Laura McNeal's "The Incident on the Bridge"

Laura Rhoton McNeal holds an MA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and has worked as a freelance journalist, a crime writer, and a high school English teacher. She is the author of Dark Water, a finalist for the National Book Award. She and her husband, Tom, are the authors of Crooked, Zipped, Crushed, and The Decoding of Lana Morris.

Here McNeal dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Incident on the Bridge:

If they made The Incident on the Bridge into a movie, I’d prefer that people who are not already famous play the teenagers, but that’s because I love to see movies in which the actors, especially young ones, are unknown to me. Then I don’t have to erase my feeling that, for example, Shailene Woodley is the girl from The Descendants. That said, I loved Lily James in the BBC version of War and Peace. Something about her teeth makes her endearingly fragile-looking. She would make a lovely, self-doubting Thisbe, I think. The next role I’d want to cast is Frank Le Stang, and since I can ask for the impossible here, I’d want Mark Rylance. I fell completely in love with his Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall and then found him just as convincing as the soviet spy Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies. He’s the kind of actor who could make you feel sorry for Frank Le Stang.

Visit Laura McNeal's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Laura McNeal & Link.

The Page 69 Test: The Incident on the Bridge.

Writers Read: Laura McNeal.

--Marshal Zeringue

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