HALLIE EPHRON: Today it's my pleasure to introduce you all to the writing team of Midge Raymond and John Yunker and DEVILS ISLAND, their brand new crime novel that Publisher's Weekly calls “Suspenseful … This is one nightmare vacation worth taking.”
It's set in one of my favorite parts of the world, down under, and features elusive animals that echo the title of their book...
Both Midge and John are seasoned writers with a particular affection for birds(!) So how did this collaboration come about and how did it be about creatures other than birds?
MIDGE RAYMOND: When writers become obsessed with something, they write about it — which is how my husband, John Yunker, and I both ended up writing novels filled with penguins.
And this was, initially, why the two of us headed to Australia — to see the fairy penguins, a species we were eager to meet. These birds are at once ubiquitous and elusive: While walking around certain Sydney neighborhoods, we saw many penguin awareness signs, but these small, flightless birds are shy and don’t come ashore until after dark, which meant we had to make a real effort to see them.
And while we did manage to track down the penguins, it turned out that on this trip, it was the Tasmanian devil that would capture most of our attention — and our imagination. I recently learned a French term, dérive, which refers to a journey that takes an unexpected path — and realized that this is very much what happened to John and me when we decided to take a side trip to Australia’s island state of Tasmania.
It all began with a four-day hiking trip on Maria Island, which is even more remote than the remote island state. And, we soon learned, it’s this very isolation that allows for the conservation work that is reviving the Tasmanian devil population.
We’d heard of Tasmanian devils but didn’t know that, beginning in the mid-1990s, up to 90 percent of Tasmanian devil populations were vanishing due to a contagious facial cancer (known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease, or DFTD). And the very island we were hiking and camping on was the place that gave this endangered species a chance for survival: Just over a decade ago, twenty-eight healthy devils were released on Maria Island, keeping them safe from the disease that was ravaging those on Tasmania. These healthy, protected animals thrived on the island, offering hope for the entire species.
Ironically, we became obsessed with these devils in part because, despite our proximity, we could not see them; this made them all the more intriguing. From our campsites, we could hear them, late at night, and understood immediately why Europeans named them “devils” (listen to the otherworldly yowls of the devils here, and you’ll see what I mean).
And though we didn’t see devils on Maria Island, we met several of them afterwards, at Tasmania’s Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary. (Check out some of the sanctuary’s devil photos, and you’ll see that the cuteness of these little marsupials hardly aligns with the horrific sounds they make.)
Even our hiking guides, who were on the island constantly, rarely saw the nocturnal devils — but they had stories. One guide told us how she left out her swimsuit to dry one night, only to put it on the next day and learn that the devils had chewed through the most revealing parts of the fabric. And how she had to wrestle a determined, growling, twenty-pound devil for a container of food that he’d gotten into. (The guide won, though she said it could’ve gone either way.)
Meeting rescued devils and hearing stories of the wild ones made it impossible not to fall in love with them, much as we had with penguins, who are also endangered, also working hard to survive on a changing planet. Visiting and donating to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary was one small way of contributing to their survival — but we wished we could do more.
And the idea for Devils Island was born.
As well as introducing readers to these marvelous creatures, we also knew we had a great setup for a murder mystery: a group of strangers, with secrets, on a remote island as a wicked storm brews. It was as fun creating the human characters as it was bringing the devils into the story.
We are not quite done obsessing over (and writing about) penguins, but spending time with Tasmanian devils, both in person and on the page, was a wonderful dérive. And this, we realized, is why we travel (and also why we write) — to open ourselves up to the unexpected, and to seize the opportunity to learn something new about the world.
Have you ever set out on a journey — whether near or far — that turned out differently from what you expected? Let us know in the comments!
ABOUT DEVILS ISLAND Devils Island is the debut collaboration by Midge Raymond and John Yunker. Midge is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent and the award-winning short-story collection Forgetting English. John is the author of the novel The Tourist Trail and editor of the Among Animals fiction series and a nonfiction anthology, Writing for Animals.
