Cassie Miller’s debut YA rom-com, Meet Me Under the Lights (Viking, Mar.), is a love letter to small towns and two of the things their residents hold dear: baseball and community theater. Set in the North Carolina farm town of Fairfield, the story centers on town princess and aspiring lighting designer Eliza Crowley and Reed Fulton, ace pitcher for the Fulton Hawks and grandson of a struggling Fairfield farmer. Though the two were childhood friends, their social backgrounds and an intergenerational feud between their families kept them apart as they entered their teen years. Now, during the summer when their families approach a turning point, the two find that the gulf between them might not be as wide as they thought.
Miller, an elementary school librarian in Southwest Virginia who is married to a high school band director, says the inspiration for the story developed while watching summer collegiate baseball team the Pulaski River Turtles. “I was immediately intrigued and inspired by the way that this gorgeous baseball stadium could fit itself inside such a small town and how that entire town seemed to come out for every home game to support the team,” she says.
As she became a regular fan and a people-watcher at the games, she says she knew she wanted to write about a small town and its baseball star. At the same time, having grown up playing hide-and-seek in her grandparents’ costume shop and being a former set designer and director for high school musicals, she had an appreciation for “the overlooked technical side of theater.”
Moore says that although Meet Me Under the Lights is not the first novel she wrote, it’s “the story I was always meant to tell.” An enemies-to-lovers story, it also shines a light on often overlooked communities. “I am the product of working-class families, of small business owners, and of farmers, so I’ve always been drawn to characters and stories that come from similar backgrounds,” she says. “Paying homage to the hardworking farmers on both sides of my family gave me the opportunity to return home to my roots and to memories I’ve clung to for over 35 years.”
