/ en-US Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:15:23 -0700 60 / 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg /author_blog_posts/25653641-it-s-national-library-week-don-t-fear-the-library Mon, 07 Apr 2025 09:15:23 -0700 /author_blog_posts/25653641-it-s-national-library-week-don-t-fear-the-library
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,

This is the start of National Library Week.

And I’m a novelist for lots of reasons, but among them? Public libraries.

My family moved often the second half of my childhood, and at one point I went to five schools in six years in three states.

To wit, just before I started eighth grade, my family moved from a suburb of New York City to Miami, Florida, and we moved over Labor Weekend. The following Tuesday, I started school at Palm Springs Junior High, and then -- right after sch00l -- saw my new orthodontist (a sadist, it would turn out, if ever there was one). He gave me some orthodontic headgear that looked like the business end of a backhoe, and I had to wear the device for four hours a day. I couldn't speak when I was wearing it, and I wasn't allowed to sleep when I was wearing it. So, some days, I would come home from school, put in my headgear, and go to the library to read.

There I devoured books as different as William Peter Blatty's "The Exorcist" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." I began to understand little bits about literary momentum and narrative drive, and how first person narrators are every bit as made up as the fictional constructs around them.

Now, of course, libraries are under threat. It began with "book banning," (as recently as 2023, my novel, "Midwives," was among the books pulled from library shelves in a part of Florida). But the threat has gotten worse in recent months. To wit:

- At the U.S. Naval Academy Library, among the 381 books that were removed after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the school to eliminate titles promoting DEI were Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and "Memorializing the Holocaust."
The staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services was put on leave.

- Many libraries have had previously approved federal grants terminated.

- Texas legislators are considering a bill that would impose criminal penalties on teachers and librarians who provide books with "sexually explicit content," regardless of whether the book has literary or educational value.

- Mississippi's Library Commission had to cut off access to eBooks.

- Ohio's summer reading program is in limbo.

As I wrote back in 1998 when my little Vermont village library was destroyed in a flood, a library is far more than a roomful of books. It's a multigenerational community center used by all demographics, from toddlers to seniors.

No one becomes a librarian to get rich. None of them signed up to be a wall of defense for the First Amendment.

But that's where we are.

What can you do?

- Ask your congressional representative via email or phone to support federal library funding.

- Vote in local elections for citizens who will support your library.

- Thank your librarians the next time you visit.

- Learn about the American Library Association.

- Share your love of libraries with friends and family, in person or on the social networks.

There is obviously more. But this is a start.

Thank you, my friends. May you always have a book you love by your bedside.

All the best,

Chris

�


Praise for The Jackal's Mistress

An Instant National Bestseller


"Inspired by true events�.A moving tale about the difficult choices people must make in dangerous circumstances." -- The Washington Post

"All the propulsive plot and character development one has come to expect from Bohjalian." -- The Boston Globe

"It’s hard not to get pulled in from the first sentence�.The Jackal’s Mistress gallops along, sweeping us up in its heart-pounding final pages." -- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"The Jackal’s Mistress. . .is destined to be a classic worthy of Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. . .[an] unforgettable read that cements Bohjalian’s placement on the literary Mount Rushmore of American writers." -- BookReporter

"Elegant, poignant, and richly atmospheric. . .Bohjalian once again demonstrates his profound respect for women, endowing his female protagonists with depth and nuance.� -- Booklist, starred

One of the New York Times's 24 Books to Read This Spring

One of the Washington Post's 10 Noteworthy Books for March

An Indie Next Selection for March

An Amazon Editors' Pick for March

A Barnes & Noble and BookBub "Most Anticipated Book" for March

posted by Chris Bohjalian on April, 07 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25620268-pulling-prose-from-our-dreams Wed, 26 Mar 2025 13:20:00 -0700 /author_blog_posts/25620268-pulling-prose-from-our-dreams
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,

I’m writing a novel that is, at least in part, about my childhood and adolescence, memories of which seem to be peppering my sleep.

And so lately I’ve been trying to understand my dreams.

A novel about dreams may sound like a yawn, but at the moment I’m finding it eye-opening.

I’ve also been reading a bit of Freud and a bit of Jung, but a little of either analyst goes a long way in a novel � especially a novel set between in 1978 and 1980, which is, much to my horror, historical fiction.

I’ve also been thumbing through articles on nightmares, contemplating the way we use the words “nightmare� and “dream,� which is rather like navel-gazing, unless the people using the words are James Joyce, Frida Kahlo, or Martin Luther King, Jr.

And just as I am thinking more about my own dreams, I am driving my lovely bride crazy by asking her about hers. My wife may be a lucid dreamer. Sometimes when she is asleep, she’s aware that she’s dreaming and has some control of the content. It also means that she is capable of waking herself up when the dream is morphing into a nightmare: before the plane she is on actually crashes, for instance. But it also means that she will remind herself as even less dramatic action is unfolding that she is dreaming and this is, perhaps, merely wish fulfillment of a sort.

Likewise, she enjoys flying without a plane, and does so periodically � well aware that she is, technically, asleep.

And yet there is nothing we hate more as readers and viewers than a story that ends with these five words: “And then I woke up.� We feel utterly cheated. There are a few exceptions to this, of course. We do not merely forgive L. Frank Baum and “The Wizard of Oz� for building his story around Dorothy Gale’s dream; we cherish the construct. Likewise, we accept (more or less) the premise of Christopher Nolan’s movie, “Inception,� which has characters attempting to move about in one another’s subconscious and dreams.

So much of what novelists and filmmakers do is to try and convince our audiences to suspend disbelief. “Fiction does its work by creating a dream in the reader’s mind,� observed John Gardner in his concise examination of our craft, “The Art of Fiction.� He compares this dream to a movie in the reader’s head, adding that most of the time there is nothing worse a writer can do than distract the reader � “[break] the film, if you will� � with bad technique. In other words, we never want to wake the reader from the fictional dream.

Which brings me back to real dreams. Lucid dreams. Nightmares. I think I know the answer to this, but one of my characters has been pondering which is more profound: the relief when we wake that a nightmare was but a dream, or the sadness when we wake that a good dream � a really good dream � wasn’t real? Certainly I’ve experienced both. Everyone has.

And it is very easy to read more into a dream than is there.

But here is the one, deeply personal reality I keep coming back to: I write in the morning. It’s a work habit that goes back to my years before I became a full-time novelist: I would write everyday between five and seven a.m. before going to work at advertising agencies in Manhattan and then Burlington, Vermont.

It’s only now, as I write a book in which the role of memories and dreams is pivotal, that I am realizing why this time of day has always worked so well for me: my mind is still rich with the magic of the subconscious.

Thank you, my friends. May you always have a book you love by your bedside.

All the best,

Chris


PS: Here are the upcoming events on The Jackal's Mistress Rock and Roll Book Tour

FRIDAY, MARCH 28
Virtual Facebook and YouTube Event
A Mighty Blaze -- in conversation with Jenna Blum ("Those Who Save Us"); books by Bookshop.org.
4:00 p.m.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3
Montclair, New Jersey
First Congregational Church of Montclair -- in conversation with Christina Baker Kline ("The Exiles"); books by Watchung Booksellers
7:00 p.m.
Tickets here:

SATURDAY, APRIL 5
Tallahassee, Florida
Word of the South Festival -- in conversation with Mark Mustian ("Boy with Wings")
3:30 p.m.
The AC Marriott Hotel Ballroom
801 South Gadsden Street

MONDAY, APRIL 28
Virtual Facebook Event
Dolen's Bookclub
8:00 p.m. eastern time.
Yes, the brilliant novelist, Dolen Perkins-Valdez -- author of the forthcoming Happy Land -- has selected The Jackal's Mistress for her April pick. Join her bookclub on Facebook and tune in to enjoy Chris and Dolen in conversation!

FRIDAY, MAY 2
Garden City, New York
The Garden City Hotel -- in conversation with Alyson Richman ("The Timekeepers")
A lunch event hosted by Friends of the Port Washington Library
11:00 a.m.
Tickets here:

THURSDAY, MAY 8
Wilmington, Massachusetts
"Behind the Books!"
Shriners Auditorium -- hosted by the Wilmington Public Library
6:30 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4
Manchester, Vermont
The Northshire Bookstore --- in conversation with Joe Donahue of WAMC.
Stay tuned for Details!

THURSDAY, JUNE 5
Bristol, Connecticut
The Friends of the Bristol Public Library
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel
42 Century Drive
11:30 a.m.
Books by R. J. Julia
Ticket order form here:


Praise for The Jackal's Mistress -- An Instant National Bestseller

"Inspired by true events�.A moving tale about the difficult choices people must make in dangerous circumstances." -- The Washington Post

"It’s hard not to get pulled in from the first sentence�.The Jackal’s Mistress gallops along, sweeping us up in its heart-pounding final pages." -- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Masterful." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred

A "page-turner." -- Library Journal, starred

"Elegant, poignant, and richly atmospheric. . .Bohjalian once again demonstrates his profound respect for women, endowing his female protagonists with depth and nuance.� -- Booklist, starred

"Readers will be glued to the page." -- Publishers Weekly

One of the New York Times's 24 Books to Read This Spring

One of the Washington Post's 10 Noteworthy Books for March

An Indie Next Selection for March

An Amazon Editors' Pick for March

A Barnes & Noble and BookBub "Most Anticipated Book" for March

posted by Chris Bohjalian on March, 26 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25584712-our-post-pandemic-literary-renaissance Thu, 13 Mar 2025 19:59:08 -0700 /author_blog_posts/25584712-our-post-pandemic-literary-renaissance -- Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe


13 March 2025

Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,

Well, it's here: my 25th book, The Jackal's Mistress, is now available at bookstores and libraries everywhere -- and I am on my 35th book tour. I thank you all so much.

And I have been thinking a lot about the place of literature and art in 2025.

We are now on the far side of the worst pandemic since the influenza pandemic of 1918 - 1920.

And we know what followed that: the roaring twenties, with all that jazz, gin, and dancing.

(In all fairness, I did not wait until the end of the pandemic to rediscover gin. Some of you might have read my 2021 novel, Hour of the Witch. Well, there's a main character in that book I renamed Peregrin in the early summer of 2020, because I thought I should give a shoutout to my booze of choice those months, Appalachian Gap's Peregrin Gin.)

In any case, the other thing that followed the influenza pandemic was a great literary renaissance: Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Richard Wright, Katherine Anne Porter. It's a long list.

Obviously, an argument can be made that it was the First World War that gave the Lost Generation its voice. I suppose Gertrude Stein thought so.

But in 2021, I read Porter's novella about the influenza pandemic, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, and that's when it clicked for me. Other than Hemingway, who was a volunteer ambulance driver wounded in July 1918, those Lost Generation writers never saw the mechanized carnage of the war. So, is it possible it was the pandemic that gave us such extraordinary fiction in the 1920s and 1930s? I think so now.
�
When I look at the remarkable books that began appearing in 2022 and have continued raining upon us like an invigorating waterfall, it feels to me as if, once again, a pandemic has inspired great work. A small sampling of the wonderful books with which we've fallen in love the last few years, many of which were written in lockdown, would include Tom Lake, Chain Gang All-Stars, Demon Copperhead, James, Pineapple Street, Yellowface, and Romantic Comedy.

The Jackal’s Mistress is my 25th book. Since March of 2020, I finished writing Hour of the Witch, and then wrote, The Lioness, The Princess of Las Vegas, The Jackal's Mistress, The Amateur (my 2026 novel), and a play, The Club. This is not a brag, humble or otherwise. I mention it because all writers and artists have been more productive than ever. Fifteen minutes in a bookstore or library will leave you -- in a good way -- overwhelmed.

In any case, I am now on my 35th book tour. (Not a typo. Because, for years, I toured for paperbacks, I have more book tours than books.) The list of cities I am visiting is below. If I’m not coming to your town and you want a signed book, we’ll make it happen. Reach out to the Vermont Book Shop (in Middlebury, Vermont), Phoenix Books (in Burlington, Vermont), Lemuria Books (in Jackson, Mississippi), or the Barnes & Noble website. Also? Your local bookstore might have signed copies: I signed many thousands of pages to be bound into copies last fall.

Thank you, my friends. May you always have a book you love by your bedside.

All the best,

Chris



Praise for The Jackal's Mistress

"Inspired by true events�.A moving tale about the difficult choices people must make in dangerous circumstances." -- The Washington Post

"It’s hard not to get pulled in from the first sentence�.The Jackal’s Mistress gallops along, sweeping us up in its heart-pounding final pages." -- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Masterful." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred

A "page-turner." -- Library Journal, starred

"Elegant, poignant, and richly atmospheric. . .Bohjalian once again demonstrates his profound respect for women, endowing his female protagonists with depth and nuance.� -- Booklist, starred

"Readers will be glued to the page." -- Publishers Weekly

One of the Washington Post's 10 Noteworthy Books for March

An Indie Next Selection for March

An Amazon Editors' Pick for March

A Barnes & Noble and BookBub "Most Anticipated Book" for March

The Jackal's Mistress
Rock and Roll Book Tour: Remaining Events


THURSDAY, MARCH 13
Decatur, Georgia
Georgia Center for the Book
Decatur Library Auditorium -- in conversation with Karin Slaughter ("This is Why We Lied"); books by The Book Bird in Avondale Estates
215 Sycamore Street
7:00 p.m.

FRIDAY, MARCH 14
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Pine Lakes Country Club -- hosted by Litchfield Books
5603 Granddaddy Drive
Noon


SATURDAY, MARCH 15
Greenville, South Carolina
M. Judson Booksellers
"Books Over Drinks"
130 S. Main Street
7:30 p.m.


SUNDAY, MARCH 16
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore County Public Library, Perry Hall Branch
9685 Honeygo Blvd.; books by the Ivy Bookshop
2:00 p.m.


TUESDAY, MARCH 18
New York, New York
Barnes and Noble -- in conversation with Miwa Messer (host of the wonderful Barnes and Noble Podcast, "Poured Over")
2289 Broadway
7:00 p.m.

SATURDAY, MARCH 22
Charlottesville, Virginia
The Virginia Festival of the Book
In conversation with Kimberly Brock ("This Fabled Earth")
10:00 a.m.
.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3
Montclair, New Jersey
First Congregational Church of Montclair -- in conversation with Christina Baker Kline ("The Exiles"); books by Watchung Booksellers
7:00 p.m.


SATURDAY, APRIL 5
Tallahassee, Florida
Word of the South Festival -- in conversation with Mark Mustian ("Boy with Wings")
The AC Hotel
801 South Gadsden Street
Time TBD.

MONDAY, APRIL 28
Virtual Facebook Event
Dolen's Bookclub
8:00 p.m. eastern time.
Yes, the brilliant novelist, Dolen Perkins-Valdez -- author of the forthcoming Happy Land -- has selected The Jackal's Mistress for her April pick. Join her bookclub on Facebook and tune in to enjoy Chris and Dolen in conversation!

FRIDAY, MAY 2
Garden City, New York
The Garden City Hotel -- in conversation with Alyson Richman ("The Timekeepers")
A lunch event hosted by Friends of the Port Washington Library
Tickets on sale soon.

THURSDAY, MAY 8
Wilmington, Massachusetts
7:30 p.m.
Stay tuned for details.

posted by Chris Bohjalian on March, 13 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25559188-our-totemic-connection-to-books Tue, 04 Mar 2025 07:42:00 -0800 /author_blog_posts/25559188-our-totemic-connection-to-books
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,

Last month when I was dusting books in my library � I have no idea what got into me � I came across a lovely note from Donna Tartt in my first edition of The Secret History. I also found my mother’s beautiful cursive in a bookplate of her first edition of Fletcher Knebel’s Night of Camp David. And there was my older brother’s sweet note to me in the first volume of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time (he gave me all four volumes).

I mention this because this coming Saturday I begin my 35th book tour: a chance to meet new readers and see, once again, readers I’ve known for years. We don’t all fall in love with the same books, but often we share this: a totemic connection to books made of paper � to the book as an artifact.

In the library in my house, I can swivel in my desk chair and glance at the dust jackets of perhaps hundreds of the novels there and tell you where I was when I first cracked the book’s spine. Ian McEwan’s Atonement, for instance, is the grass beneath a maple tree outside a dance studio in Middlebury, Vermont, the leaves unfurling in the April sun, my daughter inside learning a new tap routine. Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep is the snack bar at Smith College, where my wife went to school when we were merely boyfriend and girlfriend, and the smell of the onions the cooks there placed on the hamburgers. And Franz Werfel’s magisterial epic, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, is the wood-paneled living room of my childhood home in Stamford, Connecticut, and my dawning awareness that there was more to my Armenian grandparents� lives as children and young adults than they were ever likely to share. I knew they were survivors of the Armenian Genocide, but most of what they experienced, they took to their graves.

The truth is, a book’s dust jacket can instantly catapult most of us back in time. We don’t merely recall the novel’s plot or a snippet of dialogue: we remember where we were, who we were, and, just maybe, the state of our lives when we first met Atticus or Daisy or (most recently) James. A book is like music in that regard: it can resurrect memories for us. Even the smell, of course, can be a Proustian madeleine. The late Roger Shattuck, a wise and funny literary scholar who one Saturday years ago showed me how to properly scythe, told me how the books he’d had with him when he’d been a pilot in the Pacific Theater in the Second World War still smelled of the jungle, and the aroma instantly conjured memories from him of 1944 and 1945.

The Jackal’s Mistress is my 25th book. I hope some of its 24 predecessors have offered you a similar remembrances of things past. The list of cities I am visiting on the book tour is below. If I’m not coming to your town and you want a signed or personalized book, we’ll make it happen. Reach out to the Vermont Book Shop (in Middlebury, Vermont), Phoenix Books (in Burlington, Vermont), or Lemuria Books (in Jackson, Mississippi). Also? Your local bookstore might have signed copies: I signed many thousands of pages to be bound into copies last fall.

Thank you, my friends. May you always have a book you love by your bedside.

All the best,

Chris



Praise for The Jackal's Mistress

"Masterful." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred

A "page-turner." -- Library Journal, starred

"Elegant, poignant, and richly atmospheric. . .Bohjalian once again demonstrates his profound respect for women, endowing his female protagonists with depth and nuance.� -- Booklist, starred

"Readers will be glued to the page." -- Publishers Weekly

One of the Washington Post's 10 Noteworthy Books for March

An Indie Next Selection for March

An Amazon Editors' Pick for March

A Barnes & Noble and BookBub "Most Anticipated Book" for March

The Jackal's Mistress
Rock and Roll Book Tour

SATURDAY, MARCH 8
Burlington, Vermont
Phoenix Books -- in conversation with historian Garrett Graff ("When the Sea Came Alive")
89 Church Street
7:00 p.m.

SUNDAY, MARCH 9
Middlebury, Vermont
The Town Hall Theater -- in conversation with Vermont Public's Mikaela Lefrak
Hosted by the Vermont Book Shop
69 South Pleasant Street
4:00 p.m.

MONDAY, MARCH 10
Concord, New Hampshire
Gibson's Bookstore -- in conversation with the revered broadcast journalist, Laura Knoy, who for 25 years hosted New Hampshire Public Radio's "The Exchange"
45 South Main Street
6:30 pm

TUESDAY, MARCH 11
The Jackal's Mistress officially goes on sale everywhere!

TUESDAY, MARCH 11
Watertown, Massachusetts
The Armenian Museum of America -- in conversation with historian Khatchig Mouradian ("The Resistance Network"); books by An Unlikely Story
65 Main Street
7:00 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12
Westminster, Maryland
The Carroll Arts Center -- in conversation with novelist Angie Kim ("Happiness Falls"); books by A Likely Story and Park Books
91 West Main Street
7:00 p.m.

THURSDAY, MARCH 13
Decatur, Georgia
Georgia Center for the Book
Decatur Library Auditorium -- in conversation with Karin Slaughter ("This is Why We Lied"); books by The Book Bird in Avondale Estates
215 Sycamore Street
7:00 p.m.

FRIDAY, MARCH 14
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Pine Lakes Country Club -- hosted by Litchfield Books
5603 Granddaddy Drive
Noon

SATURDAY, MARCH 15
Greenville, South Carolina
M. Judson Booksellers
"Books Over Drinks"
130 S. Main Street
7:30 p.m.

SUNDAY, MARCH 16
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore County Public Library, Perry Hall Branch
9685 Honeygo Blvd.; books by the Ivy Bookshop
2:00 p.m.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18
New York, New York
Barnes and Noble -- in conversation with Miwa Messer (host of the wonderful Barnes and Noble Podcast, "Poured Over")
2289 Broadway
7:00 p.m.

SATURDAY, MARCH 22
Charlottesville, Virginia
The Virginia Festival of the Book
In conversation with Kimberly Brock ("This Fabled Earth")
10:00 a.m.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3
Montclair, New Jersey
First Congregational Church of Montclair -- in conversation with Christina Baker Kline ("The Exiles"); books by Watchung Booksellers
7:00 p.m.

SATURDAY, APRIL 5
Tallahassee, Florida
Word of the South Festival -- in conversation with Mark Mustian ("Boy with Wings")
The AC Hotel
801 South Gadsden Street

MONDAY, APRIL 28
Virtual Facebook Event
Dolen's Bookclub
8:00 p.m. eastern time.
Yes, the brilliant novelist, Dolen Perkins-Valdez -- author of the forthcoming Happy Land -- has selected The Jackal's Mistress for her April pick. Join her bookclub on Facebook and tune in to enjoy Chris and Dolen in conversation!

FRIDAY, MAY 2
Garden City, New York
The Garden City Hotel -- in conversation with Alyson Richman ("The Timekeepers")
A lunch event hosted by Friends of the Port Washington Library

THURSDAY, MAY 8
Wilmington, Massachusetts
7:30 p.m.

posted by Chris Bohjalian on March, 04 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25520042-it-takes-more-than-a-snow-comet-of-vomit-to-stall-a-book-tour Tue, 18 Feb 2025 09:02:59 -0800 /author_blog_posts/25520042-it-takes-more-than-a-snow-comet-of-vomit-to-stall-a-book-tour
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,

Three weeks from today, my 25th book, The Jackal's Mistress, goes on sale and I will be on my 35th book tour. (All of the events are in the second half of this Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ blog post.)

Why are there more book tours than books?

Because, for years, I toured for both the hardcover and paperback editions of books.

I find 25 books less impressive than 35 book tours. THAT is iron-person-triathlon impressive.

To wit? I was on tour on 9/11 (and, yes, on a tarmac in Denver); on the morning we invaded Iraq the second time; and the day of the Boston Marathon bombing. I had an event on the afternoon of January 6, 2021, while the Capitol was being stormed. And I had a book tour canceled on March 13, 2020, because (wait for it) a worldwide pandemic was coming on fast and furious.

But I love book tours.

And I love them because of all of you: readers, booksellers, and librarians.

Here is a true story from one moment on one book tour.

Once upon a time, I vomited in front of a lovely book club from Illinois. Yup, when I’m on a book tour, I hold nothing back.

It was a Friday afternoon and I was on my third plane of the day, this one a Dash 8 turboprop from Denver to Steamboat Springs. The next day I was joining three other novelists for the Bud Werner Memorial Library’s annual Literary Sojourn, an all-day celebration of what words and reading and books can mean to the soul. It’s a terrific event and lots of book clubs make a pilgrimage there—including, that year, one from Illinois that was on the turboprop with me.

Now, I don’t mind small planes. But that day I had been traveling since about six in the morning in Vermont, there was the usual Rocky Mountain clear air turbulence, and I was on my third flight of the day. The book group on the airplane recognized me instantly as one of the authors they were coming to hear, despite the fact that soon after takeoff my skin was airsickness green. And so we chatted and I sipped a Diet Coke and set the air vent above me to “wind tunnel.� Surreptitiously I kept reaching into my seat pocket, trying to find an airsickness bag amidst the magazines and Sky Mall catalogues. Somehow I had two of each, but no airsickness bag.

The group and I talked about books as we flew to Steamboat Springs, and the unforgettable brilliance of the first sentence of Sena Jeter Naslund’s wonderful novel, Ahab’s Wife: “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.� At some point, I reached into the pocket of the seat beside me for an airsickness bag. There wasn’t one there, either.

Looking back, I really thought I was going to make it to Steamboat Springs with my dignity intact. I fly a lot and it’s rare for me to feel like I’m going to lose my lunch. I was sure I could remain in this book group’s eyes an author they found charming and open, the sort who didn’t vomit on airplanes. This is called hubris—and, in hindsight, naïvete.

It was on our initial descent that we hit the bump that finally did me in. Now, I did feel it coming. And so without an airsickness bag handy, I showed an instinctive skill with origami I hadn’t known existed somewhere deep inside me: I ripped a few pages from one of the Sky Mall catalogs in my seat pocket, twirled them into a snow cone, and folded the bottom into a seal.

Yup, somewhere around 8000 feet in the air, I created a snow cone of vomit.

Now, here is why I am sharing this story with you. A reader on the plane actually offered to hold my handmade Sky Mall biohazard so I could wipe my mouth and rinse with the last of my Diet Coke. That’s support. That’s kindness. That’s the sort of heroism that is way above any reader’s pay grade.

But the people you meet on a book tour are like that.

So. . .

. . .book tours are a way of thanking my readers in person for their faith in my work. Book tours reassure us that reading is both a solitary and a communal pleasure. And, yes, book tours remind us that novels make us more empathetic as people -- SO empathetic that one reader once offered to hold my snow cone of vomit for me on a Dash 8.

Below are almost all of the places where we can meet on THE JACKAL'S MISTRESS rock and roll book tour this spring. (Shhhhhhh -- there is one more in-person event coming and one more virtual event on the calendar, but they won't be announced until early March.)

So, without further ado, here it is, The Jackal's Mistress Rock and Roll Book Tour.

SATURDAY, MARCH 8
Burlington, Vermont
Phoenix Books -- in conversation with historian Garrett Graff ("When the Sea Came Alive")
89 Church Street
7:00 p.m.

SUNDAY, MARCH 9
Middlebury, Vermont
The Town Hall Theater -- in conversation with Vermont Public's Mikaela Lefrak
Hosted by the Vermont Book Shop
69 South Pleasant Street
4:00 p.m.

MONDAY, MARCH 10
Concord, New Hampshire
Gibson's Bookstore -- in conversation with the revered broadcast journalist, Laura Knoy, who for 25 years hosted New Hampshire Public Radio's "The Exchange"
45 South Main Street
6:30 pm

TUESDAY, MARCH 11
The Jackal's Mistress officially goes on sale everywhere! (Special thanks today to Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi, an absolute gem of a bookstore, where the novel is their March First Editions Book Club Pick. Want to make sure your copy is a SIGNED first edition -- and get many other first editions of the novels you'll treasure in your personal library? Learn more about Lemuria's First Edition Club.)

TUESDAY, MARCH 11
Watertown, Massachusetts
The Armenian Museum of America -- in conversation with historian Khatchig Mouradian ("The Resistance Network"); books by An Unlikely Story
65 Main Street
7:00 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12
Westminster, Maryland
The Carroll Arts Center -- in conversation with novelist Angie Kim ("Happiness Falls"); books by A Likely Story and Park Books
91 West Main Street
7:00 p.m.


THURSDAY, MARCH 13
Decatur, Georgia
Georgia Center for the Book
Decatur Library Auditorium -- in conversation with Karin Slaughter ("This is Why We Lied"); books by A Capella Books
215 Sycamore Street
7:00 p.m.

FRIDAY, MARCH 14
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Pine Lakes Country Club -- hosted by Litchfield Books
5603 Granddaddy Drive
Noon

SATURDAY, MARCH 15
Greenville, South Carolina
M. Judson Booksellers
"Books Over Drinks"
130 S. Main Street
7:30 p.m.

SUNDAY, MARCH 16
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore County Public Library, Perry Hall Branch
9685 Honeygo Blvd.; books by the Ivy Bookshop
2:00 p.m.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18
New York, New York
Barnes and Noble -- in conversation with Miwa Messer (host of the wonderful Barnes and Noble Podcast, "Poured Over")
2289 Broadway
7:00 p.m.

SATURDAY, MARCH 22
Charlottesville, Virginia
The Virginia Festival of the Book
In conversation with Kimberly Brock ("This Fabled Earth")
10:00 a.m.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3
Montclair, New Jersey
First Congregational Church of Montclair -- in conversation with Christina Baker Kline ("The Exiles"); books by Watchung Booksellers
7:00 p.m.

SATURDAY, APRIL 5
Tallahassee, Florida
Word of the South Festival
The AC Hotel
801 South Gadsden Street
Time TBD.

MONDAY, APRIL 28
Virtual Facebook Event
Dolen's Bookclub
8:00 p.m. eastern time.
Yes, the brilliant novelist, Dolen Perkins-Valdez -- author of the forthcoming Happy Land -- has selected The Jackal's Mistress for her April pick. Join her bookclub on Facebook and tune in to enjoy Chris and Dolen in conversation!

FRIDAY, MAY 2
Garden City, New York
The Garden City Hotel -- in conversation with Alyson Richman ("The Timekeepers")
A lunch event hosted by Friends of the Port Washington Library

THURSDAY, MAY 8
Wilmington, Massachusetts
7:30 p.m.
Stay tuned for details.


The swag for this year's tour? Rock and roll canvas tote bags with the dust jacket on one side, and a list of all the "tour" cities on the other.

Hoping I see you all on the road.

In the meantime? Happy reading!

All the best,

Chris

@ChrisBohjalian on all the socials

posted by Chris Bohjalian on February, 18 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25432442-for-the-love-of-writing-the-journey-from-process-to-product Fri, 17 Jan 2025 12:31:00 -0800 /author_blog_posts/25432442-for-the-love-of-writing-the-journey-from-process-to-product
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,

This blog essay is an exploration of (literally) how I write.

First, however, a little news.

1) Who's narrating the audiobook of The Jackal's Mistress, my Civil War love story that arrives March 11? Marni Penning, the brilliant narrator who helped bring IRON FLAME and THE FOURTH WING to life. I am over-the-moon.

2) Who's joining me on The Jackal's Mistress "Rock and Roll" Book Tour this spring? Among others, Christina Baker Kline, Angie Kim, Garrett Graff, Alyson Richman, and others. There will be events in 13 states. Full details coming soon.

3) I am so grateful to Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Journal for their faith in the novel:

“A masterful yarn...A compelling story about two people who long for their spouses in a time of war.�
—Kirkus, Starred Review

“[A] page-turner from bestselling Bohjalian� The vividly drawn characters and historical details make for a compelling read.� —Library Journal, Starred Review

"Bohjalian skillfully rachets up the tension....Readers will be glued to the page.� —Publishers Weekly

And I am thrilled that here on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ it has 93 reviews and a 4.55 star rating!

The Jackal's Mistress is available for preorder wherever you buy your books.

And now, my friends, the essay.

+++++

The Journey from Process to Product


John Gardner was thrown from his motorcycle and died the year before his book, The Art of Fiction, was published in 1983. Consequently, he never saw the influence that his short, smart guide to good writing would have on so many aspiring writers � including me.

In the last thirty years, I’ve thought often of a point he makes in the preface: “Though the ability to write well is partly a gift � like the ability to play basketball well, or to outguess the stock market � writing ability is mainly a product of good teaching supported by a deep-down love of writing.� I never took a creative writing class, so his book was my Bread Loaf, that almost mythic writing conference in Vermont’s Green Mountains where (among other places) Gardner taught.

Just for the record, I did try once to take a creative writing course. I was a sophomore in college and the writer in residence read a sample of my work to see whether I was worth her time. She summoned me to her office and said, “I have three words advice for you.� I could tell this wasn’t going to be good. “Be a banker.�

My sense is that by a “deep-down love of writing,� Gardner meant an appreciation for the way that we string words together: the finished product. But I like to believe he might also have been considering the process of putting words down on paper. Writing, in this case, would be both a noun and a verb.

The reality is that not all writers enjoy the process of sitting down and writing. Dorothy Parker once confessed with her usual cleverness, “I hate writing, I love having written.�

But most of us do enjoy it. We have a deep-down love for the process. Even Hemingway, whose letters and interviews are rich with melodrama about the pain and hard work of being a writer, on occasion would confess to Max Perkins (and others) how much he loved it.

Certainly I do. I write every day. I’m at my desk with an eight-point-four-ounce can of Sugar Free Red Bull (the first of two I will finish by lunch) as soon as I have walked my beloved Jesse, my canine best buddy. The goal each day is to produce a thousand words. Yes, like Hemingway, I count them � or to be precise, Microsoft Word for Apple counts them. But even when I was a young man writing with blue, fine-point Bic pens on yellow legal pads before going to work at an ad agency, I counted the words. I don’t always reach a thousand, but the point is to get something down on paper I can work with. As novelist Jodi Picoult has observed � a remark that captures both her wisdom and humor � “You can edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.�

And the reality is that a lot of those words will wind up on the cutting room floor. The first draft of my novel Before You Know Kindness was 185,000 words. The final draft was 135,000. In between, I did not merely cut 50,000 words; I probably cut 85,000 and wrote 35,000 that were new.

I depend upon two techniques that Hemingway championed. First, I always begin by rewriting the last 200 or 300 words I wrote the day before. This reacquaints me with the material and gives me momentum: Think of a plane gaining velocity and then rising as it hurtles down a runway. I am also, of course, editing the text. Improving it. Second, I always knock off around lunchtime. This way I always have a little gas in the tank for the next morning.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I spend my life working only half-days. The afternoons are filled with research: interviews with people who know more about a subject than I do (heart surgery, human trafficking, why planes crash). But the afternoons are often filled with biking, too, at least for the seven months a year when it’s pleasurable to ride here in Vermont. I am an avid bicyclist, and the riding helps my writing. Someone � I don’t recall who � once observed that the most important tool a writer can have is a walk. For me, it’s a ride. When I am alone on my bike somewhere between the Lake Champlain Bridge and the top of the Middlebury Gap, I am invariably thinking about whatever book I am writing.


There are a couple of reasons why I have found my bicycle such an important tool. One is the shower principle � a term I learned from the fictional Jack Donaghy on �30 Rock.� It has less to do with sweat than it does with clearing one’s mind. “The shower principle is a term scientists use to describe moments of inspiration that occur when the brain is distracted from the problem at hand � for example, when you’re showering,� Donaghy explains. I have no idea if this is a real term that any scientist outside of TV Land has ever used, but we all know there’s a certain truth to it. On my bike I have figured out how books will end and determined whether characters will live or die. My novels, The Double Bind and The Red Lotus were born on a bike.

And over the last few years, I have grown more likely to stop and pull my iPhone from my cycling jersey, and write entire scenes on the device. The moment in Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands when narrator Emily Shepard retreats into a shopping mall bathroom with her cutting kit was written on my iPhone while sitting beside a gazebo in New Haven, Vermont.

Finally, it is worth noting that as much as I love writing (the verb), I probably love writing (the noun) even more. I doubt anyone becomes a serious novelist who doesn’t love reading: savoring paragraphs that precisely capture longing or dread or desire. Being riveted by a plot twist that is utterly surprising but, you realize, perfect, because it was inevitable.

I don’t play basketball well and heaven knows I have never guessed right on the stock market. But I can’t imagine a gift for either would have made me any happier in this life than writing.

All the best,


Chris B.

posted by Chris Bohjalian on January, 17 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25385622-this-year-take-a-deep-breath-and-focus-on-others Tue, 31 Dec 2024 09:16:00 -0800 /author_blog_posts/25385622-this-year-take-a-deep-breath-and-focus-on-others
The parties were actually pretty standard fare for that era and that geography: the hard-drinking, hard-working, hard-playing suburbs of New York City in the 1970s. Moreover, it didn’t have to be New Year’s Eve for the parties to cross the line between boisterous and bacchanalian. They had doozies in the summer, too.

My parents loved their neighbors and they loved to entertain, but I always suspected there was something a little desperate in their friends� behavior at those parties, especially the ones on Dec. 31. I had the sense that for many of the grownups, all that alcohol and all those cigarettes and all that forced bonhomie was a camouflage for wistfulness and regret.

The reality is that New Year’s Eve has the potential to be spectacularly depressing. Often we look back on the last year with a combination of disappointment and self-loathing. We make resolutions for the purpose of trying to will the coming year to be better � to see if we can somehow stop making the same mistakes year after year.

Consequently, I rarely make resolutions, and it’s not simply because I know I’m a lost cause. One year I resolved to stop biting my nails, but by Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I was back on the keratin. Likewise, I tend to steer clear of New Year’s Eve parties because there are too many middle-aged ghosts from my childhood at the punch bowls.

If we are lucky, we can find a moment on the 31st to take a deep breath and sit very still. We can focus on all that is right with the world and all that is wrong � on all the ways we have striven for personal decency in our lives and, alas, on all the ways we have failed. We can recall the people we have loved who we have lost, and ponder the friends and family who deserve more attention than we give them.

And maybe those are the only resolutions that matter: the ones that focus on others.

_______________________________________________

Chris Bohjalian's 25th novel, THE JACKAL'S MISTRESS, arrives March 11. You can learn all about it here on Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ or at . This essay appeared originally in the New York Times.

posted by Chris Bohjalian on December, 31 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25368855-the-year-christmas-eve-meant-the-moon Tue, 24 Dec 2024 06:22:49 -0800 /author_blog_posts/25368855-the-year-christmas-eve-meant-the-moon
Yes, it was Christmas Eve.

In the United States, it was nighttime.

It was 1968.

Cue the space music.

My family and I were living in a Connecticut suburb of New York City, and we were spending that Christmas Eve with family friends who lived nearby, Bob and Mary George. I was a very little boy whose biggest concern as the evening dragged on was that we were going to leave so late at night � so deep into the early morning � that we would get home precisely when Santa Claus coasted to a stop on either our roof or our long, straight, invariably slick driveway. Imagine a patch of airport runway made of black ice.
Somehow, of course, Santa and his reindeer always landed safely. Sure, my mother and father would annually take off a side mirror as they careened to a stop in the red Falcon or the white Impala, or skid at least once each into the garage door. But Santa Claus? As far as I knew, he always nailed the landing. Think an Olympic gymnast’s ten-point dismount.

At the same time, we couldn’t possibly risk arriving home while Santa was at our house: I understood the rules. You leave out the cookies and milk for the big guy, but you don’t try and catch him. You leave out the carrots for the giant sleigh’s engine room, but you don’t stay up and expect Rudolph to eat from your hand. There are. . .consequences. By remaining at Bob and Mary George’s, my family was not merely playing with fire: we were risking the very cosmological foundations of Christmas � because wasn’t Christmas all about Santa Claus?

The Georges meant a great deal to my parents and (yes) to me, which was why we often spent Christmas Eve with them. But their children were a lot older than I was. Their daughter was actually old enough to have been my older brother’s babysitter and was now a grownup herself: She was married to a soldier who was spending that Christmas across the globe in Vietnam.

That’s how different the world was in 1968: As a nation, we were fighting in Southeast Asia and as a species we had yet to walk on the moon. Most of you reading this essay were yet to be born.

But, oh, that night long ago my concern wasn’t for the safety of my brother’s babysitter’s husband in a rice patty on the other side of the globe or for the three astronauts in a spacecraft roughly a quarter of a million miles away. I was focused only on the five adults � my parents, their friends, and their friend’s daughter � drinking scotch in the living room by the fireplace.

I was watching the clock and I was fretting about the time. I was worried about whether our car would be able to navigate the Georges� driveway, which was the exact opposite of our own: Their house was nestled like the base lodge for a ski resort at the bottom of a steep, wooded hill. The driveway was a black diamond trail with a garage at the end. It wasn’t snowing that night, but it had the day before and when we had arrived at the Georges� on Christmas Eve, our car had slid down that driveway as if we were riding a barely controlled toboggan.

Now, hours later, I was reaching that moment when the little boy mind moves from mild to meltdown.

The reality is that like most children, I had never been especially patient as Christmas neared. I always had advent calendars � and, invariably, I had opened all twenty-five doors by the third of December. (I was always miffed by what I found behind them: A drawing of an apple? A painting of an elf puppet? Seriously? Behind those doors I hoped to find terrifying robots and plastic models of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. That’s what I wanted from an Advent Calendar.)

My family had two Christmas trees those years in Connecticut, one that my father, my older brother, and I were allowed to trim, and one that my mother alone would decorate. Why? Hers were themed � white Christmas, Victorian Christmas, green and gold Christmas, and (one year), napkin rings, nothing but napkin rings � and she spent serious amounts of time on them. The males� tree? I recall one year my father, my brother, and I trimmed the whole thing during a football game halftime.

I know I was not unique: what child actually wants to wait for Christmas?

So, Christmas Eve 1968.

The Georges�.

The adults.

The scotch.

I was at my wit’s end when abruptly Mr. George rose from his living room chair and went to the radio. In my memory, the radio is the size of a cement block and covered in gold-colored fabric. The dial was the diameter of the palm of my hand, and he spun it until he found the station he was looking for. He insisted I sit down on the ottoman before the fireplace and listen.

I did and that instant would become for me a moment of revelation that I can liken to Charlie Brown watching Linus stand center stage in the school auditorium and explain the meaning of Christmas by reciting the second chapter of Luke. Mr. George wanted us all to hear a transmission from outer space � from astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders. We were listening to men almost (but not quite) on the moon.

Anders began by sharing how they were flying over one of the future landing sites, the poetically christened Sea of Tranquility, watching the “long shadows of the lunar sunrise� on the ground. Then, after a pause, he said that the crew had a message for the people back on earth:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,� Anders said. For the next few minutes, the astronauts read from the first chapter of Genesis. There was light. Firmament. Water. Land.

There was Earth.

The transmission was scratchy and occasionally hard to understand, but that only added to what a marvel it was. There were atheists then who questioned the decision, but has the poetry of Genesis ever been more rich than when read by three men in a cramped space capsule, orbiting the moon for the first time in human history? This was the mission when Anders took that now classic photograph, “Earthrise,� a color image of our spinning blue marble from the lunar orbit. The idea of reading from Genesis? Poignant and powerful, the intersection of aspiration and awe. Of hope. This was one of those rare instances when the world together could exhale in wonder at the miracle that is mankind at its best. My father sat perfectly and uncharacteristically still. My mother’s eyes, I saw, were damp.

Even though I was at an age when I still waited desperately for Santa Claus, I understood that 1968 had been a terrible year. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Of Robert Kennedy. The cities in flames.

And, of course, Vietnam � and Bob and Mary George’s son-in-law, a soldier in harm’s way on the other side of the globe.

When the transmission was finished, no one moved for a long moment. Then my mother motioned me over: she wanted me � she needed me � to sit in her lap.

Make no mistake, I was probably as greedy a child after that reading from space as I was before it. I would love here to offer alliteration and call it a sermon from space, but that would in some way diminish its magic, and I believe it would misrepresent the three astronauts� intent. It wasn’t a sermon; it was � by its simple existence � a testimony to our potential as human beings, and what a gift it is to breathe. To stretch. To not merely gape at the moon, but ascend to it.

And yet if I remained as acquisitive a little boy on December 26th as I had been on December 23rd, I was reminded of something I had managed to miss in Sunday School, obvious as it was: the foundation of the Christmas story, whether one views it as fable or history, begins in a crèche � not a sleigh.

Our car would make its way up that black diamond of a driveway and then coast to a stop without incident in our own. We would be home before Santa.

The historical record shows that Borman concluded the reading by telling his listeners, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you � all of you on the good Earth.�

Indeed. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. May our world somehow find peace in 2025.

posted by Chris Bohjalian on December, 24 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25277198-on-thanksgiving-mom-broke-the-mold----and-some-news Wed, 20 Nov 2024 06:21:50 -0800 /author_blog_posts/25277198-on-thanksgiving-mom-broke-the-mold----and-some-news
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,

As many of you know, I want these blog post to transcend spam, so I try to include a relevant essay. This month, it's a Thanksgiving remembrance.

But first, two bits of news:

1) My March novel, THE JACKAL'S MISTRESS, got its first two review this month: a starred review from Library Journal and a starred review from Kirkus and so I am thrilled. Also, 50 advance readers on NetGalley have given it an average (wait for it) 5-star review rating. I am, well, as gobsmacked as I am grateful.

If you want to preorder the novel, and I would be more appreciative than you know if you did, please visit or click wherever you buy your books.

2) If you want to give someone on your list a signed or personalized copy of one of my novels this holiday season, it's very easy. Call or visit the websites for the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, VT (802 388-2061) or Phoenix Books in Burlington, VT (802 448-3350). I visit them all the time and sign -- and they wrap and ship!

And, now, the essay:

On Thanksgiving, Mom Broke the Mold

The time of year when we all take a day off and reflect upon what we are thankful for (not being born a turkey is always a good place to start) is almost here. I am thankful for many things, not the least of which is that there will be no broccoli mold on the Thanksgiving table at my house this coming holiday.

A broccoli mold was always my mother’s culinary contribution to the festivities. Some of you might wonder why anyone would bring a dish to the Thanksgiving table that looked like a Bundt cake made of puke. (I am not exaggerating.) The very term “broccoli mold� is my own personal culinary “Silence of the Lambs,� two words that instantly catapult me back to the Thanksgivings of my childhood and the great horror that my mother � with only the best intentions � would inflict on our large extended family.

Also, just for the record, I have not made up this dish. Google the words “broccoli� and “mold,� and thousands of recipes appear. Fortunately, none of them are my mother’s. Hers was pretty basic: frozen broccoli, frozen creamed onions, and Jell-O. (If frozen Jell-O existed, my mother would have used that too. In her kitchen, foods came either frozen or canned.) Swirl it together in a food processor, dump it all into a Bundt cake pan, chill and serve.

Now, my mother was gifted in myriad ways, but she would have been the first to admit that no one was going to mistake her for a chef. She was smart and funny and generous. She was also completely incapable of making toast. That’s not hyperbole: Among those Proustian sounds I equate with my boyhood is the scraping of a stainless-steel knife on a piece of white bread that looks like someone just tried to toast it with a blowtorch.

Usually our family held Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle’s massive Victorian not far from Manhattan. My aunt would handle the lion’s share of the Thanksgiving preparation and this was no small task since there were between 19 and 21 of us in attendance most years. But my mother would insist on bringing the broccoli mold, despite my aunt’s reassurance that she needn’t bother. In hindsight, it’s pretty clear that my aunt wasn’t being polite, and I have always imagined the phone calls between my mom and my aunt went something like this:

MOM: I’ll bring the broccoli mold.
AUNT: You don’t have to.
MOM: It’s no problem!
AUNT: It is. It’s a huge problem. Even the dog won’t eat your broccoli mold, and he eats poop.

As I said, this is an imaginary conversation. In the real one, after my mother said, “It’s no problem,� my incredibly sweet aunt would have capitulated and said, “OK, thank you,� while thinking to herself, “Maybe she’ll drop it on the front walkway while carting it into the house.�

Absolutely none of us wanted to eat a single bite, but neither did we want to hurt my mother’s feelings. She took such pride in her contribution.

Besides, it was Thanksgiving: A holiday when we are all supposed to remember how fortunate we are that we have a bounty before us. Given the plight of the world then (and now), the idea that we should complain because a vegetable smelled like a bus station bathroom seemed a tad ungrateful. And so, as a family, we would give thanks for all the food on the table, even the broccoli mold, and we would scoop some onto our plates. Then we would smile and smack our lips � and see how much we could hide under Mini Cooper-sized dollops of mashed potatoes.

One final thought: This holiday there will be more Thanksgiving tables looking Spartan than past years. If you can, please be sure to give generously to your local food shelf.

All the best,

Chris

posted by Chris Bohjalian on November, 20 ]]> /author_blog_posts/25114279-why-the-green-mountains-turn-red Sun, 22 Sep 2024 06:12:44 -0700 /author_blog_posts/25114279-why-the-green-mountains-turn-red
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,

I want these newsletters to transcend spam, so I try to include a relevant essay. (Some of you told me you enjoyed my essays in this newsletter over the summer.) This month, it's about fall foliage -- and why the Green Mountains turn red. It appeared first in the Boston Globe Magazine.

But first, two bits of news:

1) I am appearing in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts on Tuesday, October 1. Yes, that IS the night of the Vice Presidential debate. I'm on at 7 pm, they're on at 9 pm. I'll be sure to get you out the doors early. It's my last event in the U.S. this year, BUT there will be a book tour in March for The Jackal's Mistress. Stay tuned:



2) You can now preorder The Jackal's Mistress wherever you buy your books. (It arrives March 11.) Trust me, preorders are SO important to a book's success. So, please consider preordering by clicking below and learning more:



And, now, the essay:

WHY THE GREEN MOUNTAINS TURN RED

I am standing in the remains of a turret in Scotland's Edzell Castle, staring down into the restored Renaissance garden that a British nobleman designed four hundred years ago. This castle is a gem: it has the power of history (Mary, Queen of Scots, visited here), the aura that permeates any relic the size of a football field, and a vast garden with roses, statuary, and hedgerows trimmed to spell out the inspirational motto of the Clan Lindsay, when seen from above.

When the British couple beside me hear that I hail from Vermont, however, the subject turns instantly to leaves. Specifically, it turns to Vermont leaves. An elderly French couple quickly chime in, wanting to share their memories of a September visit to the Green Mountains a decade earlier and how they had never seen anything like the Vermont foliage. I try to steer the conversation back to the castle in which we are standing, but in the opinion of these four Europeans, the Vermont autumn is infinitely more interesting than a castle built centuries ago.

The Vermont foliage is like that: for two or three weeks in late September and early October, the trees explode in an absolutely phantasmagoric display of color. The maples -- a third of the trees in the state -- turn shades of crimson and cherry and red, the birches become an almost neon yellow, and the ash becomes a purple that is as flamboyant as a child's most vibrant Magic Marker. The color moves inexorably from north to south, from the higher to the lower elevations, traveling through the trees like a tsunami.

And along with those colors come the leaf peepers. Over four million people visit Vermont in the autumn, more than six times the state's population -- spending over a billion dollars. Several upscale bed-and-breakfast owners tell me they are likely to do a sixth of their business during that three week period when the leaves may be at their best.

Moreover, while the tourists may be visiting in large measure because of the foliage, it's not merely the colors in the trees that have drawn them: it's the notion that the whole Vermont landscape is a throwback, an unspoiled glimpse of agrarian America. The dairy farm may be beleaguered in Vermont, but plenty still remain, and it is easy to find a hillside speckled with Holsteins or discover a red barn beside an elegant country skyscraper of a silo. Though the woods don't feel exactly primeval, there are pockets in the state where the trees still grow thick and the daylight can disappear.

Yet there is an irony to the foliage display the Vermont woods offers its guests every year, as well as to the notion that the state's remarkably beautiful landscape is the product of centuries of careful husbandry of the countryside. First, Vermonters almost completely deforested the state not once but twice in the last two-hundred years; second, if we hadn't leveled the forests, it is unlikely that our hillsides now would be exploding with myriad shades of red and yellow and orange.

* * *

I grew up loathing leaves. I was raised in the sort of mannered New England suburb in which lawns were supposed to be manicured every day of the year when they weren't buried in snow, and so I spent a great many September and October weekends as a child trying to keep up with the waves of leaves that would fall to their death between our house and the cul-de-sac on which we lived. (Autumn leaves to an elementary school student must be something like the mail in December to a postal worker: the leaves just keep falling and falling, and no sooner is the yard clean than a wind in the night blankets the ground with them once again.)

As an adult, however, I have come to love the magic of the Vermont foliage. My family's house is in the woods, though we live on a high ridge with a panoramic vista to the west: the woods around Otter Creek and then Snake Mountain.

I had lived in Vermont for a decade before I learned from my neighbor, the writer John Elder, that my state's autumnal beauty is the inadvertent result of man's natural rapaciousness. The two of us were hiking in the Bristol Cliffs Wilderness Area and talking about the book he was then writing about Robert Frost's appreciation of this section of the state.

Although the hills were steep and the trees were tall, Elder showed me the places where the woods had been logged a century earlier and the oxen had pulled the fallen timber from the forest. There, on the trunk of an old birch, were the remains of an iron cable. Once the cable would have been attached to the yoke of the oxen, so that if the animals slipped, they wouldn't tumble down the hill to their deaths.

His point? The trees around us were barely eighty years old.

Most of Vermont is like that. Despite two rounds of deforestation that laid the state bare, Vermont is now nearly eighty percent forest. Originally, man obliterated much of the forest at the end of the eighteenth century to make potash for gunpowder and soap, and to fuel iron forges. Then, once the land was cleared, it was kept free for the merino sheep that energized the economy through the Civil War. Vermont, however, was never great sheep country.

In reality, it has never been great farming country. The land is hilly, the soil is rocky, and the climate can be ornery. After the Civil War, both the people and the sheep left, often following the new railroads west, and trees returned to the meadows and pastures -- though this time the hardwoods returned in slightly greater numbers.

Still, even those trees didn't last long. The Vermonters who remained carved out a living any way they could, and that often meant logging. Despite the pleas of some of the first conservationists, the hillsides were soon cleared once again. Fortunately for leaf peepers, however, hardwoods like maples grow faster than pine. In torn, muddy ground no longer shielded from the sun by evergreens, the maple seeds took root and the trees quickly flourished. The configuration of the forest changed, with the result that the woods here comprise far more hardwoods and far fewer evergreens than two hundred years ago, and flatlanders have a reason to visit.


* * *

A dead leaf -- even a magnificent specimen from a healthy red maple -- is of little value. Preschoolers may trace its iconic fjords and bays, and stencil upon its topographic veins; idiosyncratic interior designers may shellac clusters of them onto walls and boxes and placemats. The reality, however, is this: once a leaf has fallen from a tree, it is well on its way toward decomposition. Either it will become part of the carpet of humus that covers the forest floor (cuisine at the very bottom of the food chain), or it will be raked (often by an exasperated elementary school student). A leaf, like the rest of us, loses its looks real fast after death.

Yet unlike the rest of us -- combinations of cells, animals or plants, it doesn't matter -- the leaves that make up the Vermont hillsides die dazzlingly beautiful deaths. That is, in essence, what we are watching when we gaze at the annual autumnal fireworks in the trees: we are watching leaves die.

The tree is preparing for winter, and a part of its process is the elimination of all those dainty leaves that are ill-equipped to endure the oncoming cold. The trees do so by slowly producing a layer of cells at the base of the leaf, thereby preventing fluids from reaching it.

The leaves, meanwhile, stop producing chlorophyll -- the chemical necessary for photosynthesis, the process by which a leaf uses sunlight to generate food. Chlorophyll is also the reason a leaf has such a rich green luster. When the chlorophyll is gone, however, the colors in the other chemicals (which have, of course, been there all along) become visible: the scarlet carotenoids of the maple tree, for example.

That beautiful red leaf, in other words, is slowly starving to death.

Often, leaf peepers (and the thousands of businesses that depend on them) worry about the summer weather and what effect it will have on the timing of the color. In reality, weather has little effect: an unusually hot, dry summer might put some stress on the trees and may cause the foliage to peak two or three days earlier than usual; conversely, a cooler summer with plenty of moisture and clouds might prolong it an extra half-week. But these swings are marginal. Leaves change because the days are growing shorter, and there is no variability there.

Sometimes weather can affect the brilliance of the foliage -- a drought can certainly dull the colors, just as sufficient moisture in the soil will enhance them -- but again, rainfall is a relatively small factor. The leaves are going to turn, and it will almost always be a remarkable spectacle to watch -- especially when it's part of a massive ribbon of color on a hill, with either a dairy farm or Norman Rockwell-esque village green in the foreground.

Douglas Mack, for years the chef and co-owner of a renowned bed and breakfast (and award-winning restaurant) in Vermont, believes that it is exactly this combination of natural beauty and archetypal New England imagery that generates such devotion to the state. "There's a decided homeyness that comes with the crisp autumn air, the changing leaves, and a fire in the fireplace. It's like coming home," he says. "Suddenly, your marriage looks wonderful and your kids have turned out OK. That's really what we're serving up here."

And that might be exactly why it touches some people more than the view of a garden from an ancient castle keep. The leaves signal the onset of winter and the desire in us all to cocoon in a place that is warm, cozy, and reminiscent of something called home.

posted by Chris Bohjalian on September, 22 ]]>