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Amanda Ward Interviews Keija Parssinen, author of "The Ruins of Us"

Here, Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Close Your Eyes, interviews Keija Parssinen, author of The Ruins of Us--a timely story about intolerance, family, and the injustices we endure for love.

AW: The Ruins of Us is an interesting twist on the ever-popular infidelity storyline. Did the idea for this multi-faceted novel originate with a polygamous marriage?

KP: Actually, it originated from something far more nebulous than that. It began with nostalgia for Saudi Arabia, a place of my past, a home I couldn’t return to. One of the themes of the book is longing. Rosalie longs for the Saudi Arabia of her childhood, Faisal longs for his loving family of the past, Abdullah longs for the passionate bond he and Rosalie enjoyed as young people. When I started writing The Ruins of Us , I was recovering from my parents’ divorce, which had occurred six years earlier. I merely connected my two great griefs—the loss of my home and the loss of my family. The Rosalie/Abdullah story was at first a peripheral part of the narrative.  

AW: The novel is told from various perspectives. Did you ever consider writing the novel just from Rosalie’s point-of-view?

KP: She is the protagonist of the book, but surprisingly, I never considered telling the story from her perspective. I actually find writing in one voice to be limiting and a bit boring. I knew I couldn’t tell this story solely from an American perspective, as I wanted Faisal and Abdullah to give us a glimpse into their culture-specific rationalizations while also revealing their universal aches and desires. Dan’s voice came easily to me and I related to him the most. I liked his sense of humor, and in Saudi society, he’s an outsider, like me. It took me years and many revisions to realize that Rosalie holds the story together because all the characters connect through her.

AW: Much of your work draws on the Middle East and its various political situations. What keeps bringing you back to this region? As an expatriate yourself, did you always know that your debut novel would be set in Saudi Arabia?

KP: In the New Yorker, Wendell Stevenson asks Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany if he’s planning to write a novel about the recent revolution. He says that’s akin to asking someone if they’re going to fall in love, and with whom. He’s right—I don’t think a novelist has much control when it comes to the subjects that are captivating and mysterious. I knew that Saudi Arabia entranced and obsessed me, and those are two necessary qualities of any novelist’s subject matter. The Middle East is not easily understood or explained, and I find those complexities riveting.

Additionally, I’ve always felt that I was forced to leave my home—Saudi Arabia—before I was ready to let it go. By writing about the country, I’m able to hold on to it just a little bit longer.

 

 

Guest Blogger: Lia Fairchild Charts a New Path “In Search of Lucy”

"Finding yourself" has become a cliché, but many of us truly do feel lost at some point in our lives. It makes sense that as we grow and change, we experience a sense of loss for the people we used to be.

The story of In Search of Lucy came to me at a time when I felt the need to "find" myself again. The Big Four Oh! was creeping up on me, and I was on my third career change. I’d given up working in public relations to get my teaching credential. Just as I completed the program, schools in my area began cutbacks, so I fell into substitute teaching. Each time I headed to a new school to take the place of someone else, I’d hear the same question from teachers and staff: Who are you today? I began to wonder about that myself.

Years earlier, before having my two children, I’d tried my hand at writing screenplays. Then the babies came along, and I set those projects aside—until I realized that my new flexible schedule was perfect for jumping back into the writing game.

Revolving the story around a young woman who felt lost seemed fitting, given my circumstances. But I wanted to take it even further. What if this woman felt so lost that she didn’t want to go on? Maybe she was even desperate enough to end it all. But what if she couldn’t make that choice for herself? This is where we enter Lucy’s life. Living alone, betrayed by her family, she is closed off emotionally to those around her. Then she finds out she is the only match for a kidney that will save her sister’s life. Love and devotion battle with bitterness and betrayal as Lucy journeys to reunite with her sister, determined to help her. I found it fascinating to create someone who was caring and giving but, because of her destructive past, also came off as cold and cynical. I believe readers will see through Lucy’s pain and experience a connection with her, just as I did.

In my journey to find In Search of Lucy, I also found myself—and a new beginning as an author. I haven’t stopped writing since. I recently completed a mystery series called A Hint of Murder and have two other books in progress: a thriller and a romantic comedy. But with all those different genres, I guess you could say I haven’t completely found myself yet.

—Lia Fairchild

Editors' Picks: February

 

Before the calendar turns, we wanted to give you a final look at our editors' picks for the Best Books of February. Here are a handful from the list, which includes debut novels, eye-opening nonfiction titles, and a suspenseful legal mystery:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo 

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Katherine Boo's landmark work of narrative nonfiction tells the dramatic, and sometimes heartbreaking, story of families striving toward a better life while taking up residence in the slum-shadows of one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities: Mumbai, India.

 

Defending Jacob: A Novel by William Landay 

When a shocking crime shatters Andy Barber's happy life, the assistant district attorney is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. It's a suspenseful, character-driven mystery and a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and losing control.

 

A Good American by Alex George 

When Frederick and Jette flee her disapproving mother in 1904 by traveling to America, they find themselves in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri, not speaking a word of English and meeting characters ranging from a gumbo-cooking jazz trumpeter to a malevolent, bicycle-riding dwarf. Poignant, funny, and heartbreaking, it's a novel centered on the universal story about the search for home.

 

Flatscreen: A Novel by Adam Wilson 

Eli Schwartz as has endured the loss of his home, the indifference of his parents, the success of his older brother, and the frequent dismissal of women. A classic loser, Eli strikes up a dangerous friendship with a former TV star, now current paraplegic sex addict, that descends into utter debasement and YouTube stardom. Adam Wilson writes heart-moving mischief in this wondrous debut of a truth-telling comic voice.

 

The Snow Child: A Novel by Eowyn Ivey 

Alaska, 1920, is a brutal place to homestead, especially for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless; they are drifting apart, but in a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, the couple build a child out of snow. Come dawn, the snow child is gone, but Jack and Mabel glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. Jack and Mabel come to love this strange child, Faina, as their own, and what they eventually learn about her will transform all of them.

"The Flatey Enigma": The Book Behind the Book

In 1871, when students sailing from Iceland to Copenhagen devised a quiz about the text of a famous medieval manuscript to entertain themselves on the journey, they never suspected that their unsolved riddle would become the center of a gruesome murder mystery decades later.

So explains Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson in his new novel, The Flatey Enigma, which is steeped in the mystery surrounding the Icelandic Book of Flatey, a medieval tome that recorded the histories of the Norse kings. Each chapter of Ingolfsson's international best seller ends with a clue (and an answer) from the 40 questions in the so-called Aenigma Flateyensis puzzle. The 40th question—and the key to the riddle—has never been solved.

The Flatey Enigma begins with the death of professor Gaston Lund, a Danish cryptographer who visits the tiny island of Flatey to decipher the Aenigma Flateyensis once and for all. When his body is discovered on a deserted island nearby, no one knows why he failed in his quest.

Soon after, another body is uncovered with a Viking symbol carved into its back. Kjartan, a young lawyer from the district magistrate's office, is assigned to investigate. All connections lead back to the riddle of the Book of Flatey. Had Lund solved the puzzle, only to perish?

As Kjartan unravels the clues, myths, and codes surrounding the Aenigma Flateyensis, fans of Nordic crime writers such as Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, and Arnaldur Indridason will relish the cleverly plotted layers of this Glass Key–nominated mystery.

Guest Blogger: John Hooper, author of the Kindle Single, "Fatal Voyage"

Fatal Voyage describes the terrifying tick-tock of the January sinking of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, and its deadly aftermath--with fresh new details reported by John Hooper, the Rome correspondent for The Guardian, who covered the disaster from the Tuscan island of Giglio.

Sometimes life can take you in a long, broad arc back to somewhere you thought you had long ago consigned to memory.

On my very earliest visit to Italy, at the age of 18, I was asked by an opera singer to skipper his powerboat. The first trip was to be around the island of Giglio. I botched it hopelessly, and was sacked on our return to Porto Ercole.

Scroll forward many years -- years I have mostly spent as a newspaper foreign correspondent -- to the morning of January 14^th, 2012. I am in bed in Rome with a bout of flu when I am woken up to be told that there has been a shipwreck in the night. The flu has to be forgotten as I drive at breakneck, and doubtless illegal, speeds up the Via Aurelia to Porto Santo Stefano where the survivors are being brought ashore.

The next day, I manage to hitch a ride on a Coast Guard patrol boat to Giglio where the stricken liner, the Costa Concordia, has come to grief. Within an hour or so I am on the rocks by the ship watching from less than 100 meters away as the last of the survivors to be rescued alive is winched out on a stretcher.

Thus began my involvement with a story that brims with drama -- and still holds a number of mysteries.

In writing Fatal Voyage, I have had the benefit of access to material gathered by the prosecutors in their continuing investigation into the causes of the disaster. But, while I hope readers will find in the story new facts and original perspectives, my overriding aim has been to write a minute-by-minute narrative that brought to life the terrifying reality of what it was like to be trapped aboard a vast, capsizing ship.

To try to do that, I needed to interview someone who had been on the Costa Concordia throughout the various phases of the emergency: someone with good powers of description and, ideally, a knowledge of the sea. I found the perfect interviewee in Dean Ananias, a retired Californian schoolteacher who served in the US Navy during the Vietnam War.

For well over an hour, he talked me through his experiences and those of his wife and two daughters – heart-stoppingly frightening experiences that led them on four occasions to say their good-byes, believing their luck had run out and that they were about to die. By the time I finished speaking to Dean, my own pulse was racing and, when I put down my notebook, I let out a very long “Phew …”

I hope you’ll feel something of the same when you come to the end of Fatal Voyage.

--John Hooper

John Rector reviews "A Good and Useful Hurt"

Nothing beats a good opening line.

When one works, it'll tell you all you need to know about the book, and at the same time pull you along and leave you wanting more.

"What was the worst thing you've ever done?"
-Peter Straub, Ghost Story

"It was Friday the thirteenth and yesterday's snowstorm lingered in the streets like a leftover curse"
-William Hjortsberg, Falling Angel

"It was a pleasure to burn."
-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Not only will a good opening line set the mood for what's to come, sometimes it'll make it almost impossible not to keep reading.

Aric Davis understands this, and his novel, A Good and Useful Hurt, has a particularly striking opening line.

'F--k art, this is war.'

And believe me, he means it.

Davis pulls you along a winding path filled with art, romance, and friendship. He will distract you with enough details about the fascinating world of tattoos to make you believe, on some level, that everything is fine, that those shadows in the corner are just shadows. Basically, he makes you believe that war isn't coming.

But it is.

A Good and Useful Hurt is an all or nothing book. There's very little I can tell you without giving too much away, but I'll do my best. Mike owns a tattoo shop and hires the young headstrong Deb to join his wily crew of misfits in Grand Rapids Michigan. Mike and Deb fall in love, and although they are both nursing some deep emotional wounds, the relationship blooms.

Deb performs some fairly extreme body modifications.

Mike tattoos select patrons using the ashes of their dead relatives.

Just another day at the office.

Of course, it's not long before we come face to face with a sociopathic serial killer and start communicating with the dead…  And that's just the start. Things get even more intense from there.

Aric Davis has done something wonderful. He's brought a new and unique perspective to the traditional ghost story, and it would be a shame to miss out.--John Rector

John Rector is the best-selling author of three suspense novels, The Grove, Already Gone, and The Cold Kiss.

Guest Blogger: Deborah Crombie, author of "No Mark Upon Her"

A native Texan who has lived in both England and Scotland, Deborah Crombie is a three-time Macavity Award winner, an Edgar Award nominee, and a New York Times Notable author. Her latest novel, No Mark Upon Her, is an absorbing, finely hued tale of suspense—a deeply atmospheric and twisting mystery full of deadly secrets, salacious lies, and unexpected betrayals involving the mysterious drowning of a Met detective—an accomplished rower—on the Thames. Here, Crombie explains, why rowing?

I've always considered writing novels an excuse to learn about new things, and in fourteen books I've researched the tea trade, the evacuation of children from London during the Blitz, new-age Glastonbury, racial unrest in Notting Hill, narrow boats on the English waterways,  Art Deco jewelry, whisky distilling in the Scottish Highlands, firefighting in London...and so much more.  All things, I have to admit, about which I knew next to nothing when I began a book.

But in No Mark Upon Her, I think I outdid myself in rashness.  I am the most un-athletic person imaginable.  The kid who was picked last for school sports.  The woman whose idea of a good workout is walking the dog.  And so I decided to write about rowing, one of the toughest and most physically demanding sports in the world.  Like one of my characters, I was enchanted by the sight of rowing and sculling, by the grace and beauty of the long, slender boats skimming the water. 

If you are going to write about rowing in England, you must start with Leander Club in the beautiful and historic town of Henley-on-Thames.  Founded in 1818, Leander Club is the most prestigious and successful rowing club in the world, with 99 Olympic gold medals won by its members. Through an introduction by a friend, I was invited to stay at Leander and get a real-life, close-up look at what it takes to be a competitive rower and an Olympic contender.

What I learned?  That rowing may look beautiful but it is physically brutal.  That rowers, male and female, drive themselves beyond pain and exhaustion every single day.  That rowing requires obsession  (and obsession always provides good material for crime novels).

And I got to row. Sir Steve Williams, two-time Olympic gold medal winner for Great Britain in the coxless four, offered to take me out for a lesson in a double scull.  I have never been so terrified.  And never so exhilarated.  I learned what it was like for my characters to be out on the river, to feel the boat move in rhythm with the pull of the oars, to watch the light fade over the Thames.  I learned why rowers do what they do, in a way that no amount of reading could ever capture.

And the best part?  I didn’t fall in.

--Deborah Crombie

Guest Blogger: Erin Duffy, author of "Bond Girl"

Erin Duffy graduated from Georgetown University in 2000 with a B.A. in English and went on to spend more than a decade working in fixed-income sales on Wall Street. Bond Girl is her first novel. In it, a feisty, ambitious woman named Alex stands up to the best (and worst) of the boys on the Street. 

Here, the author gives the skinny on "Wall Street Dating 101."

It has come to my attention that there are a lot of girls out there who are struggling with the pitfalls of dating a Wall Street guy. No worries, ladies. Consider me your mole. Class is in session.

There are a few things you need to know if you want to have a relationship with a Wall Street guy. First and foremost, DON’T call him at the office eight times a day. It makes his coworkers think he’s whipped and opens him up to inhumane ridicule. Never, ever do this. Put it right up there on the list with running with scissors and playing in traffic. On the rare occasion that you are actually able to get your boyfriend on the phone during the day, don’t be offended if he hangs up on you mid-sentence. No, he’s not mad at you; simply put, he had another phone call that was more important than yours, (read: one that pays him). Poor phone habits are a byproduct of the job. The sooner you accept them, the better.

Next up: be prepared for a lot of alone time. When your boyfriend apologizes for missing your mother’s birthday on a Sunday because he has to go to a golf outing for work, he’s telling the truth. Sure, no one likes coming in second to a putting green, but you need to understand that mandatory sporting events are a part of the job description.

This lesson is a particularly hard one for girls to understand. You can’t be surprised if your boyfriend goes to every nice restaurant in the city during the week without you, and then on Friday wants to sit on the couch and order in pizza. I know it’s not fair. You have been waiting patiently all week for the work obligations to end, and now he’s too tired to put on pants? The short answer is, yes. As a male friend of mine so perfectly put it, “I leave everything on the field during the week. I’m not moving off my couch on a Friday for anything less than my apartment catching fire.

Lastly, Wall Street guys have multitasking down to an art form. If you are talking to your boyfriend and he’s simultaneously checking his I-pad, writing a text message and reading an email all the while assuring you he is listening to your every word, he probably is. Our brains have been reconditioned to absorb information from ten different sources at once. This should be good news. You aren’t being ignored nearly as much as you think you are.

If you find yourself dating a Wall Street guy, and remember these rules, you will be much better off. Believe me, he will love you all the more for it.

Class dismissed.

--Erin Duffy

Paula McLain’s Top Ten Literary Love Stories

Paula McLain received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of two collections of poetry, a memoir, and two novels including the best-selling, The Paris Wife.

The first time a love story knocked me flat was when I read The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough. That was in high school, nearly thirty years ago, and it ruined me in the best sort of way. McCullough’s tale is set in the wilds of the Australian outback and chronicles, with epic anguish, the forbidden love between Meggie Cleary and Father Ralph. Although they can’t keep each other (hint: he’s a Catholic priest), their bond is undeniable—and good for several boxes of tissues. Don’t get me wrong. I like a happy ending as much as anyone, but when it comes to romance, I’m often more moved and more convinced by a healthy dose of heartbreak. When I was writing The Paris Wife, a big part of what drew me to Ernest and Hadley’s story was the way their connection is tested and challenged by sometimes overwhelming obstacles. I’m a card-carrying romantic, but in that box of valentines, I’ll always reach past the fluffy pink heart with scalloped lace edges for the one that’s pierced, broken. Real.

Here are my top ten favorite all-time literary love stories, some old, some new, some poignant, some absolutely jubilant—all guaranteed to pack a wallop on Valentine's Day. Happy reading!

Persuasion, by Jane Austen
Quiet, unassuming Anne Elliot and the dashing Captain Fredrick Wentworth have both watched the love of their lives slip away. Here, we see if they’ll weather the considerable risks to grab happiness when it comes around again. Even more than Pride and Prejudice, or any other number of Austen masterpieces, this novel kills me every time for its depiction of a mature and constant love that stands the test of time.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
In setting the gold standard for Gothic Romance, Charlotte Brontë has also given us one of the most extraordinary heroines ever to grace the page. Jane is unearthly, intense, and painfully self-aware—she’s also a consummate survivor. As we follow her from her orphaned childhood through terrible obstacles and deprivations, she becomes utterly whole for us, a complicated thinking and feeling woman. Of course her love for the brooding, haunted Edward Rochester is complicated too—and entirely unforgettable.

The Time Traveler’s Wife (paperback only), by Audrey Niffenegger
Like Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, Henry De Tamble has come unstuck in time. Haphazardly swept through decades, and vulnerable in every way, Henry attaches himself to Clare and comes to chart his life through loving her. Forever left behind, Clare overrides the considerable challenges to link her life to Henry’s as well. The brilliant trick of this novel is that Niffenegger makes the high-concept and fantasy-based love story feel breathtakingly real, recognizable and even essential.

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
The only novel published by the other Brontë sister, Wuthering Heights is a dark treatise on all-consuming life-altering passion. Heathcliff and Catherine are devastatingly locked together in life and death, and although they aren’t likeable characters, we’re swept up by their raw and harrowing human drama.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Essentially a current day comedy of manners, this utterly delightful novel follows the brusque and stodgy Major—such a fresh and unlikely troubadour!—in his complicated pursuit of love with Jasmina Ali, a Pakistani shopkeeper. Funny, wise and completely delicious!

Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
Set in the Smoky Mountains in the final throes of the Civil War, Inman is a wounded confederate soldier who deserts his post and embarks on a journey of heroic proportion to reunite with his scrappy beloved, Ada, who is also tested beyond measure.

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
While others may swoon for Romeo and Juliet, I’ll take these seasoned lovers, long married. Lady Macbeth knows her husband profoundly. His weakness is clear, and she exploits it; he complies because he wants her approval and her heart. Their love is extreme and disastrous—but there’s a shocking truth in the depth of their understanding of one another.

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
In this unbelievably beautiful novel, eighty-year-old Leo Gursky, a lonely eccentric, is fated to meet Alma Singer, a teenaged girl named for the love of Leo’s life. Full of wonderful plot turnings and synchronicities, Krauss’s story is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit, and the power of love unending.

On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
The brilliant McEwan has outdone himself in this tender and wrenching depiction of a young couple on their wedding night. Set on the Dorset Coast of England in 1963, the story is also completely timeless in its meditation on personal restraint, sexual ignorance and all the other small but enormous things that keep us from saying what needs to be said, and reaching out to another in the moments that can change our lives forever. You’ll want to gobble up this spare and perfect novel in a few hours—and I highly recommend reading it just that way.

Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx
“I wish I knew how to quit you,” Ennis Del Mar tells Jack Twist in this powerful rendering of the impossible love between two men who meet as ranch hands in Wyoming’s stunning and unforgiving high country. Even if you’ve seen the gorgeous film adaptation by Ang Lee, you’ll want to read Proulx’s language first hand. The story is one of eight in her terrific collection, Close Range, and somehow manages to deliver, in just a handful of pages, one of the truest, wisest, most honest depictions of love I’ve ever encountered.

Michelle Willingham Reviews "Charming the Shrew"

Guest post by historical romance author Michelle Willingham.

Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is a classic play that pits a charming man against a strong-willed woman. Laurin Wittig's medieval romance, Charming the Shrew, is an entertaining, compelling version of this tale, set in the Scottish Highlands.

Tayg Munro is renowned as a war hero and a man wanted by every unmarried maiden within a hundred miles. After he returns home from the battlefield, Tayg feels the shadow of his elder brother's death. He tries to follow in his brother's footsteps, struggling in his role as the clan's future chief. But inwardly, he wants a very different life—one where no one tries to glorify his days of war.  

During a visit to the MacDonell Clan, Tayg disguises himself as a bard in order to learn whether they are truly faithful to King Robert the Bruce.  He is suspicious of the MacDonells, particularly when their chief, Duff "Dogface" MacDonell demands that Tayg deliver a mysterious message to his betrothed wife in Assynt.

Known as the Shrew of Assynt, Catriona MacLeod is facing an unwanted marriage to Dogface MacDonell. Burdened with four brothers who torment her and one who is too quiet to stand up for himself, she defends herself in the best way she knows how—lashing out with words. But words will do nothing to help her escape the marriage, and Catriona takes matters into her own hands, running away.  Her bad sense of direction takes her the wrong way and she's caught in a snow storm, only to be rescued by a handsome bard.

Tayg hides his true identity from her and is startled to learn that the sharp-tongued Shrew of Assynt is a stunningly beautiful woman with ebony hair and deep blue eyes. When he gives her the parchment from Dogface MacDonell, Tayg discovers hidden within the message, a secret plot to kill the king. With no choice but to warn Robert the Bruce, he journeys with Catriona in an effort to stop the king's enemies.

Along the way, Tayg is deeply attracted to Catriona. Beneath her sharp tongue lies a softer woman, a woman he desires more with each day that passes. Cat, in turn, is unsure of how to manage this man who somehow understands that her shrewish temper is a means of hiding her fear.

Pursued by her brothers and Dogface MacDonell, Catriona must decide whether to lower her defenses and learn to trust a bard who cannot sing but whose kisses break down the walls of her heart. The closer they become, the more she wonders if Tayg is not all that he seems. Their journey toward the king becomes another journey for her—a journey of finding her own self-worth and understanding that not everyone is a threat. As she learns to curb her sharp words, she begins to make friends among strangers.

Tayg, in turn, is falling hard for this woman who has never known the love and security of a true family. With her, he can be himself, and he's no longer trying to mimic what his brother might have done.  Instead, he relies upon his own decisions to protect others. As Cat begins to return his feelings, he's worried that once his lies are revealed, she will once again feel betrayed by someone she loves.

During the second half of the book, the story becomes impossible to put down, taking the reader on a journey where characters transform, digging deep to find the courage to become who they really are. Wittig's writing is solid and the ending is absolutely magical. It's a historical romance that will leave a smile on any reader's face.

Michelle Willingham is the historical romance author of over twenty novels, novellas, and short stories including the MacEgan Brothers series, the MacKinloch Clan series, and the Accidental series. Her novel Taming Her Irish Warrior was named a 2010 Rita Finalist for Best Historical Romance.