If your present self could reckon with the past, what would you try to resolve? That’s the question that haunts Bodie Kane, the protagonist of I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai’s slow-burning crime novel, to be published Feb. 21. Bodie, a 40-something film professor and popular podcaster, has moved on from everything that happened at Granby, the tony New Hampshire boarding school where her roommate Thalia was murdered during their senior year. But when Bodie is invited back to campus to teach a podcasting course, she’s forced to revisit long-buried dark truths.

For Makkai, engaging with the past is a daily reality. For the past 21 years, the author, 44, has lived on the campus of the Illinois boarding school that she attended as a d…