WRITING PASSAGES--LIBBY FISCHER HELLMAN

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  It's always such a treat to have broadcaster, speaker, and award-winning author Libby Fischer Hellman drop in for a visit on Jungle Red! Today she gives us a fascinating look at the stages of her writing life--and a new book A BEND IN THE RIVER. Publisher's Weekly calls it "Gripping...This passionate story of survival has staying power." William Kent Krueger says it's "...a stunning piece of historical fiction." Here's Libby to elaborate on her departure from crime fiction.

 

 

LIBBY FISCHER HELLMAN: Hi, Reds and Friends. It’s so nice to be back. Yes, I have a new book, and I’ll get to it in a bit. But first, I want to bring up another book. I think most Jungle Reds— because we are of a certain age—are familiar with Gail Sheehy’s PASSAGES. She died this year, but I will never forget her thesis: that every seven years or so, a woman passes through a new stage of her life. Some are precipitated by crises, some aren’t. I was in my late twenties when I read the book, and I identified so closely with the first two passages that I figured my life was predestined a la Sheehy. Did you as well?

My only beef was that she stopped with the ‘50s, which made me feel that any age higher than fifty-nine just wasn’t worth talking about. Harrumph. Even so,  darned if I didn’t begin to see life as a series of passages, which, might apply to almost anything I did or thought about.

Including my writing life. The years aren’t precisely seven, nor does entering one “passage” require an exit from another, but I can clearly see how I’ve passed through different stages of my writing life.

First was the early mystery stage, where I enthusiastically published four Ellie Foreman mystery novels in three years. That doesn’t count the four years I spent learning the craft of fiction well enough to get published, so figure seven years. So far, right on schedule.

Then came my “second series” Passage. Restless for a new challenge, I gave one of the characters from my first series her own thriller series. Georgia Davis is grittier, more hard-boiled, and action-oriented than Ellie. And I love her stories. They energize me in a way Ellie doesn’t. Although Ellie has the sense of humor I crave.

Three novels later (call it four years because of a year of Presidenting Sisters in Crime) presaged a new Passage: the historical thriller. As a former history major, I love the way history repeats itself, but mutating in a tiny way from what went before. I also love diving into rabbit holes and surfacing with a historical nugget or fact or story that surprises me, and hopefully, will surprise readers as well. I’m sure you Reds who write historicals can relate.

In writing historical thrillers, though, I was still tethered to the structure of crime fiction, which provides a plot template that we all follow in one form or another. I could pretend I wasn’t REALLY writing historicals. They were historical mysteries. Historical thrillers.

Another four years went by. Then I went to Vietnam. I grew up in DC and gazed for years at all the monuments to the Civil War in neighboring Virginia. This time, though, I wanted to see the country and any monuments that took 50,000 of our boys’ lives during a war which many still think was unnecessary. To be honest I didn’t know I was entering a new passage until my travel partner and I were in a Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, art gallery staring at this painting.

 I felt like I’d been hit by lightning, and I immediately knew I was going to write a book set in Vietnam during the war. I also knew it would be about these two sisters. And I implicitly knew it was not going to be either a mystery or a thriller. It was going to be a historical novel, the story of two girls struggle to survive a war that was tearing their country apart. I bought the painting.

 

  I had started reading about Vietnam before I stepped off the plane, but my research instensified while we were there. Photos and videos speak to me, and I took hundreds of shots. I interviewed a former North Vietnamese colonel, as well as two Boat people who escaped Vietnam for the States. After I got home, research intensified even more, and I found fascinating “nuggets” and began to build possible scenes. I put together a timeline of the war and the book. Then I started to write.

 

I confess I have never enjoyed writing. I love “having written” and holding a finished book in my hands, but the process of writing has always bedeviled me. Not this time. I loved writing this book. In fact, I had to force myself to end it – there was more I could have said. For the first time, I experienced what I now see was an organic process, not dependent on tropes or plot elements. However, I will admit that intuitively knowing how to build suspense helped the story. So did an inherent sense of pacing we learn as we continue writing. But the bottom line was that I felt free to explore the setting and the characters with no constraints. It was something I had never done before.

 

A Bend In The River was clearly my Passage into a new way of writing. A new genre. I’m thrilled to be here, but I won’t abandon Ellie or Georgia. I intend to continue with all three “passages.” Which might make it pretty crowded in my brain, but Gail Sheehy should have known that’s what happens after your Fifties. We can juggle multiple passages if we want. It all depends on our story.

 

When their village is destroyed, two sisters face their futures alone. Will the uncertainties of war keep them apart forever?

In 1968 two young Vietnamese sisters flee to Saigon after their village on the Mekong River is attacked by American forces and burned to the ground. The only survivors of the massacre that killed their family, the sisters struggle to survive but become estranged, separated by sharply different choices and ideologies. Mai ekes out a living as a GI bar girl, but Tam’s anger festers, and she heads into jungle terrain to fight with the Viet Cong. For nearly ten years, neither sister knows if the other is alive. Do they both survive the war? And if they do, can they mend their fractured relationship? Or are the wounds from their journeys too deep to heal? In a stunning departure from her crime thrillers, Hellmann delves into a universal story about survival, family, and the consequences of war. A Bend in the River is a remarkable historical fiction standalone novel. If you enjoy a saga of survival against all odds with unforgettable female characters, you’ll love Libby Fischer Hellmann’s sweeping epic. 

 READERS, did you read PASSAGES? Do you see your life in stages, too?

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Travel: Rolling the dice

HALLIE EPHRON: When you travel, sometimes you luck out, and sometimes you roll snake eyes.

Two weeks ago a blizzard was forecast for the northeast. I was supposed to meet my editor and publicity team at HarperCollins the next morning and I was determined to be there.

Just before the storm hit, at 7 AM I drove to the Amtrak station just outside of Boston and boarded a train to New York. It started snowing in Rhode Island. Then whiteout. By the time we got to Queens you could not see the surrounding streets, never mind the Manhattan skyline.

But we arrived... only ten minutes behind schedule. I boarded a subway to Brooklyn (the A-train arrived as I was climbing onto the platform). Emerged in Brooklyn and slogged a block in well-trodden snow to my daughters' apartment. Spent the day playing with my grandchildren! Next morning, took the subway to my meeting, feeling as if I'd slipped through a crack in the space-time continuum and singing the praises of mass transit.

On the way back the next day I boarded an Amtrak train that had arrived an hour late to Penn Station. By the time it approached Boston it was creeping along at about 10 miles an hour and the PA system had died and many of the doors were frozen shut. I hoofed it through two cars to find a working the exit. But I got there.

MEANWHILE, THAT SAME DAY My friend Barbara Fournier tried to get to Boston from... Casablanca:

I had just flown from Casablanca into JFK airport to find my flight, and all others to Boston, cancelled. I went online and managed to buy the last seat on a 10:30 pm Greyhound bus to Boston! I grabbed the shuttle to the Port Authority, slogging through snow and ice. I printed out my ticket and headed for the dock when a representative announced that all buses to Boston had been cancelled three hours ago!!

But I just bought the ticket!" I whined. He shrugged.

I then checked the Amtrak train schedule and grabbed a ticket for the 2:30 am train. I cabbed it to Penn station and paced anxiously in the jammed waiting room. We left on time!!! I found a seat and dozed off as the train left the station. 

But in a few minutes I was jolted awake by the train stopping. The lights went out except for some dim back ups. The heat was off. The train was dead. We were not fifteen minutes out of the station, in the Bronx. We were getting colder by the minute. The toilets began to overflow. The first announcement informed us that the electrical system was down; an hour later it was announced that 'they' were working on it.

Four hours later, finally the train started. We limped into the next station ( New Rochelle). We were directed to leave the train immediately. We can leave our luggage on board, we were assured. The next train is right behind us. We piled onto the platform. It was ten degrees and the wind was howling. The doors shut and slowly the train pulled out of the station. People who left their luggage on board were yelling.

Three trains stopped but didn't open their doors, despite our pounding. Finally a train stopped for us - but it was already full. Many of us stood for the remaining four hours to Boston. But we were warm! We could go to the bathroom!  We were going home!

So it took me six hours to go from Morocco to the US but eighteen hours to go from New York to Boston. What a world!"

What are your good-luck/back-luck travel stories?
(Photo credit Matt Donnelly Lake Shore Limited Boston-DC)

RHYS BOWEN: My worst bad luck travel experience was when we were in Kashmir and wanted to go to Ladakh, in those days a forbidden kingdom high in the Himalayas.

We started in a jeep at four in the morning. Drove up a steep mountain pass with streams gushing across the road and a three thousand foot drop on one side. The pass was 15,000 feet high. Bitterly cold. Then for hours through a high bleak valley. At four in the afternoon we came upon a place where the road had been washed away for fifteen miles. No way around.

We had to turn around and drive back for twelve hours mostly in the dark, with a driver who thought he could save gas by shutting off the engine when going downhill. I had to sit with my hand poised above the keys to knock his hand away!

A good luck experience was when we wanted to visit Yellowstone. We spent the night in Cody where it was snowing and all the signs said the park entrance was closed. John, being stubborn, said we would drive up there, just in case. We drove up and they had opened the gate ten minutes before! We were one of the only cars we saw all day.

INGRID THOFT: A few years ago, my husband, mom, and I traveled to Vietnam.  We're an adventurous threesome, and it was a destination that interested us.  It was a fascinating and amazing trip in many ways, but it also included one of my worst travel experiences. 

As we drove away from our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon,) we did a passport check only to realize that my mom's passport was missing.  We had a guide and driver for the day (we were supposed to be traveling to the Mekong Delta,) so we returned to the hotel. 

A lengthy search ensued, but the passport could not be found.  First, we went to the local police station to report the missing passport.  Next, we went to the American consulate where they very efficiently issued her a temporary passport.  Phew!  Except we then had to go to the Vietnamese immigration office to get a new visa. 

The next eight hours were filled with chaos, anxiety, and bribes.  Many, many bribes.  At one point, I went out to the car to get more money from my husband, only to hear that he and the driver had been involved in a car chase.  And you know what?  I didn't really care, that's how fraught the situation was in the immigration office! 

Finally, with a lot of cash and the help of our guide, we got the required visa and set off for the Mekong Delta.  A couple of days later the hotel in Saigon contacted us to say they had found the passport in her mini-bar.  Maybe it would have ended up there after our fiasco, but not before.  We suspect the front desk staff misplaced it during check-in and eventually discovered it amongst their paperwork. 

As for good travel stories, every time my plane lands safely, I consider that a successful trip!  Most travel aggravations can be overcome, but not if you don't finish it in one piece!

JENN MCKINLAY: My Mom and I decided to indulge in a trip to Florence (Ah, Firenze) Italy for my fortieth birthday. I left the Hub and Hooligans behind in the frat house for a week of visiting museums, historic sites, and Tuscan vineyards.

It was a wonderful trip. Amazing food, beautiful city, lovely people, lots of laughs, and more gelato than I could ever eat, although I did my best. The only blip in the trip was when Mom got into it with a transportation officer on a city bus and the next thing I knew we were getting hauled off the bus and charged seventy-five euros. Mom hadn't punched her ticket right away and when she remembered and went to do it, the transportation guy nabbed her. Not very sporting of him since she was trying to do the right thing but we were already under way so he felt he had a case. Mom, being feisty, refused to listen to the man, and started calling for "La Polizia!" (I kid you not), meanwhile the other woman who got snagged with us made her escape.

I was too busy laughing at the insanity and taking pictures of the cute police officers, they had white hats just like the British bobbies, who smiled and nodded and told us with a shrug that we had to pay. Mom was miffed but once we caught the bus to our vineyard tour at a castle and had some wine, she settled down.

Still one of my favorite memories. Mom has spunk!

LUCY BURDETTE: Our scariest travel moments involved driving to ski houses in Vermont back in the 1990's. If you rented a house with another couple for a weekend, by God you were going to get there no matter what it took.

I wouldn't have minded staying home if the forecast was for black ice or a blizzard while traveling. Especially with two squabbling children in the backseat! At one point I was reduced to a quivering blob moaning "motel, motel." John honestly could not see the road more than 100 yards in front of him.

I finally prevailed and we got the last room in a crummy dive and we were oh so glad to be there. I consider it sheer dumb luck that we survived all those weekends--and that our fledgling marriage survived too!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, good luck is when it all turns out fine and everyone is safe. My plane to Atlanta Friday was FIVE HOURS delayed, and there's nothing like the crazed and frantic atmosphere of a planeload of travelers trying to to figure out how to get somewhere. It was doomed. It was presidents day weekend and school vacation week, and seriously, there was not one seat. It all turned out fine, I arrived five hours late, but my event was the next day, so all fine.

But once on a trip to Indianapolis, I smelled a funny smell. you know how when some thoughtless person brings Chinese food on a plane? That's what I thought it was.

Finally, though, it was clear it wasn't. I went to the flight attendant and said, you know, there's a funny smell. (I mean, you have to understand the level of terror I had to mention it..) And she looked at me like I was really annoying, and said this plot has twenty years of experience, I'm sure it's fine. So I shrugged, and tried (and failed) to believe her 

And truly, the smell  grew to be incredibly pungent..I had my scarf over my nose. The flight attendant saw me, and said: the smell is less in the back, want to change seats? And I did. 

As the Indianapolis airport came into view, and we were almost landing, the flight attendants came on the PA. 'BRACE BRACE BRACE"  they yelled. "Heads down, heads down! Brace brace brace!" I peeked out the window.MANY Fire trucks. SILENCE on the plane, except for the commanding flight attendants. We landed. We taxied way to the end of the runway. The pilot came out, and said they that before we deplaned, they had to make sure the plane was not going to catch on fire.

Turns out, the electrical system had shorted out, and been burning, and just before we landed, the ENTIRE electrical system went down.

Forgive me for how long this is, but I had the same pilot on the flight back. I said to him--wow, that was scary yesterday.

And he said yeah, in my twenty years of flying, nothing like that had ever happened. He said--the cockpit was filled with smoke. We put on our masks, and landed.

Oh! PS. He also said "When I first smelled it, I thought someone had brought on Chinese food."

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I made my book signing yesterday in Phoenix by the skin of my teeth! Flying early yesterday morning from Portland, big mess at PBX with a flight very delayed from Chicago and all the American agents scrambling to get people sorted who had missed planes, which delayed my flight, too. But so far, that's the closest call for book tour.

I have a fun travel story. A few years ago, my daughter and I were flying to London. She had booked us for afternoon tea at Gordon Ramsay Claridge's for that afternoon. Even reserving months ahead, that had been the only available date.

So we arrive at Gatwick at 7 in the morning. We get through customs and my bag comes in. Then we wait, and wait, and wait. No bag for Kayti. We finally realize it is not on the plane and fill out the necessary paperwork. Kayti is in sweats and we are panicked about our tea reservation.

So we go shopping in Gatwick and find her a dress at Monsoon, and then some shoes. By this time it's noon and we have to be at Claridge's at two. No time to go to the flat to change and freshen up. I said don't worry, we can change in the Ladies at the hotel. Really? Kayti asks. It's Claridge's, I say. Of course we can.

So we did, and our tea was fabulous, one of our most memorable experiences. Kayti's bag arrived the next morning...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My scary experience? A "free" week-long vacation in Manzanillo that my father-in-law got us when he sat through a time share offer. (He used the same technique to acquire a weekend in the Bahamas for us later.) We were young, adventurous and child-free, so we jumped at it.

First off, we booked a cheap flight (not included) saving money by arriving in the middle of the night. There was a driver from the time share company waiting for us, who ushered us into the back seat and began to drive. And drive. And drive. He didn't speak English, and we didn't speak Spanish. We went for what seemed like hours, seeing nothing but impenetrable jungle in the narrow headlight beams. Ross was convinced we had fallen into the hands of kidnappers.

When we finally arrived at the Barefoot Hotel, we were pleased with the spacious accommodations - but the only part of the hotel that seemed lit was our room and the antechamber leading to it. The only sound we could hear was the beating of the Pacific waves. No voices. No muzak. No greeting. Ross told me to bar the door and not open it for anyone, then went to see what he could find out.

Turns out, we were the ONLY guests in the hotel, which was otherwise closed for renovations. Only we never saw any work going on. There was one maid - from the village? - who cleaned our room. We never saw her. The only other person around was Ramon, a sixty-something who spent his days trying unsuccessfully to clear the pool of leaves and who kept a cooler full of ice and beer for Ross, whom he called "Patron." I felt like we had fallen into a Winston Graham novel.

It was a relaxing and eerie experience, made more so by the fact that I can't find any reference to a "Barefoot Hotel" in Manzanillo...

HALLIE: So please, were any of you out and about in a blizzard or trying to get somewhere in California's epic rains? Share the good, bad and the ugly.

Childhood's End

First, headlines! 

The winner of THE BLACK HOUR is mauisun411! Email Hank h ryan at whdh dot com with your address--and congratulations!

THE OTHER WOMAN is now just $2.99 on all e platforms! But not for long. http://www.HankPhillippiRyan.com

and now: 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  It's Saturday morning, and as we learned yesterday from Lori Rader-Day, there'll be no more binge-watching of cartoons. But that just gives us more time to listen to a great story.

A story of a different kid of childhood. Maybe--with no cartoons.

Today Lisa Alber spins us quite the intriguing tale. Again, about being at a certain place at a certain time.  A tale of her childhood, and how it haunts her dreams today, and how it changed her life.

The Mystery I’d Most Like to Solve

                  by Lisa Alber

Picture this: Six-year-old Little Lisa (LL for short) sits on an olive-green recliner. She’s waiting to walk to school with an older neighbor girl, Laura Parrish, who is in fifth grade. Every day LL tries to slip past Laura’s house by skulking behind parked cars. Sometimes she makes it and gets to walk to school alone even though she’s too young for that. Most often, she’s caught out and banished to the gloomy living room while Laura finishes her breakfast. The musty curtains are always closed, the shag rug always un-vacuumed. LL makes a game of bouncing her hands off her thighs in different rhythms. It’s hard—her hands want to sync up—but over time she improves. She does this so she doesn’t have to think too much about who’s down the murky hallway.

The scary brothers just home from a war in Vietnam.

There’s something wrong with them, something wrong with the mom who plays guitar and sings “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head,” something wrong with the buttoned-up businessman dad, and, most of all, something wrong with Laura, who pees her bed.

Of course, Little Lisa doesn’t know this consciously; she senses the wrongness of everything about this house. Knows that this house is in some fundamental way not a safe place for little girls.

***

Wow, Hank, when you asked me to write a post for Jungle Reds, I expected to keep it light. This memory arrived instead. But at least I know why.

It’s this: The other day I got to thinking about the inevitability of me writing mystery/crime fiction rather than, say, romance or women’s fiction. Inevitable because the mystery of Laura has followed me around since I was a kid. To this day, for example, I dream about murky, inescapable houses when I’m under stress. It’s my go-to anxiety dream.

As for my writing, I gravitate toward stories about families with secrets. I often incorporate moody buildings—or some other thick, cloying environmental factor—in my stories. And since my first impression of the world outside my home was one laden with danger, I guess it’s not surprising that I’d write stories about dangerous situations.

I’ve tried to find Laura over the years. Every once in a while I Google her name. About a decade ago, I visited the old neighborhood and realized that I’d remembered her home address, 5 Dellwood Court, but not my own. I knocked on the front door, hoping that somehow a Parrish still lived there. Where’s Laura? I’d ask. What’s she doing? Did she end up OK—or a drug addict—or worse? And, most of all, what the hell was going on in her effed-up household?!?

There was even the time about, oh, eight years ago when, in a fit of despair, I set aside what would become my debut novel, Kilmoon, and started a new piece, in which, yes, I tried to solve the mystery of Laura through fiction. Writing that novel led to the revelation that I’d suffered from PTSD as a child. Seriously. Is that crazy, or what?

(Aside: We moved away from the neighborhood when I was seven—thank goodness; life saver!)

Am I sad or bitter about my less-than-bucolic early childhood? Nah. I’m fascinated. 

I’m fascinated by psychology, in general, and by how we become the adults we turn out to be. I can be anxious and high-strung—you spend enough time in an oppressive house in which amputee’d, drug-addled men (with PTSD no doubt) jump out of closets at you—well, so it goes.

In the end, Laura was probably as big an influence on my early development as my parents. For all I know, I have Laura to thank for my writing life because while I sat on that dingy recliner bouncing my hands against my thighs, I used to sink deep into other worlds. I Iived in imaginary worlds.

So, thank you, Laura. I hope you’re OK out there somewhere. You’re still the mystery I would most like to solve.

Jungle Redians, do you have a life-long mystery you wish you could solve? Or some remnant from your childhood that still follows you around? How do you think this influenced your development—and writing life, if you’re a writer?

HANK: Well, I still watch for tornadoes, as I used to when I was a kid, all the result of Wizard of Oz, of course.  I dream of houses, too, but they are lovely. Which I  think makes yours even more fascinating. But you know as a writer, I always worry when I can't give someone a happy ending, or when I have to write about someone saying goodbye. I know, absolutely, where in my childhood that came from. 

How about you, Reds?

******************************

About KILMOON

Californian Merrit Chase travels to Ireland to meet her father, a celebrated matchmaker, in hopes that she can mend her troubled past. Instead, her arrival triggers a rising tide of violence, and Merrit finds herself both suspect and victim, accomplice and pawn, in a murderous game that began thirty years previously. Family secrets, betrayal, and vengeance from beyond the grave—Merrit has just discovered her long-lost father.

This first in Alber’s new County Clare Mystery series is utterly poetic … The author’s prose and lush descriptions of the Irish countryside nicely complement this dark, broody and very intricate mystery.

     —RT Book Reviews (four stars)

In her moody debut, Alber skillfully uses many shades of gray to draw complex characters who discover how cruel love can be.

     —Kirkus Reviews

Brooding, gothic overtones haunt Lisa Alber’s polished, atmospheric debut. Romance, mysticism, and the verdant Irish countryside all contribute to making Kilmoon a marvelous, suspenseful read.”

     —Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of
          Through the Evil Days

Lisa Alber received an Elizabeth George Foundation writing grant based on Kilmoon. Ever distractible, you may find her staring out windows, dog walking, fooling around online, or drinking red wine with her friends. Ireland, books, animals, photography, and blogging round out her distractions. Lisa lives in the Pacific Northwest. She is currently at work on her second novel set in Ireland.

You can find Lisa at: website | Facebook | Twitter | blog

The Tides of History

HANK:  Susan Orlean had a great tweet Saturday. She wrote something like: "can we just have a nice boring week, please?"

 I'm with ya, Susan. I woke up yesterday and thought I'd feel safe..instead, I felt sad. I walked into the Dunkin Donuts, saw all the regular t-shirted messy-haired normal people just..buying coffee! And I burst into tears. My husband thinks I've lost it.

Anyway.We've been talking all week about the intersection of fiction and reality, so how perfect it is that debut author Kay Kendall (she's fabulous!) is here today to explore that, too.

The Lure of Terrors Past—and Conquered

                           by Kay Kendall

My first experience of the lure of historic catastrophe happened at the movies when I was eight. On the screen a small town celebrated the return of victorious soldiers from World War I, I thought—How exciting it must’ve been to live during wartime. I longed for the drama, the glory. What did I know?

That memory flickers in my head while I watch events in Boston on my television screen. As I write this, the city is in lockdown and Watertown is the focus of the manhunt for a nineteen-year-old terrorist. 

Lives have been lost this week. Many people have been maimed. This terror has not yet been conquered. Perhaps there are more people involved, perhaps more unexploded IEDs lying about. This may be drama, but it is not entertainment. This is not fun.

But people clamor for fiction that features events like this. How do we explain being drawn to horror movies, spy stories, serial killers’ tales and the like? I think fiction of this sort shows how people can act in catastrophic times, overcome their fears and come out on top. When we read novels set during past wars, we can get scared but know how things turn out. The Nazis always lose, even if a few survive to plot another day.

I grew up when the Cold War was pretty hot. I moved rapidly from a severe case of Nancy Drew-itis to being mesmerized by John le Carré’s twisted spy stories. Much later, when I felt compelled to devise my own mysteries, it seemed natural to turn to my favorites as models. For a year I drowned myself in mysteries set during World Wars One and Two and the Cold War. 

Of all the major wars of last century, only the wars in Korea and Vietnam weren’t “taken,” weren’t overrun with thrillers. Vietnam offered a dangerous yet fairly empty niche that needed filling…and I concluded I’d do the filling.

Draft protests, draft dodgers and resisters are symbolic of that war, so much so it seems millions of young men fled to Canada. However, that exodus wasn’t huge, although it was the largest since colonists loyal to England moved north after the American Revolution. (Famous in Canada, that group is called United Empire Loyalists—I’d never heard of them.)

During the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, by law Canadian immigration officials couldn’t ask men entering the country about their draft status. Consequently accurate statistics aren’t available. Informed guesses range from 125,000 down to 50,000. Whatever the number, further estimates conclude that roughly half those who moved to Canada still remain. They settled into Canadian society, made families and careers. Some even entered Canadian politics and were elected to office.

For the half of draft resisters who left Canada eventually, it’s impossible to tell where they went. In 1974, President Ford offered clemency to Vietnam draft resisters and deserters. Only 27,000 of 350,000 eligible applied before the offer (mandating two years of government service) expired in 1975. Two years later President Carter pardoned those who dodged the war by not registering or fleeing the country. Stigma still attaches to the subject of draft evasion.

Desertion, however, is a more serious offence, and it created political furor, especially among American veterans of World War II and Korea. As late as 2005, a Vietnam era deserter was prosecuted by the Marine Corps.

In my debut novel, Desolation Row—An Austin Starr Mystery, one young woman gets swept along by the tides of history during the turbulent sixties. She’s a moderate—not an activist like “Hanoi” Jane Fonda or Angela Davis. My fictional Austin Starr, homesick Texas bride of a Vietnam War activist, must prove her husband didn’t murder a fellow draft resister in Canada, the black-sheep son of a U.S. Senator. When the Mounties are convinced David Starr is guilty and jail him, Austin must find the real killer herself or risk losing everything.

I enjoy writing about historical turmoil that lends itself to personal drama, intrigue and murder, I can control the world that I build on the page. That is comforting.  But now I must return to my television screen, to wait for the newscasters to tell me that the crisis has passed, the bad guys are conquered. Waiting for comfort to come, even if it is only temporary, only until the next horror fills my screen.

============================

HANK: Kay (who apparently has...a rabbit??) will drop in to answer questions and respond to comments, and she'll give away a copy of DESOLATION ROW (Stairway Press, Seattle) to a lucky commenter.

And we'll announce all this week's winners later today!

*************

 Learn more about Kay and her book at www.kaykendallauthor.com, on Facebook  <www.facebook.com/KayKendallAuthor>, on Twitter @kaylee_kendall, and at LinkedIn  <http://www.linkedin.com/in/kaykendallmysteries>.