with younger Darby is through the books younger Darby loved, like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson & The Olympians series. Picking a book in the series off the shelf, older Darby is brought back in time to his younger self; “The book is so real and so familiar in my hands that I can practically see myself sitting in this aisle, my feet stretched out in front of me, with Michael next to me (pg. 106).” How did you think of the connection between reading and time travel when writing this book?
Bookstores have always felt like they exist a little out of time and space to me. Books represent possibilities—you’re really getting plunked down in an entirely different world when you read. And there’s something really special about re-reading books that are familiar; revisiting them feels like revisiting the person I was when I first read them, which is, I suppose, kind of a form of time travel! I also think for many trans folks (certainly for me), we do a lot of exploration of ourselves through fiction. I definitely casually over-identified with many male characters before I realized I was trans. So it felt very natural for Darby’s character to be very connected to books, and for a bookstore to be that portal between past and present—a literal door to possibility.
When developing the conceit of time travel, how did you approach creating the temporal logistics in the story? Did you do any research?
I did do a bit of research, mostly to get a sense how other storytellers had handled the concept of time travel before me, and what our understanding of time travel (scientifically) is these days. I wanted this to feel a little fresh and as grounded in reality as it could be without going way down a science fiction hole. That’s a big part of why (spoiler alert!) I ultimately went with the possibility of multiple parallel universes—the multiverse. Plus, I love a little mystery and unresolvedness! But overall, rather than spend a lot of time trying to understand physics, I generally approached the logistics of time travel through what the story felt like it needed. So, for example, because everyone has a smartphone these days, I realized pretty quickly that I had to get rid of Darby’s phone when he’s in the bookstore, otherwise he’ll take a picture of his younger self, or show his younger self something from the future on Google, and that would get gnarly. So that became a little puzzle to solve. I always wanted the logistics and the story to feel very enmeshed, like one wouldn’t really make sense without the other.
There’s something really special about re-reading books that are familiar; revisiting them feels like revisiting the person I was when I first read them, which is, I suppose, kind of a form of time travel!
During one of their encounters, older Darby asks younger Darby to order a copy of Susan Stryker’s Transgender History in the hopes that younger Darby will look over the book and, in learning about the existence of other trans people, begin to understand that he is trans. Why did you pick that book for older Darby to recommend?
It was one of the earliest books I remember finding (and I don’t remember how I initially found it), reading, and realizing that trans people weren’t new. That we’d been here a long time, and that I wasn’t some strange anomaly. When I came out, around 2008, social media didn’t really exist the way it does now. I googled, looking for trans people like me, and I remember finding one blog. One!
It was really important to me that the older version of Darby not just give the younger Darby all the answers himself. I didn’t want him to see his younger self and actually say, You’re trans. I wanted him to give his younger self the tools of self-discovery. Because I really think nobody else can tell you who you are—not even another version of yourself! So, since the setting for this transformation is a bookstore, a book seemed natural—and I knew that book was old enough (one of the few that is) that it would have existed in 2009 for that younger version of Darby to find.
Early in the book, when Darby is discussing his move to New York City, he says, “It was the beginning of a new life. Just like New York City was the beginning of a new life when I got to college. The very definition of possibility (pg. 12).” Throughout the book, I found myself thinking about the idea of possibility. In giving younger Darby a copy of Susan Stryker’s book, older Darby is trying to introduce younger Darby to the possibility of his transness and his queer identity. Books themselves are endless possibilities. How does Darby’s relationship to the possible and impossible change over the course of the book?
I think this is why the book feels hopeful to me, even if it’s also a little bittersweet—because that possibility is always there. At the beginning of the book, Darby feels stuck. His life isn’t turning out to be what he expected or hoped for, and he feels like he has very little agency in it. Things happen to him. Darby spends the rest of the book confronting his own story, realizing that while some of it has been written (the past), most of it is actually still full of possibility (the future). You can’t take every possible path, but there’s agency in deciding which paths you take, and excitement in thinking about the possibilities. By the end of the book, he focuses much more on possibility—he still doesn’t have all the answers (and nobody ever does, really) but he knows he can choose where to go and what to do. I think as a millennial, this felt very powerful to me as well, personally. I’ve read so many news articles about how my generation has “bypassed traditional markers of adulthood” or otherwise “missed” opportunities that older generations had. I could argue that we haven’t, by and large, “bypassed” these markers out of choice, but with this book, I really wanted to explore the idea that you don’t have to have things figured out and lined up by age 30. You don’t have to know where your career is going. You don’t have to be settled. There’s still agency and power in exploring the possibilities.
Within a couple of weeks of returning to Oak Falls, Darby is invited to a house party by his high school best friend Michael, with whom he fell out his senior year. At Michael’s house party Darby meets several LGBTQIA+ people who live in the town and thinks, “Why didn’t I realize that there were queer people right here? How did Michael find them (pg.88)?” Throughout the book Darby has moments where he feels nostalgia and a love for Oak Falls, but he also recalls it as a place he felt he didn’t belong when growing up. What does Oak Falls mean to Darby? How does it contrast to New York City where he found himself and a queer community?
A lot of Darby’s feelings about Oak Falls are inspired by the complex feelings I’ve wrestled with around the notion of home. Like Darby, I grew up relatively isolated in the Midwest and later moved to big coastal cities. And like Darby, I found community in those big cities, but I always felt like there was some piece of me that was still connected to the Midwest. I was shaped by where I grew up, and it’s very weird and sometimes uncomfortable to simultaneously have fondness for the place you grew up and feel that it really hurt you.
It honestly never even occurred to me to stay where I grew up. Partly for career reasons, but also because once I came out, I just felt like the only way to have a future was to move to a big city. That was just what queer people did. I’m a little embarrassed now at how long it took me to realize that queer people existed in those small Midwestern towns too—but existence in the Midwest often looked different than existence in a place like New York City. The narrative of the “misfit” moving from their small town to the big city is a common one, including in the queer community, and I wanted to complicate that a little bit with this book. I wanted to acknowledge that pieces of Darby will always fit in with where he came from, but that leaving also shaped who he became. The reality also is that it’s still different to be trans in a small town in the Midwest than it is to be a cis gay person, whether that’s because of prejudice or simply because trans folks have different healthcare needs. I think the big change for Darby over the course of the story is that when he first left Oak Falls, after high school, it was because he felt like he had to. By the end of the book, he realizes that if he chooses to leave again, it will be because that’s what he personally needs. Again, the idea of personal agency and possibility, rather than choices being made for you.
I really wanted to explore the idea that you don’t have to have things figured out and lined up by age 30. You don’t have to know where your career is going. You don’t have to be settled. There’s still agency and power in exploring the possibilities.
The relationship between older Darby and younger Darby is shaped by the things older Darby wishes younger Darby knew and, at times, that gap in knowledge frustrates him. Is there a grace and forgiveness that we owe our younger selves?
I definitely think there is. For all that I’ve wished I could travel back in time and tell my sixteen-year-old self that I was trans, I have no idea if I actually would have been ready to hear any of that at the time. I really believe most people do the best they can with what they have where they are, and at sixteen, I was doing the best I could with the limitations of the time and place. I don’t see any point in being angry at myself for that—where’s that going to get me? Our brains aren’t even done developing until we’re about 28 years old (no wonder everyone has a quarter-life crisis around age 30!). I really think that all of those mistakes we make shape who we become, and the best we can do is learn from them and build on them to become kinder, gentler humans.
What was the most fun part of writing this novel?
Aside from writing all the angst (because I deeply love writing about thorny feelings), there’s a very specific and very niche Marvel reference, and I had such a fun time enlisting one of my friends to help me hunt it down. She’s an expert on all things Marvel, and I knew I wanted a really nerdy reference that only somebody really into Marvel in 2009 (in this case, the character of Michael) would know about. She helped me find Pet Avengers, and it was such a perfect time capsule and really fun to read about!
The In-Between Bookstore is your first novel for adults, but you’ve previously written two young adult novels, This Day Changes Everything & Always the Almost. What inspired you to shift from writing for YA audiences to adult audiences?
Mostly that I wanted to write a book for me and my friends and where we are now in our lives. I think YA has really been on the cutting edge when it comes to queer representation—which is a big reason why so many of my friends and I still read it, even in our thirties! There still isn’t as much diversity of queer experience in adult fiction, especially commercial-leaning fiction. So I really wanted to write the kind of book I wished I could find on the shelves—a story that felt true to the millennial and Gen Z experience of being on the cusp of 30, but with a trans protagonist who existed outside of the romance genre or literary tragedy.
Erasing our stories is erasing us and our history. In fact, trans people have existed for as long as there have been people, and plenty of us lived in small towns in the Midwest… but I didn’t know that as a young person, because I had no access to that history.
What do you think is the biggest threat to free expression today? Have there been times when your right to free expression has been challenged?
One of the biggest threats to free expression, I think, is the onslaught of rightwing book bans. It’s alarming. I’ve read enough history to know that this isn’t new—coming for marginalized books and marginalized voices is always an early play by fascists, because it sends an immediate message that those stories and voices do not matter and are somehow dangerous. Erasing our stories is erasing us and our history. In fact, trans people have existed for as long as there have been people, and plenty of us lived in small towns in the Midwest… but I didn’t know that as a young person, because I had no access to that history.
I think that undercurrent runs through The In-Between Bookstore too. Darby believes he can’t possibly stay in Oak Falls because he can’t see that history either. I can’t tell you how incredibly mind-blowing, how healing, it was to discover that I had elders. That trans people have always lived their lives, even when others tried to erase them. I don’t want that knowledge to be taken away from future generations.
I don’t personally know if my books have been banned, and I haven’t tried to find out. I expect it’s quieter than that—my books simply aren’t ordered for school libraries because there’s a fear that they’ll be targeted, for example. I understand the fear. But we can’t comply in advance. We can’t do the fascists’ job for them. We need to fight for these books—and their readers—now more than ever.
Edward Underhill grew up in the suburbs of Wisconsin, where he could not walk to anything, so he had to make up his own adventures. He studied music in college, spent several years living in very small apartments in New York, and currently resides in California with his partner and a talkative black cat. He is the author of two young adult novels, Always the Almost and This Day Changes Everything, and a book for adults, The In-Between Bookstore. Visit him on Instagram @edwardunderhill.