The Sisters From Brookfield Who Rule the Thriller Novel Genre

Book covers for the newest books by Wisconsin-born sisters Andrea and Julia Bartz. Images courtesy of the authors.

Two authors from Wisconsin recently published their newest bestselling thrillers. And they happen to be sisters.

Andrea and Julia Bartz grew up in Brookfield. They now live — and write — in Brooklyn, New York.

“We grew up in a home that was filled with books,” Andrea told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “We took weekly trips to the library and came home with big bags full of books. We were both creative kids. I think it was really natural that we were trying to make our own books together.”

Professionally, Andrea and Julia took very different paths to their careers. Andrea got her start in magazine journalism before deciding to pursue her own projects as an author. And while Julia was a creative writing major in college, she was well on her way to earning her therapist’s license before she published her first book.

“I had always wanted to be an author,” Julia said. “I ended up writing two novels that were actually not published. I was unsure if I wanted to move forward with writing. But I decided to see if I could funnel all of my frustration about my attempts into my first book. That actually turned out pretty well.”

The sisters moved to New York City in 2008. Today, they bounce ideas off each other, edit each other’s work, and yes, they have considered collaborating on a project — someday.

“Our minds actually work really differently,” Andrea said. “She’ll look at a plot problem that I’m having or an idea that I’m trying to turn into something larger, and she’ll come up with a suggestion that never would have crossed my mind.”

Published in May, Andrea’s newest book, “The Last Ferry Out,” takes place on a fictional island off the coast of Mexico. The main character is from Madison.

“She travels to the tiny, remote tropical island where her fiance died in a tragic accident a few months earlier,” Andrea said. “She meets this enchanting group of expats that her partner had befriended. But the more she starts to examine the expats and what brought them there, she begins to suspect that her fiance’s death was not an accident — and she just might be trapped on an island with a killer.”

Julia’s “The Last Session” published in April. She told “Wisconsin Today” that Thea, the main character, is a social worker at a psychiatric unit. Thea ends up attending a mysterious Wellness Center in New Mexico when she realizes that there’s something dark going on underneath the surface.

“And if she doesn’t find out the truth,” Julia said, “she might not make it out of her last session alive.”

Andrea and Julia told “Wisconsin Today” about staying true to their Wisconsin roots — even in the Big Apple.

The following was edited for clarity and brevity.

Rob Ferrett: Andrea, the main character in your newest book, “The Last Ferry Out,” is from Wisconsin. Does Wisconsin influence a lot of your work? 

Andrea Bartz: I think people in the Midwest aren’t always saying what they feel the way that East Coasters are. That has influenced my writing in that it’s made me such a sensitive observer. I like to think about where people are coming from and what they’re saying in terms of literally including Wisconsin in my stories.

My third book, “We Were Never Here,” was set in Milwaukee, so that’s got a lot of Easter eggs for locals. And in “The Last Ferry Out,” the plot line is on a Mexican island, but there’s also another timeline that is in Madison. You get to see this couple together, these two women falling in love and arguing about having to drive from opposite ends of Madison. And there’s hopefully some fun Wisconsin Easter eggs there, as well.

RF: Julia, how do you view what’s going on behind the face Midwesterners present to the world?

Julia Bartz: I think “The Last Session” goes pretty deeply into that, questioning what is beneath the surface. One of the main themes is cults and this idea of: Can we trust people? Can we trust what they’re saying? What are people really feeling that they’re not sharing? So, I think that shows up in my books quite often.

RF: How about you, Andrea?

AB: I was raised to be a nice Midwestern girl, and if I was experiencing what is a pretty normal human emotion like anger or shame or impatience, “Just don’t show that. Don’t have those emotions,” was kind of the message from my upbringing. And I think that’s true of a lot of Midwesterners.

I think the throughline of all five of my thrillers is that they really cast a light on elements of the female experience that we don’t really like thinking or talking about. They’re not polite, not something that comes up at a Midwestern potluck or dinner party. And for me, that’s exploring things like anger, fury, shame, embarrassment over not meeting certain societal expectations — all these things that aren’t maybe polite to talk about, but I think are universal and really powerful to see portrayed in art in its different forms.

RF: Both of your books have been classified as thrillers. Andrea, do you set out to write a thriller? 

AB: I definitely am always setting out to write a psychological thriller. The psychology piece of it is fascinating to me. I know that I want an interesting social milieu. I like a close-knit, closed-door world, such as the expats in [“The Last Ferry Out”]. What I keep doing is taking a social group like that and just throwing a dead body into the center and seeing what happens. So I always want dead bodies in my stories. So one way or another, I’m writing, hopefully, a thriller.

RF: Julia, how do you work within, and maybe around, the thriller genre?

JB: I am very similar to Andi in that I’m also just really interested in human psychology. I think Andi and I both are very focused on how to get readers to keep turning the pages, so all of our books have a lot of twists and turns in them, a lot of surprises. There’s so many ways that people can spend their time and their attention these days. We want to make sure that people are having a good time.

Listen to the WPR report

Meet the sisters from Wisconsin who rule the thriller novel genre was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.