Connie Johnson Hambley: Inspired by The Troubles & therapeutic riding

HALLIE EPHRON: Today I'm delighted to welcome Connie Johnson Hambley back to Jungle Red. She's a horsewoman, well versed in thoroughbred racing and steeplechase, and in her books the horses are as real as the people. Her trilogy features world-class equestrian, Jessica Wyeth, entangled by her lover into a world of international crime. The final book, The Wake! was published in September. 

Connie, catch us up on what you've been up to since you visited us last.

CONNIE JOHNSON HAMBLEY:  My two sons have graduated from college and my “baby” daughter has begun her college years. I’m still waiting for the empty nest blues to hit, but my hubby and I like a quiet house! 

I think that’s because the rooms are always filled with my characters. Our conversation during cocktail hour starts with, “Have you heard from the kids today?” and ends with, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to Jessica Wyeth!” 

I did a lot of soul searching while padding around my empty house thinking of the threads I needed to knit together for a satisfying, gripping, and emotionally true conclusion to the final novel in The Jessica Trilogy.  My characters are real to me. I talk out loud to them, pantomime their movements or reactions, rejoice and cry with them. 

The trilogy follows historical milestones involving riots in Belfast, called the Troubles, but American history shaped the story as well. My character-driven thrillers feature Jessica, a world-class equestrian The characters, born with The Charity and who grew in The Troubles, have their life woes resolved in The Wake. 

I’ve written them so each book can stand on their own merits as a novel that encapsulates a moment of history involving American involvement in Northern Ireland’s struggle for unification and peace. 

Jessica received the Wyeth family fortune from a couple who had raised her since birth, but died without formally adopting her. As a lawyer, this situation nagged at me because it raised questions of family loyalties, citizenship, and inheritance. As an author, I wondered who would be the most motivated to avenge a wrongful inheritance? 

Ha! Enter “Uncle” William Wyeth, a bankrupt Boston Brahmin adept at Machiavellian plotting. Jessica’s biological family secrets have international political consequences too, and I worried about the men in her life. Were they good people at their core? Could they be corrupted? I fretted that her lover could exploit her secrets for his financial gain. 

I worried about who my characters loved as much as how they were loved. I put all of these threads to good use and made some hard, tough-love decisions to answer the question of whether terrorists are born evil or if circumstance could rot their hearts.

To me, Jessica is a rose. Beautiful, but not without thorns. Some of my character-based decisions were complicated by historical events. Folks who know their Irish history may recall that English law forbade direct references to an independent Ireland, so protests against English rule referred to Ireland in code as the “Black Rose.” 

When The Wake begins, Jessica has returned to the States after a harrowing time in the Irelands. Her arrival places her in the South three weeks prior to the Atlanta-based Summer Olympic Games. Jungle Red readers may recall the horrific bombing that happened in Centennial Park during the Games. Weave into this chaos a desperate uncle and a selfish lover along with the threads of international terrorism, and hey, I’m a thriller author, so my mind goes there.

My first two books bring the reader to thoroughbred racing and steeplechase, but the third bookdemanded a different edge. I use The Wake as a platform to bring attention to an amazing healing tool--therapeutic riding, an equestrian discipline for which I have a tremendous passion. 

I volunteer as a horse handler at Windrush Farm located near my home in Massachusetts. Windrush provides hippotherapy, a horse-based physical and emotional therapy conducted by licensed therapists. I work with clientele with a variety of challenges. Some challenges existed from birth – like Cerebral Palsy or Down Syndrome – and others are the result of a catastrophic injury or event–like stroke, PTSD, or accident.

For physical therapy, riding a horse has a rhythm and engages muscles similar to our natural walking stride. Deep core muscles required for balance may not be triggered by traditional therapies, but riding can speed recovery for certain individuals. Emotional therapies leverage horses’ primal instincts. They are herd and prey animals, meaning they have a keen sense of the emotional state of those around them–horses and humans alike–and react to emotions often before we are aware of feeling them.

I’ve been an equestrian my whole life, and continue to be amazed at the power of healing horses provide to people who are not able-bodied or who carry emotional scars.

  

CONNIE JOHNSON HAMBLEY grew up on a dairy farm in New York and had plenty of space to ride one of her six horses. All would have been idyllic if an arsonist hadn’t torched her family’s barn. Bucolic bubble burst, she began to steadfastly plot her revenge against all bad guys, real and imagined. After receiving her law degree, she moved to Boston and wrote for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Nature, and other wonky outlets as she honed her skills of reaching readers at a deep emotional level. Connie embraces the changes in the publishing world by being both traditionally and independently published. Her high-concept thrillers feature remarkable women entangled in modern-day crimes and walk the reader on the razor’s edge between good and evil. Connie delights in creating worlds where the good guys win–eventually. Her short story, Giving Voice, won acceptance in New England’s Best Crime Stories: Windward, published by Level Best Books and will be joined by Black Ice in the 2017 Level Best release of Snowbound. The third book in The Jessica Trilogy, The Wake, joins The Charity and The Troubles, which was the 2016 Best Fiction winner at the EQUUS Film Festival in New York City. She keeps horses in her life by volunteering as a horse handler at a therapeutic riding center. Connie is a board member and Featured Speaker of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime.