If you live in the city of Rye, you may be sharing your house with one of the characters from the new novel, “The Way I’ve Heard It Should Be.”
Author Rachel Cullen, a Pelham resident, said she used real streets in Rye when finding homes for her characters. “One of the characters has a very large and expensive home, the kind of style you might see in Rye,” she said.
Cullen’s tale is the story of four women who enjoy oversized bank accounts and gorgeous homes, but, she said, are each struggling to fill a deeper void in their lives.
“All of them are living these relatively upscale, perfect lives, and the more you get to know them, the more you understand they all have issues,” she said.
Cullen said she chose Rye instead of Pelham because the former has a greater diversity of wealth. She added that she wanted to distance herself from the characters in the novel, stressing that the book was a work of fiction.
However, the setting is more true to life than not.
Cullen makes several references to Rye and the surrounding communities in Westchester County. She mentions familiar locations, including Whole Foods in Port Chester, Rye County Day School and a cafe in Rye which she renamed Lucy’s.
Taking her about seven months to write, “The Way I’ve Heard It Should Be” is Cullen’s first novel.
“I think if you’re a woman living in [Westchester], I think it’s a very relatable tale,” she said, adding that the book’s genre is women’s contemporary fiction.
The book was released on Amazon for Kindle in November 2015 and in paperback in April 2016. It is now available at Arcade Booksellers in Rye, Anderson Bookshop in Larchmont and throughout the Westchester Library System.
