Alyson Richman's 'The Time Keepers' is set in a fictional Bay Shore

Alyson Richman, who grew up in St. James, returned to the "healing landscape" of her Long Island childhood after she and her husband experienced the 9/11 attacks from an apartment overlooking the World Trade Center. In her 10th novel, "The Time Keepers" (Union Square & Co., $18.99), her "most Long Island-based one to date," she finds healing and hope for a group of characters affected by the Vietnam War, residents of the fictional town of Bellegrove — a stand-in for Bay Shore — in 1979.

In a recent Zoom interview, she discussed the real-life inspirations for "The Time Keepers," which comes out Oct. 15. She'll also talk about the book at two Long Island venues — Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. at The Next Chapter in Huntington and Oct. 20 at 2 p.m. at A Book Place in Riverhead.

Tell us about the research you did for this novel.

The stories that are woven into "The Time Keepers" came to me over a period of years, stored in the Rolodex of my imagination. The original seed was planted by a parent at my daughter's ballet school. During her childhood in the 1970s, the Suffolk County diocese sponsored several South Vietnamese families, and a group of young mothers pitched in to help. My friend said that observing the refugee children inspired her to have a sense of gratitude for her life, but her older sister, who was a teenager at the time, looked at the experience differently.

This must be where you got the character of Katie, who's so snarky about her mother's involvement with the refugees.

Yes, that's it! A few years later, I had the chance to interview a Long Island teacher who entrusted me with a very dramatic and tragic story about her escape from Vietnam with her family. Everything that you read in "The Time Keepers" about Bao and Anh's escape, including the story of the scar on Bao's hand, comes from her experience. As these stories lingered in my heart and in my mind, I began to imagine a novel that would be told from multiple perspectives.

Was the character of Jack, the Vietnam vet, also inspired by a real person?

Yes. A high school friend led me to Pete Mohan, who had served in the Marines during the war. He was then in his 70s. I invited him to come for lunch, hoping he would tell me a little about his experience — as it turned out, he sat down in my living room and didn't leave until 2 a.m.

I had the same sensation listening to him tell his story that I had when interviewing Holocaust survivors for my book "The Lost Wife." There were so many stories buried inside them but they didn't want to burden the people they loved with their suffering. Finally, with me, an outsider, they were able to open up.

Later I heard another story that went into the character of Jack. One of my neighbors had an uncle that the family had always assumed died in Vietnam, though they never received official notice. Decades later, they learned that he had been home all along, living above a pizza parlor in the next town. He had come back so traumatized that he didn't think he could assimilate into his family's circle.

And what about Grace, the Irish immigrant housewife who gets involved with Bao and Anh?

I was lucky enough to interview one of those Bay Shore mothers who reached out to help the refugees, a woman named Maureen Connolly. She became the model for Grace. Maureen was from the West Coast of Ireland, and like Grace had suffered a tragedy in her childhood. She had that lens of outsidership that Grace has. She understood the struggle — and had a strong desire to pay forward the good life that she had in America.

Very early on in the story, you introduce a character who doesn't have that empathy.

Right, Adele; both she and her son, Buddy, bring a certain malevolence into the novel. They have both suffered trauma, including the death of Adele's brother in Vietnam, and they become the conduit of — I don't want to say evil, but danger, for the other characters. I remember saying to my husband, something has to happen here. Something dark. And he said, what's the darkest thing that you remember from your childhood on Long Island? And instantly, in a flash, I knew it was when 13-year-old John Pius was murdered behind the Dogwood School in the town right next to mine. Without giving away too much, I will say that elements of that crime, which I read about on the front pages of Newsday, stuck with me all my life.

It seems a good sign for "The Time Keepers" that Kristin Hannah's book about American women in Vietnam during the war has been such a hit this summer.

Yes, too bad that hadn't already happened when I first showed this book to publishers and heard that "nobody wants to read about Vietnam." Nonetheless, the popularity of "The Women" has been a great boost. And Kristin Hannah has always been very supportive of my work. She actually wrote to me on Facebook after she read "The Lost Wife," saying how moved but she was by my novel. She wanted my publisher to know that she thought I had a special talent. That's where they got the pull quote on the front cover.