Jung Yun always wanted to write about how 9/11 and an ill-timed vacation changed her life.

Just five days after the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, Yun, who was living and working in New York City when the Twin Towers fell, set sail with her then-husband and his parents on a weeklong cruise to Bermuda.

Yun sends her three main characters — Franny, Doug and Lucy — on a similar journey aboard the Sonata in her third novel. But the George Washington University associate professor spent decades avoiding what “All the World Can Hold” turned out to be.

“Because I’m not a memoirist, I really resisted the idea of putting a 9/11-related novel on a cruise ship because that felt too close to my own life,” said Yun, who has lived in Baltimore for the last decade. “But I think because the event was so important to me and important to my writing and my decision to write, I kept coming back to it.”

Once she gave in, Yun wrote the novel in 2 1/2 years: twice as fast as her usual timeline. The resulting story on the sea follows an anxious older daughter in an unhappy marriage, a washed-up TV star and an artistic computer scientist hunting for work. They process their grief and regret as their fellow passengers drink and limbo the outside world away.

Yun, 54, will join The Banner Book Club Thursday at 6 p.m. to discuss “All The World Can Hold” with us. We spoke to the author — who dedicated the story to her seven nephews, six of whom were born after 9/11 but inherited the world shaped by its aftermath — ahead of her visit.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How did your family decide to move forward with the trip?

It was sort of a vote amongst the four of us who were going. And I was the only one who thought that we should stay behind.

At the time, my ex-husband and I, we lived in Brooklyn. And my in-laws lived in the Los Angeles area. And the cruise was supposed to be this easy way for us to spend time together.

I look back on that time and I think people have very different ways of grieving. And for me, I just wanted to stay at home and be in my city, be in my country. But I think for my ex and his parents, their way was to get as far from the United States as they possibly could.

A huge part of this novel is this idea that many of the characters are struggling with being on this trip, being on the ocean, being in beautiful Bermuda knowing what was happening back in New York. How do you think about that now with some distance, about the idea of enjoying yourself in times of grief?

That was the struggle of being on this ship. It just felt like such a huge disconnect. I think there were people like me who were trying to spend time with family, who were trying to just accept the fact that there’s no getting off this boat. And then there were others who seemed like they were in full vacation mode, which was upsetting and at times kind of distressing.

So I think part of what was both the fun and the challenge of writing this book was trying to get at both of those types of approaches to being onboard the Sonata. And my characters, of course, are of the group that is very much aware that people shouldn’t be behaving in this way.

Do you feel like there are moments now, either in America or across the world, that kind of evoke that same feeling, this idea that we should stop and sit with these things? Does it sometimes feel wrong in today’s world to pursue joy?

Absolutely. It’s the struggle of being in this world right now. I’ve talked to several authors who have books out in the world and we all feel very tentative about promoting our books, talking about our books, celebrating anything good that’s happening with our books because it just feels like a time in the world that we shouldn’t be celebrating anything.

But in many ways that reflects back on the themes of “All the World Can Hold,” which is that in the shadow of all of this grief, all of this turmoil, individual lives still have to go on.

How did you arrive at the book’s title?

The original title was “Wake,” which I like because it has multiple meanings, all of which felt relevant to the book. But it was rejected by my editor, who thought it was too funereal.

We were looking at various options and “all the world can hold” is an excerpt from a James Weldon Johnson poem called “Beauty That is Never Old.” And that is a poem about love, which felt appropriate because one of the things that I remember most about my research is Kenneth Feinberg, [who] was the special master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. And in his memoirs, he talked about the thousands of interviews that he and his staff did with family members of the victims of 9/11.

The thing that resonated and the thing that felt like it endured and came to the surface most was love, which I thought was a really amazing idea and one that fit in with the themes of the book, which is a much more hopeful book than people might assume given the 9/11 connection.

This book is being promoted as sort of like “The White Lotus.” Are you a “White Lotus” fan?

I am a “White Lotus” fan. But I think I gravitate to “The White Lotus” not because of the mystery or the tension. I think I’m interested in how these characters are vacationing in these beautiful, luxurious places and yet they can’t outrun the things that are making them unhappy or unstable. So I think that was the connection with “The White Lotus” that felt most relevant to this book.

Have you started thinking about what comes next for you?

It is, once more, another novel. And it is another novel that is sort of inspired by my interest in disaster.

All three of my novels have been in some way or another related to a large-scale, man-made disaster. So the first book was the housing market collapse. The second book was an oil boom that was eventually leading to a bust. And then the third, of course, is 9/11. The fourth that I’m working on right now is a bit more speculative fiction — at least it is in this moment — but it’s related to the pandemic.