LAUREN McLAUGHLIN grew up in the small town of Wenham, Massachusetts. After college and a brief stint in graduate school, she spent 10 unglamorous years writing and producing movies before abandoning her screen ambitions to write fiction full-time. Though she fondly remembers much of her time in Massachusetts—the marina, the beach, various teenage escapades—she cannot, for the life of her, remember her SAT scores, her GPA, or any of the numbers that once summed her up.