Q&A with Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

 

 

 

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is the author of the new novel The Far Side of the Desert. Her other books include the novel Burning Distance. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Far Side of the Desert, and how did you create your characters Samantha and Monte?

 

A: I was attending an International PEN Congress in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, the opening scene of the novel. The PEN Congress happened to coincide with the annual Festival of St. James celebration.

 

At that Congress Salman Rushdie made a surprise appearance, one of his first since the fatwa had been issued against him a few years before. At the Congress I was elected to head up PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee which oversees PEN’s human rights work around the world so I was invited to have a small dinner with Rushdie.

 

I began considering what life would be if all you took for granted was suddenly taken from you. For Rushdie that meant years of living in hiding with bodyguards. For the character in my novel, it meant being kidnapped.

 

Because she and her family are connected to world events, the international political story and intrigue also play an important role in her journey and her family’s.

 

I don’t entirely recall how Samantha and Monte came into existence. I have a sister so it was natural to build that structure and an older brother was a voice I also found interesting. Samantha and Cal as journalists are in careers I know, and Monte, the smarter kid sister, was the foreign service officer. 

 

The characters began to tell me about themselves, a process most novelists will corroborate as you write so I didn’t so much “create” Samantha and Monte as listen to their voices which began to tell their story.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I had already done considerable research on arms trafficking for my novel Burning Distance, published in 2023. With background as a journalist, I saw the connections between arms trafficking, drug smuggling, human trafficking and financial manipulation which allows these practices to continue.

 

The criminal element unpins much terrorism as both a means of financing it and of protecting it. These criminal practices form a kind of membrane around many societies so that corruption and inefficiency are baked in. 

 

I read books and newspaper articles and met and interviewed individuals who studied these dynamics. They shared information and also helped direct me to well-researched books by other writers and journalists. I was consistently learning and surprised by the intricacies of deception.

Q: The author Deborah Goodrich Royce said of the book, “Deftly managing the tightrope between the tightly-paced geopolitical and nuanced psychological, Leedom-Ackerman delivers a thriller that transcends genre…” What do you think of that description?

 

A: First, I appreciate Deborah’s endorsement and her observation. I think she’s correct.

 

The Far Side of the Desert, along with my other novels, have been marketed as international political thrillers, which they are, but when writing them, I was also focused on the human dynamics of the characters.

 

The Far Side of the Desert is also a multi-generation family drama with tensions among sisters and parents, children, wives, and husbands. The characters struggle to find their own centers and relationships amid the challenges of the story they are caught in.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

A: First, I hope the reader will want to keep turning pages, caught up in the story itself, identifying with characters, relating to them and their struggles. I hope the reader might also learn a bit about the context of place and world politics.

 

The book is fiction, but satisfying to me have been comments by two highly respected international journalists about both The Far Side of the Desert and Burning Distance, noting that though fiction, the dynamics of the story and context ring true. 

 

Also, there is a moral/philosophical question the characters consider. I hope readers will consider it as well and are engaged by the answer the central character arrives at.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have two novels in final stages of revision. I leave it to my agent to place Washington Days/Beirut Nights and California Story (possibly titled Ancient Lights.)

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I began my career as a journalist for an international newspaper—The Christian Science Monitor. The journalist sits on my shoulder as I write, though over the years she has learned her place not to intrude on the imagination too early, but I keep a running list of facts to check. 

 

In most of my fiction, a journalist lurks somewhere in the story, though not necessarily as the main character, but a presence. The imagination which dominates and the focus of the story on the interior of characters’ lives--the fuel of good fiction—still pays respect to the world around.

 

I have been writing for decades. When a novel wasn’t quickly published, I started the next, then rewrote the first one, then started another then rewrote the two, all the while learning my craft, expanding skills and loving literature and storytelling.

 

I am fortunate that these books are now finding their readers. Thank you and your readers for joining my journey. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Joanne Leedom-Ackerman.