Q&A with Terry Kirk

  

 

Terry Kirk is the author of the new novel Plunder, a sequel to her novel Pitfall. She has worked as a lawyer and in the venture sector, and she's based in Toronto. 

 

Q: This is your second novel featuring your characters Frank and Katrina--do you think they’ve changed from one book to the next?

 

A: Absolutely. For starters, they are 10 years older—42 not 32. They’ve grown from a young couple with two little ones to a mature couple, married 20 years.

 

Frank hasn’t gown as much as we’d hoped after his Pitfall adventures—still a bit of a self-centred rogue, while Katrina impresses as a woman in full bloom. She’s educated and assertive, and found her voice. 

 

Q: What inspired the plot of Plunder?

 

A: There are two elements to the plot: Frank’s adventure, and the challenges in Katrina and Frank’s marriage, which is upended by Frank’s prestigious new assignment. 

 

Q: This novel is set a decade after Pitfall--why did you choose this time period, and how did you research it?

 

A: Pitfall was set in 1929–a watershed year defined by the Great Market Crash, which sharply severed the Roaring ‘20s from the Dirty ‘30s. 1939/40 was another such year, as the “Conflict in Europe” becomes “World War II.”

 

In Plunder, the cataclysmic events of this latter period lead to Frank’s new role, and the challenges for the entire family as they’re uprooted from their exceedingly comfortable Midwestern lifestyle into the eye of the storm in central London.

 

Research? I read, I watched movies and, ultimately, I moved to London for a year. 

 

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

 

A: Some readers, mostly men, will focus on Frank’s epic adventure while others—mostly women—will be intrigued by the love triangle at the heart of the story.

 

But it is my hope that male readers will be sympathetic to Katrina‘s point of view and her actions, and that everyone will learn a bit about the war, the pressures it imposed on even privileged families like Frank and Katrina’s, and will not judge their blunders too harshly.

 

I hope people will laugh, and maybe shed a tear or two.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m writing a follow-on in what, by now, has become a multigenerational family saga.

 

My third book, Probe, is set 17 years after Plunder during the Cold War. Frank and Katrina’s daughter, Franny, moves to centerstage as a young financial professional on Wall Street, having stepped into her father’s very big shoes.

 

The research has been quite daunting because, to understate it, Russia has not been very transparent about its rocketry program. I went to Paris to do research at the Russian Embassy which has a Soviet rocketry section but the closest I got was tickets to a choir concert.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Thank YOU for all that you do. It’s a beautiful calling and privilege to write books. I hope you enjoy Plunder.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Terry Kirk.