Podcast 66: A Small Town, A Long Shadow: The Wild Rose Alliance

Part One of a Two-Part Interview with Author Ariel Sarullo

A small town never forgets.
It just waits.

In Podcast 66, Part One of our two-part conversation with author Ariel Sarullo, we explore her debut novel The Wild Rose Alliance—a quiet mystery about late coming-of-age, inherited stories, and the long shadow the past casts over the present.

This episode is about:

• Small towns and buried truth
• Becoming an adult later than expected
• Writing a first novel
• Why growing up isn’t a single event

If you’ve ever felt out of sync with the timeline you were handed, this conversation will feel familiar. 

#TwoCronesAndAMicrophone #TheWildRoseAlliance #ArielSarullo #DebutNovel #WomenAuthors #CozyMystery #ComingOfAge #CroneWisdom #SmallTownStories #WritingLife

Transcript

Linda:
Hello and welcome to Two Crones and a Microphone. I am Linda.

Betty:
And I am Betty.

Sally:
And happy New Year. I’m Sally, and we’re so pleased to have with us today Ariel Sarullo, a new author with a brand-new book just released—oddly enough—on Halloween, October 31, 2025. It’s called The Wild Rose Alliance. Full disclosure: Ariel happens to be my daughter. Welcome, Ariel.

Ariel Sarullo:
Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Linda:
We’re happy to have you here. Let’s dive in. We want to hear about The Wild Rose Alliance.

Ariel Sarullo:
Absolutely. The Wild Rose Alliance is many things. It’s primarily a mystery novel—what they call a cozy mystery. It’s less about gritty, violent detective work and more about unraveling the mystery in a cerebral way as you go along. It’s also a coming-of-age novel. It features two young women in their early twenties who haven’t really figured everything out yet. I think that’s a relatable age for both younger and older readers.

Linda:
That’s excellent. I was lucky enough to read a pre-publication version, and I loved the published version. It’s fast-paced, interesting, with unexpected twists and turns. What sparked the idea in the first place?

Ariel Sarullo:
There were a few things. The first was a dream I had over five years ago, right before or during the beginning of COVID. I was in my old college housing, and at first there were five main characters living in a small Midwestern town. Eventually I realized five narrators were too many, so I cut it down to two. They’re in Wild Rose, Minnesota, switching points of view throughout the novel.

I was also influenced by Fargo, both the TV show and the movie, and by Gillian Flynn’s novels—especially her use of female main characters and mystery elements. One of my characters is working through trauma, but the book focuses more on how these two people end up in a small town for different reasons and get pulled into a mystery. And honestly, it was also inspired by my own experience being in my early twenties, working at a coffee shop, and not knowing what I wanted to do with my life.

Betty:
I downloaded it on my Kindle when it came out and couldn’t put it down. My dog Luna kept barking at me, wondering when we were going to eat. The twists really kept me engaged. How did you find the time to write it—especially with moving to Japan and working?

Ariel Sarullo:
I started writing the book in early 2020. Most of it was written between 2020 and 2023, when I was still in the U.S., working restaurant jobs in Nashville. I had more time then. I hired a professional editor to clean up the grammar and proofread. I wasn’t consistently working on it for five years straight, but it was an off-and-on process.

Linda:
Do you have a favorite character?

Ariel Sarullo:
I have a character I love to hate—Leanne, the bakery owner. She’s an interesting character to write. I think people can relate to someone like her, unfortunately.

Betty:
I was struck by how young you are and how rare it feels for people your age to write novels.

Ariel Sarullo:
There are younger authors out there, but they’re often less established. I started writing this when I was about the same age as my characters, around twenty-one or twenty-two. As I kept writing, I realized I was getting older than them. They became a snapshot of who I was back then.

Linda:
I also appreciated how authentically the older characters came across. The mystery in the present connects to something that happened thirty years earlier.

Ariel Sarullo:
That wasn’t all planned out. Halfway through I realized how things could connect, and it evolved from there. Wild Rose is a town where many young people have left, so most of the people who remain are middle-aged or older. That shaped the characters.

Betty:
I live in a small town, and you captured that dynamic perfectly. You didn’t really grow up in one, though, did you?

Ariel Sarullo:
I grew up in Redding, Connecticut, which is more suburban, but later lived in New Milford, which had more of a small-town feel. Working at a coffee shop there definitely inspired the setting.

Betty:
I recognized your mom in the book. That was fun. I loved reading it on a snowy afternoon with my dog and new kitten. I really recommend it.

Ariel Sarullo:
Thank you so much.

Linda:
Would you read the blurb on the back of the book?

Ariel Sarullo:
Sure.

This can be considered a coming-of-age novel, even though my two protagonists probably should have come of age about five years ago and are just trying their best to manage the expectations of adulthood. Nicole is a young trans woman abandoned by her ultra-religious family and trying to make ends meet in her drab hometown of Wild Rose, Minnesota. Umbreel is a well-to-do heiress who escapes to the same town to live the true writer’s life in the sprawling mansion her reclusive grandmother left her. Brought together by boredom, the pair begin to suspect that the death of a local woman wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill car accident. The Wild Rose Alliance is a coming-of-age novel for those who feel like they missed a step entirely.

Linda:
That line about missing a step really resonates at any age.

Ariel Sarullo:
I think coming of age is a long process, not a single moment.

Betty:
That really connects to us as Crones. Sometimes we’re still navigating those same questions decades later.

Ariel Sarullo:
Exactly. Life isn’t something you finish.

Linda:
Where can people find the book?

Ariel Sarullo:
You can search The Wild Rose Alliance on Amazon. If that doesn’t work, search my name, Ariel Sarullo. It’s available in the U.S., UK, Japan, and Canada, as a Kindle ebook, paperback, and free with Kindle Unlimited.

Betty:
Did you design the cover?

Ariel Sarullo:
Yes. I chose the fonts and layout using Kindle’s tools. I kept it simple.

Linda:
We’ll be talking with you again about your adventurous life and living in Japan. Any last words?

Ariel Sarullo:
If you read the book, I hope you enjoy it—and please leave a review.

Linda:
As usual, go find your glimmer.

Betty:
We’re helping you navigate the muddy waters of your time.

All:
Kaydeeshday. May all be made beautiful.