Frankenstein’s Mary Shelley Was My Ancestor, And My Legacy (Exclusive)

On the bookshelf in my childhood home, nestled between my mother’s beloved cabin décor and framed family photographs, sat two heirlooms: our family’s coat of arms and a worn hardcover copy of Frankenstein. The crest — featuring a black wolf within a shield — was said to be a symbol of our English heritage, passed down from generations long gone. The book, its spine cracked and corners dented, was written by a young woman named Mary Shelley — my distant ancestor, as detailed in that same coat of arms. For years, I barely understood the weight either held. 

I grew up with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s name floating through our home like a spell — spoken in the same breath as Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock and Universal Monster movies. My parents revered her not just as an author, but an origin point: the mother of a genre, the teenage girl who changed literature forever. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the revolutionary who dared to write that women should be more than decorations for their husbands. The mythic brilliance of our shared bloodline coursed through the house I was raised in. And whether by destiny or coincidence, I carried their names, their voices and eventually, their mission. And I always knew: I would write a book.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1816, during a time when women were expected to be muses, never makers. She was only 18 when she began writing what would become one of the most enduring stories of all time — a novel born not just of genius, but of grief, isolation and ambition that far outpaced the limits society placed on her. The world she lived in was not kind to women with vision. But she wrote anyway. She created a monster, but one so tender and complex, it became a mirror for mankind, not so much about horror as it was about humanity. About the longing ache of rejection. The brutality of being misunderstood. The devastating cost of being brought up and then abandoned.

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Reading it as a young girl, I didn’t yet have the language for all that Frankenstein held but I understood enough to feel it deeply. It helped me see that the darkest parts of us are often born from our deepest desire to belong. I didn’t just find a haunting narrative within Mary Shelley’s words, but a blueprint for how to be bold, and brave, and to build something powerful from pain and injustice. 

Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was no less astonishing. In 1791, during an age when women were told their thoughts had no place on the page, she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman — the first feminist manifesto. She argued, eloquently and furiously, that women were not inferior by nature, but by design — kept small, silenced and sidelined by a patriarchal society. She was unapologetically headstrong in a time when women were encouraged to be weak for the sake of delicacy and dependency to better attract a male suitor.

After she died in childbirth, Mary Wollstonecraft didn’t know her daughter, or the great impact she would have on her life — with Mary Shelley quite literally living in her mother’s shadow, with a passion for making her proud. Mother Mary left behind a torch, which Mary Shelley boldly carried.

So I suppose it only makes sense that centuries later, that same flame flickered inside me. When I began writing my debut thriller Night Watcher, I was consciously thinking of my family’s literary ghosts. I was telling a fictional story — a woman, alone in the woods of Portland, Ore., hunted by something she doesn’t understand. But as the pages grew, I began to see it not only as a story about murderous dread, but also about resilience. About how women are forced to navigate terror, often silently, and survive when the world refuses to believe us.

There’s a scene in Frankenstein where the creature pleads, “I am malicious because I am miserable.” That line lived in me as I wrote. It helped me create characters not just haunted by what chased them, but by what they carried. Victor Frankenstein spends the last years of his life haunted by the monster he created — terrified not just of the creature itself, but of the consequences of what he brought into the world. My novel Night Watcher  explores a similar fear, though my protagonist, Nola Strate, didn’t build her monster. Instead, she’s forced to confront one born from the failures of others. Like Victor, she finds herself alone in recognizing the danger that no one else will face. 

But where Frankenstein’s monster sought empathy, the antagonist of my novel — a masked serial killer called the Hiding Man — thrives off fear, carrying not the sorrow of abandonment but the satisfaction of control. His mask is a stitched thing — lipless, white, eerily smooth yet rugged — a grim parody of life. It evokes the same discomfort Mary Shelley conjured in her creation: something human, but not quite. Like Victor, Nola is tethered to her monster. Not by science or ambition, but by memory — and the knowledge that something she escaped still watches, embedded into the shadows.

This is not a tale that asks you to pity the monster. It asks a harder question: what happens when a creation builds itself? When a man, once overlooked, decides to become the nightmare? Although the Hiding Man’s horrific plots of exile don’t evoke sympathy, readers can identify the psychological toll it takes on the person who must live in fear of him. Nola, like Victor, is isolated in that terror — questioning the reality around her. And she knows that once a monster has been unleashed, whether by creation or neglect, the only way forward is through, with eyes wide open.

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I think often about the wolf on our family crest. It symbolizes persistence and determination. The description reads: One who strives very hard and long to achieve his objective. In many ways, I’ve carried that image with me, just like I’ve carried the stories of the Marys — those incredible women of vision and defiance. I feel the emotional inheritance when I write, when I tell stories on Going West — my true crime podcast dedicated to the missing and the silenced — and in quiet moments; when I realize how radical it still is, in many ways, to take up space and to speak your story. To create something terrifying, or beautiful, or both.

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Night Watcher is available now, wherever books are sold.