Maine writer Susan Conley has finally come home to Maine with her latest novel, “Landslide.” She calls it her “most important book” and the book she has been “waiting to write for years.”

We were delighted when Susan agreed to an interview. Thank you so much, Susan, and congratulations on Landslide!

It’s late afternoon at the end of a long October when the Fleetwood Mac song comes on. We’re halfway down the peninsula, and I tell the wolves I was raised on Stevie Nicks, so could they please let me listen to the whole thing. Because Sam, the younger one, has a bad habit of changing the station.

Portland author Susan Conley’s ‘Elsey Comes Home’ goes on sale Jan. 15.

A writer returns to her Maine roots and finds out what still connects her to the changing state

Elsey, artist, wife and mother, has “lost herself,” and she’s well aware how that sounds. “…It seems overdone, and there are four hundred million people living in China on a dollar a day, so cry me a river.” She’s adrift and depressed and ashamed of her feelings, living a privileged life in Beijing with her husband Lukas and their 8- and 7-year old daughters.

“This cover art looks like the painting that would be on the bedroom wall of the girl in the picture. Very meta. Also, those colors make me think of when it was warm outside, which makes me feel slightly better than I did before.”