When Oyinkan Braithwaite started writing her second novel—following her wildly popular debut,  My Sister, the Serial Killer—she also started to worry.

Published in 2018, My Sister, the Serial Killer is a dark, comic story about a Nigerian nurse who frequently finds herself cleaning up her younger sibling’s murders. The novel won a slew of prizes, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the  Anthony Award for Best First Novel.

Cursed Daughters (Doubleday, November 4), which examines the power of family bonds under the crushing weight of superstition, is a different sort of story—and Braithwaite is fretting about reader expectations.

“I wasn’t expecting the success of My Sister, the Serial Killer, but now I’ve experienced it, and the bar has been set,” she says from her home in England. “I feared I couldn’t follow it. I had to remind myself how much I love the art of writing. I did My Sister, the Serial Killer by myself in my room with no thought of how successful it would be. I had to find my way back to that place, being in the story and finding my way through it.”

Told from several points of view, Cursed Daughters follows a family of women struggling against a curse that has plagued them for generations: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace.” They might briefly find romantic happiness, but it is not destined to last.

Cousins Ebun and Monife grow up well aware of that burden; their mothers make sure of it. Quiet Ebun gets pregnant but won’t reveal the father of her child. Meanwhile, Monife falls in love with Golden Boy, who seems like the love of a lifetime—until the romance begins to sour. Heartbroken, Monife drowns herself in the sea.

Braithwaite leads with this tragedy on the first page, then works back and forth in time with sensitivity and compassion (and, when it’s warranted, a welcome dose of humor). When Ebun’s daughter Eniiyi is born, she looks exactly like Monife, prompting her elders to pronounce her the reincarnation of her aunt and treat her accordingly.

Despite what you might think, the author is comfortable in this territory. Though it is viewed as a crime novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer is also about family and the push and pull of sibling relationships. Braithwaite, the oldest of four and the only sibling born in Nigeria, understands that dynamic and digs into it more deeply in Cursed Daughters. She wanted her spirited characters to fight back against their circumstances, but she also wanted to explore the idea of responsibility.

“It was important to me that these women aren’t just lying down but constantly pushing against the curse,” she says. “But they’re not looking at themselves and being introspective or asking ‘How much am I culpable for the things that are happening?’ The curse is convenient to blame. I’ve seen people do that, blame a mysterious force for outcomes instead of their own actions.”

We recently spoke by phone with Braithwaite about the new book, which Jenna Bush Hager has selected as the November read for her Today book club. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You say you overpowered fear to write this book. How did you manage that?

My dad was bullying me a lot! He kept reminding me how long it had been since My Sister, the Serial Killer came out. He’d tell me I didn’t want to be a one-book wonder. Having him buzzing in my ear helped. I keep unfinished stories on my laptop, so I said, “OK, you know what, let me tell you some of the stories I’ve got, and we’ll decide which one will work.” I started narrating one of these stories to him, and I was able to keep going, and it all came together.

Is this how you usually work?

I’m constantly coming up with ideas, and I’ll start with writing 2,000 or maybe 10,000 words and then not be able to go any further for whatever reason. Maybe I’m not able to figure out what the story is, or maybe the voice isn’t working. The first time I attempted to write Cursed Daughters, there weren’t multiple points of view. I just couldn’t figure it out. But when I hit that kind of block, I have this belief that I’m not mature enough for the story, but one day I will be.

What was the hardest part about writing this book?

Having Monife lose her life. My dad drums into me the responsibility of being a writer. I don’t like to think about that—I just like to have fun. I like to think of my storytelling as a form of escapism for me and for the reader. But there are moments I don’t want to romanticize. I don’t know if I got it right here. It’s definitely tough. Her death is sad, but you also have to make sure it’s not just you preaching. You just make sure you look back and think, I did what I could with this story.

I think one of the reasons I chose the ages I did for Monife and Golden Boy was Romeo and Juliet. Once I realized how old they were in that story, it made so much more sense. When you’re young, everything is passion, and you feel like the world is ending and you’ll never recover. When you’re in your 30s, you realize you’ll absolutely recover.

So is the curse real?

I think I played it both ways as a writer. Sometimes the curse is real to me, and sometimes it’s not. Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy at play. I didn’t want to be too clear one way or the other. It’s really a tool to examine family and family trauma that’s passed on and how it affects these women. I feel like that’s something I’ve witnessed, not just in my family but in others, how you can inherit trauma. I’m really interested in that.

Why does writing about family appeal to you, particularly female relationships?

I’m surrounded by a lot of strong women—my mom, aunts, sisters, cousins. That’s what I’m used to. What’s interesting about families is that they’re just always there. You didn’t get to choose them. And my family is super invasive! You have to have boundaries, but they have an effect on you. My mom is self-conscious about her arms, and my aunt is, too. And they made me self-conscious about mine. You’ll rarely see me in a sleeveless top, even though I know it’s this inherited thing they passed to me. Your family is influencing you constantly.

Both of your novels have been set in Nigeria. Why is Nigeria such a fertile setting for you?

Nigeria is like an untapped treasure. There’s so much content. We haven’t even scratched the surface. I’m excited when people capture the nuances of Nigeria and being Nigerian. We have 300 tribes, and most are barely represented in books. Each tribe has its way of burying people, marrying people. Each has its own language. There’s just not a lot of competition in this space.

Connie Ogle is a writer in South Florida.