Aid

The civil war in Syria has entered its fifth year. So far, with 210,000 dead and 10 million displaced, scattered to refugee camps or left to fend for themselves, the crisis seems overwhelming. 

"A lack of funding, coordination and international political will to guarantee aid access has meant that many people are not getting the help they need, particularly in hard-to-reach areas inside Syria," writes Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children, for the New Statesman.


Save the Children works in 120 countries: "Across all our work, we pursue several core values: accountability, ambition, collaboration, creativity and integrity."

Forsyth offers specific recommendations including coalitions of governments and NGOs that can better coordinate aid, new strategies for reaching remote places, devising a system for nations to provide equitable funding, and empowering recipients. YaleGlobal points out that such strategies may "seem narrow in light of an expanding population, rising inequality, a decline in resources as basic as water amid so many longstanding conflicts."

As is often the case, readers' comments to Forsyth's essay reflect the challenges and even awareness of the complexities in the Middle East. Some readers offer small and hopeful recommendations; others argue the conflict is not the West's concern. YaleGlobal concludes by noting that the crisis could destabilize neighboring countries. The globe has reason to provide aid. Yet polarization among nations and within nations and organization, in addition to unnecessary politicization of countless issues and misinformation, not only prevent efficient distribution of aid but also the good governance and united effort that could keep such conflicts at bay in the first place.

The novel Allure of Deceit examines how charitable aid comes with an agenda by examining  a foundation's work on the ground in Afghanistan. A director uses programs to investigate the death of her son and wife while villagers are astounded to be regarded as recipients of aid. In the end, most parties are aligned, but not without deceit.

In the end, does aid from external sources help governments evade their responsibility? What kind of aid encourages responsibility? Priorities must be set.

Photo of Syrian children studying in Lebanon schools, with aid from the UK, Save the Children, and Unicef, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Russell Watkins, Department for International Development.

Limits

The ideas for my books set in Afghanistan - a woman desperate to learn how to read, children running away to an orphanage, a would-be doctor with no patients and a village that gossips about a woman who performs abortions - emerged from my imagination, pure and simple.

As such, the ideas were based on my life experiences. That is probably why I regard Interruptions, Fear of Beauty and Allure of Deceit as my favorite books.

I wrote about the limits of research for Portland Book Review: 

"The stories of my characters are ... woven with my memories: The exhilaration of my mother reading aloud, transforming a nightly fairy tale into heart-wrenching moments. The hints that my brother, sister and I might be a burden after her death. Summers spent on an uncle's farm, running with cousins through fields and patches of woods. Sessions with students, adults and younger, who confided about their struggles to read. The confusion after a long wait in a clinic with a friend distraught over a pregnancy and sensing a change of heart. Arguments with my son and fears for his safety as he set off on more than one ill-considered adventure."

"My research does not aim to provide a travelogue on Afghanistan, but rather prompt an examination of the comforts and opportunities in my country."

I conclude by pointing out that imagination goes into research, unearthing new details, making careful choices and connections. Yes, imagination is required for research, but somehow many readers do not use the word that way.

And I certainly must admit to finding the courage to start writing my novels while examining old, old books deep in the stacks of Yale's Sterling Library.

Libraries are truly magical places, as discovered by Sofi in Fear of Beauty.

Photo of Sterling Memorial Library, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Emilie Foyer; photo of Sterling stacks, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Ragesoss, to whom I'm grateful for taking a photograph of the inside of this wonderful place.

Reading aloud

Reading is an activity that increases our knowledge and lifts our spirits. It's an exchange between writer and reader. The writer tries to persuade and convince, but every reader controls his or her interpretation of any text even if some must do so in secret. 

Among my favorite memories: my mother reading to me and years later reading books aloud with my son. Our family started when he was three months old. I propped him against the sofa beside me for endless repeats of rhythmical Each Peach Pear Plum and continued the nightly ritual into early high school when we both took turns. 

We analyzed the books and compared them to our lives. And we understood them better for both following the words on paper as well as hearing them or speaking aloud. 

"Shared bookreading can stimulation more verbal interaction between child and parent, and therefore children's language development is likely to profit more from reading aloud than toy play or other adult-child interactions," note E. Duursma, M. Augustyn and B. Zuckerman n "Reading Aloud to Children: The Evidence." 

The list of evidence is long: "Sharing books with children can also help them learn about peer relationships, coping strategies, building self-esteem and general world knowledge." 

Even for older children and adults, reading a key points out loud helps create a distinctive memory, notes Art Markman  in Psychology Today, writing about a paper by Colin MacLeod, Nigel Gropie, Kathleen Hourihan, Karen Neary and Jason Ozubko for Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory, and Cognition. 

"The read-aloud process has enormous benefits to literacy learning," write Vanessa Morrison and Lisa Wheeler for Reading Rockets. 

Fear of Beauty is about a woman in rural Afghanistan who is desperate to learn how to read after the death of her so. In Allure of Deceit, she is trying to urge another son to attend reading sessions in their village. In both these mystery books about parent-child relationships, the characters read aloud.
Write to request a review copy.

Image of The Holy Family with the Virgin Teaching the Child to read, painted by Bartolomeo Schedoni, 1578-1615, courtesy of the National Gallery in London and Wikimedia Commons. The Italian artist who was known for his art with religious subjects, "quiet sentiment and vigorous painting" had a troubled life, notes ArtFortune.com.

2 sentences

In two books, two characters want to leave their home without disturbing other family members. Opening the door to make a quiet escape is essential for each, and here are the descriptions of opening the door from each novel:

    "In bed her only sensible thought was that he must have taken great care going along the hall without her hearing, and closed the front door inch by deceitful inch." Ian McEwan, The Children Act

    "Saddiq had to open the door without disturbing his father. The man was sensitive to changes in teh house and would hear the door scrape against the dirt floor for feel a draft form outside.
     "Crouching, Saddiq rubbed his hand back and forth, smoothing dirt near the doorway ...Then he turned full attention to the door. Using two hands, he slowly lifted the thick wooden bar and gave the slightest tug. Gripping the side of the door with both hands, Saddiq pulled steadily just enough to slip outside. The lower edge rubbed against the floor with the softest whoosh. Holding his breath, he stepped outside, gently closing the door.... 
    "His father did not storm outside with questions." - Allure of Deceit

McEwan's sentence is more concise.  One reason may be that he is the better writer! But another difference stems from each character's' age. The first sentence describes an unhappy husband and the second describes a child who wants to embark upon a quest without his parents' knowledge.

And another difference is point of view. The first sentence is described by the wife who has just realized her husband's secret departure. The stealth in the second sentence carries the point of view of the child who opens the door.

Both examples turn an ordinary routine, the opening of door, into anxious intrigue.

Request a review copy of Allure of Deceit.

Portrait of The Open Door by Helen McNicoll, a Canadian painter who died in 1915 at the age of 35, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain of the EU, the US and countries with a copyright term of life of author plus 70 years or less. "Primarily a painter of working women and maternal themes in outdoor settings, McNicoll drew her subject-matter from the tradition of Impressionist women painters such as Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, while acknowledging the “new woman” of the modernist age," notes Natalie Luckyj in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.  

Rituals

Rituals are routines. Yet the first word carries an aura of meaningfulness and gravitas while the word "routines" may seem boring, rote and without thought. It's a good idea for each person, each family, to examine routines and decide which have meaning and purpose and which can be discarded.

"Romance is an ideal to which every married person should aspire," writes Francesca Di Meglio for About.com. She also argues society's definition of romance may be off. "We're making it be about grand gestures and things that require lots of work, which means time and/or money, neither of which any of us has. Romance doesn't have to be so hard. It can come in the form of a simple act..."

And then Francesca described one of my favorite rituals, my husband making coffee each morning. "It's a small gesture, maybe it's silly," I had explained to her, "but it's a habit that has built over time that matters as much as the gifts we've exchanged, trips we have taken, or activities we enjoy."

As Di Meglio reminds, the trick may be assessing our routines and turning them into pleasant and comfortable rituals. No couple does this more than Sofi and Parsaa in my novels set n Afghanistan. Fear of Beauty is Sofi's story, and Allure of Deceit describes Parsaa's reflections, his appreciation of his own marriage and thoughts about other romances that have gone wrong.

Request a review copy of either book by contacting Seventh Street Books.

The photo "Going Home" is courtesy of Iain Cochrane of Scotland, 2008, and Wikimedia Commons.

Places to go...

Books are wonderful companions for travelers, helping transport us to another land in person or spirit. Setting can be a key feature for some books, often performing as a character. Fiction and nonfiction can prepare readers for other cultures, adding special meaning to journeys that test our assumptions as readers: "writing images particular spaces onto the printed page, but just as writers invent places, readers are at the very least partners in the process of producing textual places," writes John Thieme in "Reading Places: The Geography of Literature," an essay that compares how R.K. Narayan and Amitav Ghosh handle cultural geography.

Amazon, Goodreads and other sites offer many lists on settings, but a map or table is really handy. Several websites focus on setting, connecting readers and writers with books set in all over the globe:

Few novels posted are set in
Afghanistan - or East Lansing 

Novels: On Location is the easiest and quickest site for posting location. Users can search by location or by novel. Those who want to add a book can zoom in on an location, add a pin, and type in the name of the novel. The site pinpoints most novels automatically with a thumbnail of the cover and description, allowing immediate purchase from Amazon or iBooks. It took less than 5 minutes to place Fear of Beauty on top of Afghanistan and explain how the setting of Laashekoh is a fictional village in northern Helmand. There is also a Reader Notes section, to add descriptions or quotes from the book. Results are posted immediately. 

The setting for both novels is a fictional and remote village. So I typed in "northern Helmand" as the location for both. Fear of Beauty is shown north of the capital in another province and Allure of Deceit is south of the Helmand provincial capital. Because the village is fictional, I can understood the tool's confusion.

Still, I agree with this self-assessment from the site's creators in the integration notes: "the Web's best way to find novels by setting. If you write a blog on literature, travel or, education, enhance the interactive experience for your readers by integrating Novels: On Location." Note of caution: Authors or readers may unintentionally inflate pin results by posting one book with more than one setting in multiple locations.

BooksSetIn relies on search engine methods and tabular results, with input provided by readers. This format accounts for both place and time. In searching for Helmand Province, one book emerges: Torn by David Massey, while a search for "Afghanistan" yields many more results. Again, it took less than 5 minutes to list the title, author, ISBN, and description for Fear of Beauty and Allure of Deceit. The site is inviting for travelers and readers both - and asks: "Taking a trip? Interested in another part of the world? Want to learn about another culture?" 

The tool easily permits multiple locations and also highlights a few places and books on its front page. Not much has been written about the site, but Facebook suggests it began in Pennsylvania.

Book Drum, from London, is the most thorough, elegant and yet complicated of the sites, inviting authors and other registered users to submit detailed profiles on authors and settings as well as background and new explorations of specific quotes. A map is promised but did not show up on this user's multiple  tries with browsers IE and Chrome (a message points out that Google has disabled its map tool for the application). Starting the profile is easy, logging on with Facebook, but some features such as adding coordinates or saving the page numbers for quotes do not run as smoothly. Books are not posted until all six sections are started. The site's self-assessment: "Book Drum is the perfect companion to the books we love, bringing them to life with immersive pictures, videos, maps and music." 

These websites are especially useful for countries and cities that are less common as literary settings. Cities like New York and London on these sites are teeming with books.

That doesn't mean the smallest villages of the world are not teeming with stories. 

Most authors and readers have not caught on to these sites just yet, and an avalanche of interest could arrive any day. 

Authors

Before a book is published, authors are expected to seek out blurbs from other authors to help readers in making a decision whether to read a book or not. So many authors are generous with their time, taking the time to read the books and craft a few lines about the story.

I'm honored by the four authors who agreed to comment on Allure of Deceit.

Mike Befeler
Author of Mystery of the Dinner Playhouse
“In Allure of Deceit, Susan Froetschel brings alive a country foreign to many readers. This provocative novel blends social conscience, long-held secrets, murder, and the reality of village mores.” 

Befeler is best known for his series about a elderly sleuth, which began with Retirement Homes Are Murder, published in 2007. His work was also nominated for a Lefty. 

 Likewise, the sleuth  featured in his Mystery of the Dinner Playhouse is retired and conducts the central murder investigation to escape boredom: "Gabe suddenly realized this retirement gig wasn't all it was cracked up to be." 

Befeler is an author and public speaker who addresses with eloquence and wisdom the secrets and art of growing old gracefully. 

I'm grateful for Befeler's assessment of Allure of Deceit because the leading male protagonist is a village leader who resists change but recognizes that the feelings stem from his own adjustments and fears due to aging. 

Peg Herring
Author of the Loser Mysteries

“Froetschel’s crystal clear picture of Afghanistan and its people fascinates me. Though her characters’ lives differ from ours, they are like us in the ways that really matter. They laugh, they love, they seek answers when things puzzle them. This is a mystery with a stunning sense of place.” 

Award-winning author Herring is a thoughtful colleague whom I've known since attending Sleuthfest in Boca Raton about six years ago. Her mysteries explore some of our society's most vulnerable citizens. She juggles three series, including the Loser Mysteries, the Dead Detective Mysteries and the Simon & Elizabeth Tudor mysteries. with the promise of "Strong women, great stories."

Such is the case with the three-book Loser Series, the haunting story of a woman who is homeless after traumatic deaths in her family. Herring is sensitive yet forthright with her insights into how bad memories complicate a life: "A person can say she's not going to think about something. She can resolve to put it into the back of her mind, slam the door, and lock it away. But it isn't that easy. My voices hadn't spoken or months, but that night, they invaded my sleep, constant and demanding."

I value comment from Herring because of her own ability to craft complex characters whose lives can quickly spin out of control.

Martin J. Smith
Author of the Memory Series crime novels
“Celebrity philanthropy. Baby trafficking. A mysterious compound in the Afghanistan mountains. Allure of Deceit is an IED of a novel. Trust no one, and step carefully.” 

Smith is an award-winning journalist and author of non-fiction and fiction. Both combine his sense for detail and knack for storytelling. For example, The Wild Duck Chase describes the Federal Duck Stamp Contest and competitive duck painting. In his Memory Series, Straw Men was nominated for an Edgar, and Disappeared Girl is the fourth in the series:

"He wondered again about his daughter's life before adoption, five years that were mostly a puzzle to him... this wasn't the first time Melissa had described strange and disturbing images of early childhood - scary strangers, angry voices, desperate adults.... Christensen was all too familiar with the psychological condition known as confabulation - when someone creates a false narrative of their past as a subconscious way of dealing with a contemporary trauma too painful to confront on a conscious level." 

Smith employs the direct, no-nonsense voice of a journalist for stories that explore the intricacies of family relationships. We were both raised in Pittsburgh, and while we did not know each other well, also graduated from the same high school and attended the same college to study journalism. To have received early comment from a writer who understands some of influences for Allure of Deceit is ideal. 

Daniel Stashower
Author of The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln before the Civil War 

“A smart, sharply plotted thriller that puts the reader on the ground in Afghanistan. Susan Froetschel delivers.” 

Stashower, two-time Edgar winner, writes mysteries, biographies and narrative histories that  have featured historical figures including Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe, Harry Houdini, Allan Pinkerton and Abraham Lincoln. Stashower selects subjects whose lives are rich with activity, failures and successes, during periods of sweeping social change. Motivation is never a simple affair. A rich array of details on their communities, circumstances and personal histories offer clues as to why each may respond as they do: 

"The events of February 1861 continue to capture attention, however, not only for the drama of the plot and its detection, but also because Lincoln's handling of the crisis and its fallout would be a  fateful early test of his presidency, with many dark consequences. In charting the sweep of events that carried the nation into war, it is customary to focus on the landmarks of policy and social change, such as the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision. Set against these milestones, the drama in Baltimore is often overlooked, pushed aside by the more pressing urgencies that were to come, and obscured by its own uncertainties and contradictions." 

Because Allure of Deceit focuses on the history and forces of globalization unfolding in Afghanistan, Stashower's assessment was particularly welcome.

Do check out the books from these four authors. And for a review copy of Allure of Deceit, contact Cheryl Quimba of Seventh Street Books, CQuimba@prometheusbooks.com.