Tess Gunty on "The Rabbit Hutch" and the collaboration between reader and writer

Sixty years ago, South Bend, Indiana, offered America a preview of what was to come in the industrial heartland. The Christmas 1963 shuttering of the Studebaker automobile plant foreshadowed the coming decline of American manufacturing, and the decimation of Midwestern cities. Seven thousand people were put out of work, in a town of 130,000.

And while South Bend has recovered to some extent in the years since, the six-decade legacy of abandonment is still never far from sight. And now, South Bend's legacy of decline has become the unlikely inspiration for an award-winning debut novel by 30-year-old author Tess Gunty.

"I was born 30 years after Studebaker closed," she said. "I think that the kinds of consequences of economic decline become extremely personal. They're anchored in the beating hearts of those that you know and love."