WRITING PASSAGES--LIBBY FISCHER HELLMAN

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  It's always such a treat to have broadcaster, speaker, and award-winning author Libby Fischer Hellman drop in for a visit on Jungle Red! Today she gives us a fascinating look at the stages of her writing life--and a new book A BEND IN THE RIVER. Publisher's Weekly calls it "Gripping...This passionate story of survival has staying power." William Kent Krueger says it's "...a stunning piece of historical fiction." Here's Libby to elaborate on her departure from crime fiction.

 

 

LIBBY FISCHER HELLMAN: Hi, Reds and Friends. It’s so nice to be back. Yes, I have a new book, and I’ll get to it in a bit. But first, I want to bring up another book. I think most Jungle Reds— because we are of a certain age—are familiar with Gail Sheehy’s PASSAGES. She died this year, but I will never forget her thesis: that every seven years or so, a woman passes through a new stage of her life. Some are precipitated by crises, some aren’t. I was in my late twenties when I read the book, and I identified so closely with the first two passages that I figured my life was predestined a la Sheehy. Did you as well?

My only beef was that she stopped with the ‘50s, which made me feel that any age higher than fifty-nine just wasn’t worth talking about. Harrumph. Even so,  darned if I didn’t begin to see life as a series of passages, which, might apply to almost anything I did or thought about.

Including my writing life. The years aren’t precisely seven, nor does entering one “passage” require an exit from another, but I can clearly see how I’ve passed through different stages of my writing life.

First was the early mystery stage, where I enthusiastically published four Ellie Foreman mystery novels in three years. That doesn’t count the four years I spent learning the craft of fiction well enough to get published, so figure seven years. So far, right on schedule.

Then came my “second series” Passage. Restless for a new challenge, I gave one of the characters from my first series her own thriller series. Georgia Davis is grittier, more hard-boiled, and action-oriented than Ellie. And I love her stories. They energize me in a way Ellie doesn’t. Although Ellie has the sense of humor I crave.

Three novels later (call it four years because of a year of Presidenting Sisters in Crime) presaged a new Passage: the historical thriller. As a former history major, I love the way history repeats itself, but mutating in a tiny way from what went before. I also love diving into rabbit holes and surfacing with a historical nugget or fact or story that surprises me, and hopefully, will surprise readers as well. I’m sure you Reds who write historicals can relate.

In writing historical thrillers, though, I was still tethered to the structure of crime fiction, which provides a plot template that we all follow in one form or another. I could pretend I wasn’t REALLY writing historicals. They were historical mysteries. Historical thrillers.

Another four years went by. Then I went to Vietnam. I grew up in DC and gazed for years at all the monuments to the Civil War in neighboring Virginia. This time, though, I wanted to see the country and any monuments that took 50,000 of our boys’ lives during a war which many still think was unnecessary. To be honest I didn’t know I was entering a new passage until my travel partner and I were in a Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, art gallery staring at this painting.

 I felt like I’d been hit by lightning, and I immediately knew I was going to write a book set in Vietnam during the war. I also knew it would be about these two sisters. And I implicitly knew it was not going to be either a mystery or a thriller. It was going to be a historical novel, the story of two girls struggle to survive a war that was tearing their country apart. I bought the painting.

 

  I had started reading about Vietnam before I stepped off the plane, but my research instensified while we were there. Photos and videos speak to me, and I took hundreds of shots. I interviewed a former North Vietnamese colonel, as well as two Boat people who escaped Vietnam for the States. After I got home, research intensified even more, and I found fascinating “nuggets” and began to build possible scenes. I put together a timeline of the war and the book. Then I started to write.

 

I confess I have never enjoyed writing. I love “having written” and holding a finished book in my hands, but the process of writing has always bedeviled me. Not this time. I loved writing this book. In fact, I had to force myself to end it – there was more I could have said. For the first time, I experienced what I now see was an organic process, not dependent on tropes or plot elements. However, I will admit that intuitively knowing how to build suspense helped the story. So did an inherent sense of pacing we learn as we continue writing. But the bottom line was that I felt free to explore the setting and the characters with no constraints. It was something I had never done before.

 

A Bend In The River was clearly my Passage into a new way of writing. A new genre. I’m thrilled to be here, but I won’t abandon Ellie or Georgia. I intend to continue with all three “passages.” Which might make it pretty crowded in my brain, but Gail Sheehy should have known that’s what happens after your Fifties. We can juggle multiple passages if we want. It all depends on our story.

 

When their village is destroyed, two sisters face their futures alone. Will the uncertainties of war keep them apart forever?

In 1968 two young Vietnamese sisters flee to Saigon after their village on the Mekong River is attacked by American forces and burned to the ground. The only survivors of the massacre that killed their family, the sisters struggle to survive but become estranged, separated by sharply different choices and ideologies. Mai ekes out a living as a GI bar girl, but Tam’s anger festers, and she heads into jungle terrain to fight with the Viet Cong. For nearly ten years, neither sister knows if the other is alive. Do they both survive the war? And if they do, can they mend their fractured relationship? Or are the wounds from their journeys too deep to heal? In a stunning departure from her crime thrillers, Hellmann delves into a universal story about survival, family, and the consequences of war. A Bend in the River is a remarkable historical fiction standalone novel. If you enjoy a saga of survival against all odds with unforgettable female characters, you’ll love Libby Fischer Hellmann’s sweeping epic. 

 READERS, did you read PASSAGES? Do you see your life in stages, too?

<