Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 2
December 24, 2024
The Year Christmas Eve Meant the Moon
On December 24, 1968 three astronauts from the Apollo 8 mission to the moon were approaching the lunar sunrise.
Yes, it was Christmas Eve.
In the United States, it was nighttime.
It was 1968.
Cue the space music.
My family and I were living in a Connecticut suburb of New York City, and we were spending that Christmas Eve with family friends who lived nearby, Bob and Mary George. I was a very little boy whose biggest concern as the evening dragged on was that we were going to leave so late at night – so deep into the early morning – that we would get home precisely when Santa Claus coasted to a stop on either our roof or our long, straight, invariably slick driveway. Imagine a patch of airport runway made of black ice.
Somehow, of course, Santa and his reindeer always landed safely. Sure, my mother and father would annually take off a side mirror as they careened to a stop in the red Falcon or the white Impala, or skid at least once each into the garage door. But Santa Claus? As far as I knew, he always nailed the landing. Think an Olympic gymnast’s ten-point dismount.
At the same time, we couldn’t possibly risk arriving home while Santa was at our house: I understood the rules. You leave out the cookies and milk for the big guy, but you don’t try and catch him. You leave out the carrots for the giant sleigh’s engine room, but you don’t stay up and expect Rudolph to eat from your hand. There are. . .consequences. By remaining at Bob and Mary George’s, my family was not merely playing with fire: we were risking the very cosmological foundations of Christmas – because wasn’t Christmas all about Santa Claus?
The Georges meant a great deal to my parents and (yes) to me, which was why we often spent Christmas Eve with them. But their children were a lot older than I was. Their daughter was actually old enough to have been my older brother’s babysitter and was now a grownup herself: She was married to a soldier who was spending that Christmas across the globe in Vietnam.
That’s how different the world was in 1968: As a nation, we were fighting in Southeast Asia and as a species we had yet to walk on the moon. Most of you reading this essay were yet to be born.
But, oh, that night long ago my concern wasn’t for the safety of my brother’s babysitter’s husband in a rice patty on the other side of the globe or for the three astronauts in a spacecraft roughly a quarter of a million miles away. I was focused only on the five adults — my parents, their friends, and their friend’s daughter — drinking scotch in the living room by the fireplace.
I was watching the clock and I was fretting about the time. I was worried about whether our car would be able to navigate the Georges’ driveway, which was the exact opposite of our own: Their house was nestled like the base lodge for a ski resort at the bottom of a steep, wooded hill. The driveway was a black diamond trail with a garage at the end. It wasn’t snowing that night, but it had the day before and when we had arrived at the Georges’ on Christmas Eve, our car had slid down that driveway as if we were riding a barely controlled toboggan.
Now, hours later, I was reaching that moment when the little boy mind moves from mild to meltdown.
The reality is that like most children, I had never been especially patient as Christmas neared. I always had advent calendars – and, invariably, I had opened all twenty-five doors by the third of December. (I was always miffed by what I found behind them: A drawing of an apple? A painting of an elf puppet? Seriously? Behind those doors I hoped to find terrifying robots and plastic models of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. That’s what I wanted from an Advent Calendar.)
My family had two Christmas trees those years in Connecticut, one that my father, my older brother, and I were allowed to trim, and one that my mother alone would decorate. Why? Hers were themed – white Christmas, Victorian Christmas, green and gold Christmas, and (one year), napkin rings, nothing but napkin rings – and she spent serious amounts of time on them. The males’ tree? I recall one year my father, my brother, and I trimmed the whole thing during a football game halftime.
I know I was not unique: what child actually wants to wait for Christmas?
So, Christmas Eve 1968.
The Georges’.
The adults.
The scotch.
I was at my wit’s end when abruptly Mr. George rose from his living room chair and went to the radio. In my memory, the radio is the size of a cement block and covered in gold-colored fabric. The dial was the diameter of the palm of my hand, and he spun it until he found the station he was looking for. He insisted I sit down on the ottoman before the fireplace and listen.
I did and that instant would become for me a moment of revelation that I can liken to Charlie Brown watching Linus stand center stage in the school auditorium and explain the meaning of Christmas by reciting the second chapter of Luke. Mr. George wanted us all to hear a transmission from outer space — from astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders. We were listening to men almost (but not quite) on the moon.
Anders began by sharing how they were flying over one of the future landing sites, the poetically christened Sea of Tranquility, watching the “long shadows of the lunar sunrise” on the ground. Then, after a pause, he said that the crew had a message for the people back on earth:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” Anders said. For the next few minutes, the astronauts read from the first chapter of Genesis. There was light. Firmament. Water. Land.
There was Earth.
The transmission was scratchy and occasionally hard to understand, but that only added to what a marvel it was. There were atheists then who questioned the decision, but has the poetry of Genesis ever been more rich than when read by three men in a cramped space capsule, orbiting the moon for the first time in human history? This was the mission when Anders took that now classic photograph, “Earthrise,” a color image of our spinning blue marble from the lunar orbit. The idea of reading from Genesis? Poignant and powerful, the intersection of aspiration and awe. Of hope. This was one of those rare instances when the world together could exhale in wonder at the miracle that is mankind at its best. My father sat perfectly and uncharacteristically still. My mother’s eyes, I saw, were damp.
Even though I was at an age when I still waited desperately for Santa Claus, I understood that 1968 had been a terrible year. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Of Robert Kennedy. The cities in flames.
And, of course, Vietnam – and Bob and Mary George’s son-in-law, a soldier in harm’s way on the other side of the globe.
When the transmission was finished, no one moved for a long moment. Then my mother motioned me over: she wanted me – she needed me – to sit in her lap.
Make no mistake, I was probably as greedy a child after that reading from space as I was before it. I would love here to offer alliteration and call it a sermon from space, but that would in some way diminish its magic, and I believe it would misrepresent the three astronauts’ intent. It wasn’t a sermon; it was – by its simple existence – a testimony to our potential as human beings, and what a gift it is to breathe. To stretch. To not merely gape at the moon, but ascend to it.
And yet if I remained as acquisitive a little boy on December 26th as I had been on December 23rd, I was reminded of something I had managed to miss in Sunday School, obvious as it was: the foundation of the Christmas story, whether one views it as fable or history, begins in a crèche – not a sleigh.
Our car would make its way up that black diamond of a driveway and then coast to a stop without incident in our own. We would be home before Santa.
The historical record shows that Borman concluded the reading by telling his listeners, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”
Indeed. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. May our world somehow find peace in 2025.
Yes, it was Christmas Eve.
In the United States, it was nighttime.
It was 1968.
Cue the space music.
My family and I were living in a Connecticut suburb of New York City, and we were spending that Christmas Eve with family friends who lived nearby, Bob and Mary George. I was a very little boy whose biggest concern as the evening dragged on was that we were going to leave so late at night – so deep into the early morning – that we would get home precisely when Santa Claus coasted to a stop on either our roof or our long, straight, invariably slick driveway. Imagine a patch of airport runway made of black ice.
Somehow, of course, Santa and his reindeer always landed safely. Sure, my mother and father would annually take off a side mirror as they careened to a stop in the red Falcon or the white Impala, or skid at least once each into the garage door. But Santa Claus? As far as I knew, he always nailed the landing. Think an Olympic gymnast’s ten-point dismount.
At the same time, we couldn’t possibly risk arriving home while Santa was at our house: I understood the rules. You leave out the cookies and milk for the big guy, but you don’t try and catch him. You leave out the carrots for the giant sleigh’s engine room, but you don’t stay up and expect Rudolph to eat from your hand. There are. . .consequences. By remaining at Bob and Mary George’s, my family was not merely playing with fire: we were risking the very cosmological foundations of Christmas – because wasn’t Christmas all about Santa Claus?
The Georges meant a great deal to my parents and (yes) to me, which was why we often spent Christmas Eve with them. But their children were a lot older than I was. Their daughter was actually old enough to have been my older brother’s babysitter and was now a grownup herself: She was married to a soldier who was spending that Christmas across the globe in Vietnam.
That’s how different the world was in 1968: As a nation, we were fighting in Southeast Asia and as a species we had yet to walk on the moon. Most of you reading this essay were yet to be born.
But, oh, that night long ago my concern wasn’t for the safety of my brother’s babysitter’s husband in a rice patty on the other side of the globe or for the three astronauts in a spacecraft roughly a quarter of a million miles away. I was focused only on the five adults — my parents, their friends, and their friend’s daughter — drinking scotch in the living room by the fireplace.
I was watching the clock and I was fretting about the time. I was worried about whether our car would be able to navigate the Georges’ driveway, which was the exact opposite of our own: Their house was nestled like the base lodge for a ski resort at the bottom of a steep, wooded hill. The driveway was a black diamond trail with a garage at the end. It wasn’t snowing that night, but it had the day before and when we had arrived at the Georges’ on Christmas Eve, our car had slid down that driveway as if we were riding a barely controlled toboggan.
Now, hours later, I was reaching that moment when the little boy mind moves from mild to meltdown.
The reality is that like most children, I had never been especially patient as Christmas neared. I always had advent calendars – and, invariably, I had opened all twenty-five doors by the third of December. (I was always miffed by what I found behind them: A drawing of an apple? A painting of an elf puppet? Seriously? Behind those doors I hoped to find terrifying robots and plastic models of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. That’s what I wanted from an Advent Calendar.)
My family had two Christmas trees those years in Connecticut, one that my father, my older brother, and I were allowed to trim, and one that my mother alone would decorate. Why? Hers were themed – white Christmas, Victorian Christmas, green and gold Christmas, and (one year), napkin rings, nothing but napkin rings – and she spent serious amounts of time on them. The males’ tree? I recall one year my father, my brother, and I trimmed the whole thing during a football game halftime.
I know I was not unique: what child actually wants to wait for Christmas?
So, Christmas Eve 1968.
The Georges’.
The adults.
The scotch.
I was at my wit’s end when abruptly Mr. George rose from his living room chair and went to the radio. In my memory, the radio is the size of a cement block and covered in gold-colored fabric. The dial was the diameter of the palm of my hand, and he spun it until he found the station he was looking for. He insisted I sit down on the ottoman before the fireplace and listen.
I did and that instant would become for me a moment of revelation that I can liken to Charlie Brown watching Linus stand center stage in the school auditorium and explain the meaning of Christmas by reciting the second chapter of Luke. Mr. George wanted us all to hear a transmission from outer space — from astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders. We were listening to men almost (but not quite) on the moon.
Anders began by sharing how they were flying over one of the future landing sites, the poetically christened Sea of Tranquility, watching the “long shadows of the lunar sunrise” on the ground. Then, after a pause, he said that the crew had a message for the people back on earth:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” Anders said. For the next few minutes, the astronauts read from the first chapter of Genesis. There was light. Firmament. Water. Land.
There was Earth.
The transmission was scratchy and occasionally hard to understand, but that only added to what a marvel it was. There were atheists then who questioned the decision, but has the poetry of Genesis ever been more rich than when read by three men in a cramped space capsule, orbiting the moon for the first time in human history? This was the mission when Anders took that now classic photograph, “Earthrise,” a color image of our spinning blue marble from the lunar orbit. The idea of reading from Genesis? Poignant and powerful, the intersection of aspiration and awe. Of hope. This was one of those rare instances when the world together could exhale in wonder at the miracle that is mankind at its best. My father sat perfectly and uncharacteristically still. My mother’s eyes, I saw, were damp.
Even though I was at an age when I still waited desperately for Santa Claus, I understood that 1968 had been a terrible year. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Of Robert Kennedy. The cities in flames.
And, of course, Vietnam – and Bob and Mary George’s son-in-law, a soldier in harm’s way on the other side of the globe.
When the transmission was finished, no one moved for a long moment. Then my mother motioned me over: she wanted me – she needed me – to sit in her lap.
Make no mistake, I was probably as greedy a child after that reading from space as I was before it. I would love here to offer alliteration and call it a sermon from space, but that would in some way diminish its magic, and I believe it would misrepresent the three astronauts’ intent. It wasn’t a sermon; it was – by its simple existence – a testimony to our potential as human beings, and what a gift it is to breathe. To stretch. To not merely gape at the moon, but ascend to it.
And yet if I remained as acquisitive a little boy on December 26th as I had been on December 23rd, I was reminded of something I had managed to miss in Sunday School, obvious as it was: the foundation of the Christmas story, whether one views it as fable or history, begins in a crèche – not a sleigh.
Our car would make its way up that black diamond of a driveway and then coast to a stop without incident in our own. We would be home before Santa.
The historical record shows that Borman concluded the reading by telling his listeners, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”
Indeed. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. May our world somehow find peace in 2025.
November 20, 2024
On Thanksgiving, Mom Broke the Mold -- and Some News
20 November 2024
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
As many of you know, I want these blog post to transcend spam, so I try to include a relevant essay. This month, it's a Thanksgiving remembrance.
But first, two bits of news:
1) My March novel, THE JACKAL'S MISTRESS, got its first two review this month: a starred review from Library Journal and a starred review from Kirkus and so I am thrilled. Also, 50 advance readers on NetGalley have given it an average (wait for it) 5-star review rating. I am, well, as gobsmacked as I am grateful.
If you want to preorder the novel, and I would be more appreciative than you know if you did, please visit or click wherever you buy your books.
2) If you want to give someone on your list a signed or personalized copy of one of my novels this holiday season, it's very easy. Call or visit the websites for the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, VT (802 388-2061) or Phoenix Books in Burlington, VT (802 448-3350). I visit them all the time and sign -- and they wrap and ship!
And, now, the essay:
On Thanksgiving, Mom Broke the Mold
The time of year when we all take a day off and reflect upon what we are thankful for (not being born a turkey is always a good place to start) is almost here. I am thankful for many things, not the least of which is that there will be no broccoli mold on the Thanksgiving table at my house this coming holiday.
A broccoli mold was always my mother’s culinary contribution to the festivities. Some of you might wonder why anyone would bring a dish to the Thanksgiving table that looked like a Bundt cake made of puke. (I am not exaggerating.) The very term “broccoli mold” is my own personal culinary “Silence of the Lambs,” two words that instantly catapult me back to the Thanksgivings of my childhood and the great horror that my mother — with only the best intentions — would inflict on our large extended family.
Also, just for the record, I have not made up this dish. Google the words “broccoli” and “mold,” and thousands of recipes appear. Fortunately, none of them are my mother’s. Hers was pretty basic: frozen broccoli, frozen creamed onions, and Jell-O. (If frozen Jell-O existed, my mother would have used that too. In her kitchen, foods came either frozen or canned.) Swirl it together in a food processor, dump it all into a Bundt cake pan, chill and serve.
Now, my mother was gifted in myriad ways, but she would have been the first to admit that no one was going to mistake her for a chef. She was smart and funny and generous. She was also completely incapable of making toast. That’s not hyperbole: Among those Proustian sounds I equate with my boyhood is the scraping of a stainless-steel knife on a piece of white bread that looks like someone just tried to toast it with a blowtorch.
Usually our family held Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle’s massive Victorian not far from Manhattan. My aunt would handle the lion’s share of the Thanksgiving preparation and this was no small task since there were between 19 and 21 of us in attendance most years. But my mother would insist on bringing the broccoli mold, despite my aunt’s reassurance that she needn’t bother. In hindsight, it’s pretty clear that my aunt wasn’t being polite, and I have always imagined the phone calls between my mom and my aunt went something like this:
MOM: I’ll bring the broccoli mold.
AUNT: You don’t have to.
MOM: It’s no problem!
AUNT: It is. It’s a huge problem. Even the dog won’t eat your broccoli mold, and he eats poop.
As I said, this is an imaginary conversation. In the real one, after my mother said, “It’s no problem,” my incredibly sweet aunt would have capitulated and said, “OK, thank you,” while thinking to herself, “Maybe she’ll drop it on the front walkway while carting it into the house.”
Absolutely none of us wanted to eat a single bite, but neither did we want to hurt my mother’s feelings. She took such pride in her contribution.
Besides, it was Thanksgiving: A holiday when we are all supposed to remember how fortunate we are that we have a bounty before us. Given the plight of the world then (and now), the idea that we should complain because a vegetable smelled like a bus station bathroom seemed a tad ungrateful. And so, as a family, we would give thanks for all the food on the table, even the broccoli mold, and we would scoop some onto our plates. Then we would smile and smack our lips … and see how much we could hide under Mini Cooper-sized dollops of mashed potatoes.
One final thought: This holiday there will be more Thanksgiving tables looking Spartan than past years. If you can, please be sure to give generously to your local food shelf.
All the best,
Chris
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
As many of you know, I want these blog post to transcend spam, so I try to include a relevant essay. This month, it's a Thanksgiving remembrance.
But first, two bits of news:
1) My March novel, THE JACKAL'S MISTRESS, got its first two review this month: a starred review from Library Journal and a starred review from Kirkus and so I am thrilled. Also, 50 advance readers on NetGalley have given it an average (wait for it) 5-star review rating. I am, well, as gobsmacked as I am grateful.
If you want to preorder the novel, and I would be more appreciative than you know if you did, please visit or click wherever you buy your books.
2) If you want to give someone on your list a signed or personalized copy of one of my novels this holiday season, it's very easy. Call or visit the websites for the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, VT (802 388-2061) or Phoenix Books in Burlington, VT (802 448-3350). I visit them all the time and sign -- and they wrap and ship!
And, now, the essay:
On Thanksgiving, Mom Broke the Mold
The time of year when we all take a day off and reflect upon what we are thankful for (not being born a turkey is always a good place to start) is almost here. I am thankful for many things, not the least of which is that there will be no broccoli mold on the Thanksgiving table at my house this coming holiday.
A broccoli mold was always my mother’s culinary contribution to the festivities. Some of you might wonder why anyone would bring a dish to the Thanksgiving table that looked like a Bundt cake made of puke. (I am not exaggerating.) The very term “broccoli mold” is my own personal culinary “Silence of the Lambs,” two words that instantly catapult me back to the Thanksgivings of my childhood and the great horror that my mother — with only the best intentions — would inflict on our large extended family.
Also, just for the record, I have not made up this dish. Google the words “broccoli” and “mold,” and thousands of recipes appear. Fortunately, none of them are my mother’s. Hers was pretty basic: frozen broccoli, frozen creamed onions, and Jell-O. (If frozen Jell-O existed, my mother would have used that too. In her kitchen, foods came either frozen or canned.) Swirl it together in a food processor, dump it all into a Bundt cake pan, chill and serve.
Now, my mother was gifted in myriad ways, but she would have been the first to admit that no one was going to mistake her for a chef. She was smart and funny and generous. She was also completely incapable of making toast. That’s not hyperbole: Among those Proustian sounds I equate with my boyhood is the scraping of a stainless-steel knife on a piece of white bread that looks like someone just tried to toast it with a blowtorch.
Usually our family held Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle’s massive Victorian not far from Manhattan. My aunt would handle the lion’s share of the Thanksgiving preparation and this was no small task since there were between 19 and 21 of us in attendance most years. But my mother would insist on bringing the broccoli mold, despite my aunt’s reassurance that she needn’t bother. In hindsight, it’s pretty clear that my aunt wasn’t being polite, and I have always imagined the phone calls between my mom and my aunt went something like this:
MOM: I’ll bring the broccoli mold.
AUNT: You don’t have to.
MOM: It’s no problem!
AUNT: It is. It’s a huge problem. Even the dog won’t eat your broccoli mold, and he eats poop.
As I said, this is an imaginary conversation. In the real one, after my mother said, “It’s no problem,” my incredibly sweet aunt would have capitulated and said, “OK, thank you,” while thinking to herself, “Maybe she’ll drop it on the front walkway while carting it into the house.”
Absolutely none of us wanted to eat a single bite, but neither did we want to hurt my mother’s feelings. She took such pride in her contribution.
Besides, it was Thanksgiving: A holiday when we are all supposed to remember how fortunate we are that we have a bounty before us. Given the plight of the world then (and now), the idea that we should complain because a vegetable smelled like a bus station bathroom seemed a tad ungrateful. And so, as a family, we would give thanks for all the food on the table, even the broccoli mold, and we would scoop some onto our plates. Then we would smile and smack our lips … and see how much we could hide under Mini Cooper-sized dollops of mashed potatoes.
One final thought: This holiday there will be more Thanksgiving tables looking Spartan than past years. If you can, please be sure to give generously to your local food shelf.
All the best,
Chris
September 22, 2024
Why the Green Mountains Turn Red
22 September 2024
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
I want these newsletters to transcend spam, so I try to include a relevant essay. (Some of you told me you enjoyed my essays in this newsletter over the summer.) This month, it's about fall foliage -- and why the Green Mountains turn red. It appeared first in the Boston Globe Magazine.
But first, two bits of news:
1) I am appearing in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts on Tuesday, October 1. Yes, that IS the night of the Vice Presidential debate. I'm on at 7 pm, they're on at 9 pm. I'll be sure to get you out the doors early. It's my last event in the U.S. this year, BUT there will be a book tour in March for The Jackal's Mistress. Stay tuned:
https://chrisbohjalian.com/event/chri...
2) You can now preorder The Jackal's Mistress wherever you buy your books. (It arrives March 11.) Trust me, preorders are SO important to a book's success. So, please consider preordering by clicking below and learning more:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
And, now, the essay:
WHY THE GREEN MOUNTAINS TURN RED
I am standing in the remains of a turret in Scotland's Edzell Castle, staring down into the restored Renaissance garden that a British nobleman designed four hundred years ago. This castle is a gem: it has the power of history (Mary, Queen of Scots, visited here), the aura that permeates any relic the size of a football field, and a vast garden with roses, statuary, and hedgerows trimmed to spell out the inspirational motto of the Clan Lindsay, when seen from above.
When the British couple beside me hear that I hail from Vermont, however, the subject turns instantly to leaves. Specifically, it turns to Vermont leaves. An elderly French couple quickly chime in, wanting to share their memories of a September visit to the Green Mountains a decade earlier and how they had never seen anything like the Vermont foliage. I try to steer the conversation back to the castle in which we are standing, but in the opinion of these four Europeans, the Vermont autumn is infinitely more interesting than a castle built centuries ago.
The Vermont foliage is like that: for two or three weeks in late September and early October, the trees explode in an absolutely phantasmagoric display of color. The maples -- a third of the trees in the state -- turn shades of crimson and cherry and red, the birches become an almost neon yellow, and the ash becomes a purple that is as flamboyant as a child's most vibrant Magic Marker. The color moves inexorably from north to south, from the higher to the lower elevations, traveling through the trees like a tsunami.
And along with those colors come the leaf peepers. Over four million people visit Vermont in the autumn, more than six times the state's population -- spending over a billion dollars. Several upscale bed-and-breakfast owners tell me they are likely to do a sixth of their business during that three week period when the leaves may be at their best.
Moreover, while the tourists may be visiting in large measure because of the foliage, it's not merely the colors in the trees that have drawn them: it's the notion that the whole Vermont landscape is a throwback, an unspoiled glimpse of agrarian America. The dairy farm may be beleaguered in Vermont, but plenty still remain, and it is easy to find a hillside speckled with Holsteins or discover a red barn beside an elegant country skyscraper of a silo. Though the woods don't feel exactly primeval, there are pockets in the state where the trees still grow thick and the daylight can disappear.
Yet there is an irony to the foliage display the Vermont woods offers its guests every year, as well as to the notion that the state's remarkably beautiful landscape is the product of centuries of careful husbandry of the countryside. First, Vermonters almost completely deforested the state not once but twice in the last two-hundred years; second, if we hadn't leveled the forests, it is unlikely that our hillsides now would be exploding with myriad shades of red and yellow and orange.
* * *
I grew up loathing leaves. I was raised in the sort of mannered New England suburb in which lawns were supposed to be manicured every day of the year when they weren't buried in snow, and so I spent a great many September and October weekends as a child trying to keep up with the waves of leaves that would fall to their death between our house and the cul-de-sac on which we lived. (Autumn leaves to an elementary school student must be something like the mail in December to a postal worker: the leaves just keep falling and falling, and no sooner is the yard clean than a wind in the night blankets the ground with them once again.)
As an adult, however, I have come to love the magic of the Vermont foliage. My family's house is in the woods, though we live on a high ridge with a panoramic vista to the west: the woods around Otter Creek and then Snake Mountain.
I had lived in Vermont for a decade before I learned from my neighbor, the writer John Elder, that my state's autumnal beauty is the inadvertent result of man's natural rapaciousness. The two of us were hiking in the Bristol Cliffs Wilderness Area and talking about the book he was then writing about Robert Frost's appreciation of this section of the state.
Although the hills were steep and the trees were tall, Elder showed me the places where the woods had been logged a century earlier and the oxen had pulled the fallen timber from the forest. There, on the trunk of an old birch, were the remains of an iron cable. Once the cable would have been attached to the yoke of the oxen, so that if the animals slipped, they wouldn't tumble down the hill to their deaths.
His point? The trees around us were barely eighty years old.
Most of Vermont is like that. Despite two rounds of deforestation that laid the state bare, Vermont is now nearly eighty percent forest. Originally, man obliterated much of the forest at the end of the eighteenth century to make potash for gunpowder and soap, and to fuel iron forges. Then, once the land was cleared, it was kept free for the merino sheep that energized the economy through the Civil War. Vermont, however, was never great sheep country.
In reality, it has never been great farming country. The land is hilly, the soil is rocky, and the climate can be ornery. After the Civil War, both the people and the sheep left, often following the new railroads west, and trees returned to the meadows and pastures -- though this time the hardwoods returned in slightly greater numbers.
Still, even those trees didn't last long. The Vermonters who remained carved out a living any way they could, and that often meant logging. Despite the pleas of some of the first conservationists, the hillsides were soon cleared once again. Fortunately for leaf peepers, however, hardwoods like maples grow faster than pine. In torn, muddy ground no longer shielded from the sun by evergreens, the maple seeds took root and the trees quickly flourished. The configuration of the forest changed, with the result that the woods here comprise far more hardwoods and far fewer evergreens than two hundred years ago, and flatlanders have a reason to visit.
* * *
A dead leaf -- even a magnificent specimen from a healthy red maple -- is of little value. Preschoolers may trace its iconic fjords and bays, and stencil upon its topographic veins; idiosyncratic interior designers may shellac clusters of them onto walls and boxes and placemats. The reality, however, is this: once a leaf has fallen from a tree, it is well on its way toward decomposition. Either it will become part of the carpet of humus that covers the forest floor (cuisine at the very bottom of the food chain), or it will be raked (often by an exasperated elementary school student). A leaf, like the rest of us, loses its looks real fast after death.
Yet unlike the rest of us -- combinations of cells, animals or plants, it doesn't matter -- the leaves that make up the Vermont hillsides die dazzlingly beautiful deaths. That is, in essence, what we are watching when we gaze at the annual autumnal fireworks in the trees: we are watching leaves die.
The tree is preparing for winter, and a part of its process is the elimination of all those dainty leaves that are ill-equipped to endure the oncoming cold. The trees do so by slowly producing a layer of cells at the base of the leaf, thereby preventing fluids from reaching it.
The leaves, meanwhile, stop producing chlorophyll -- the chemical necessary for photosynthesis, the process by which a leaf uses sunlight to generate food. Chlorophyll is also the reason a leaf has such a rich green luster. When the chlorophyll is gone, however, the colors in the other chemicals (which have, of course, been there all along) become visible: the scarlet carotenoids of the maple tree, for example.
That beautiful red leaf, in other words, is slowly starving to death.
Often, leaf peepers (and the thousands of businesses that depend on them) worry about the summer weather and what effect it will have on the timing of the color. In reality, weather has little effect: an unusually hot, dry summer might put some stress on the trees and may cause the foliage to peak two or three days earlier than usual; conversely, a cooler summer with plenty of moisture and clouds might prolong it an extra half-week. But these swings are marginal. Leaves change because the days are growing shorter, and there is no variability there.
Sometimes weather can affect the brilliance of the foliage -- a drought can certainly dull the colors, just as sufficient moisture in the soil will enhance them -- but again, rainfall is a relatively small factor. The leaves are going to turn, and it will almost always be a remarkable spectacle to watch -- especially when it's part of a massive ribbon of color on a hill, with either a dairy farm or Norman Rockwell-esque village green in the foreground.
Douglas Mack, for years the chef and co-owner of a renowned bed and breakfast (and award-winning restaurant) in Vermont, believes that it is exactly this combination of natural beauty and archetypal New England imagery that generates such devotion to the state. "There's a decided homeyness that comes with the crisp autumn air, the changing leaves, and a fire in the fireplace. It's like coming home," he says. "Suddenly, your marriage looks wonderful and your kids have turned out OK. That's really what we're serving up here."
And that might be exactly why it touches some people more than the view of a garden from an ancient castle keep. The leaves signal the onset of winter and the desire in us all to cocoon in a place that is warm, cozy, and reminiscent of something called home.
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
I want these newsletters to transcend spam, so I try to include a relevant essay. (Some of you told me you enjoyed my essays in this newsletter over the summer.) This month, it's about fall foliage -- and why the Green Mountains turn red. It appeared first in the Boston Globe Magazine.
But first, two bits of news:
1) I am appearing in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts on Tuesday, October 1. Yes, that IS the night of the Vice Presidential debate. I'm on at 7 pm, they're on at 9 pm. I'll be sure to get you out the doors early. It's my last event in the U.S. this year, BUT there will be a book tour in March for The Jackal's Mistress. Stay tuned:
https://chrisbohjalian.com/event/chri...
2) You can now preorder The Jackal's Mistress wherever you buy your books. (It arrives March 11.) Trust me, preorders are SO important to a book's success. So, please consider preordering by clicking below and learning more:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
And, now, the essay:
WHY THE GREEN MOUNTAINS TURN RED
I am standing in the remains of a turret in Scotland's Edzell Castle, staring down into the restored Renaissance garden that a British nobleman designed four hundred years ago. This castle is a gem: it has the power of history (Mary, Queen of Scots, visited here), the aura that permeates any relic the size of a football field, and a vast garden with roses, statuary, and hedgerows trimmed to spell out the inspirational motto of the Clan Lindsay, when seen from above.
When the British couple beside me hear that I hail from Vermont, however, the subject turns instantly to leaves. Specifically, it turns to Vermont leaves. An elderly French couple quickly chime in, wanting to share their memories of a September visit to the Green Mountains a decade earlier and how they had never seen anything like the Vermont foliage. I try to steer the conversation back to the castle in which we are standing, but in the opinion of these four Europeans, the Vermont autumn is infinitely more interesting than a castle built centuries ago.
The Vermont foliage is like that: for two or three weeks in late September and early October, the trees explode in an absolutely phantasmagoric display of color. The maples -- a third of the trees in the state -- turn shades of crimson and cherry and red, the birches become an almost neon yellow, and the ash becomes a purple that is as flamboyant as a child's most vibrant Magic Marker. The color moves inexorably from north to south, from the higher to the lower elevations, traveling through the trees like a tsunami.
And along with those colors come the leaf peepers. Over four million people visit Vermont in the autumn, more than six times the state's population -- spending over a billion dollars. Several upscale bed-and-breakfast owners tell me they are likely to do a sixth of their business during that three week period when the leaves may be at their best.
Moreover, while the tourists may be visiting in large measure because of the foliage, it's not merely the colors in the trees that have drawn them: it's the notion that the whole Vermont landscape is a throwback, an unspoiled glimpse of agrarian America. The dairy farm may be beleaguered in Vermont, but plenty still remain, and it is easy to find a hillside speckled with Holsteins or discover a red barn beside an elegant country skyscraper of a silo. Though the woods don't feel exactly primeval, there are pockets in the state where the trees still grow thick and the daylight can disappear.
Yet there is an irony to the foliage display the Vermont woods offers its guests every year, as well as to the notion that the state's remarkably beautiful landscape is the product of centuries of careful husbandry of the countryside. First, Vermonters almost completely deforested the state not once but twice in the last two-hundred years; second, if we hadn't leveled the forests, it is unlikely that our hillsides now would be exploding with myriad shades of red and yellow and orange.
* * *
I grew up loathing leaves. I was raised in the sort of mannered New England suburb in which lawns were supposed to be manicured every day of the year when they weren't buried in snow, and so I spent a great many September and October weekends as a child trying to keep up with the waves of leaves that would fall to their death between our house and the cul-de-sac on which we lived. (Autumn leaves to an elementary school student must be something like the mail in December to a postal worker: the leaves just keep falling and falling, and no sooner is the yard clean than a wind in the night blankets the ground with them once again.)
As an adult, however, I have come to love the magic of the Vermont foliage. My family's house is in the woods, though we live on a high ridge with a panoramic vista to the west: the woods around Otter Creek and then Snake Mountain.
I had lived in Vermont for a decade before I learned from my neighbor, the writer John Elder, that my state's autumnal beauty is the inadvertent result of man's natural rapaciousness. The two of us were hiking in the Bristol Cliffs Wilderness Area and talking about the book he was then writing about Robert Frost's appreciation of this section of the state.
Although the hills were steep and the trees were tall, Elder showed me the places where the woods had been logged a century earlier and the oxen had pulled the fallen timber from the forest. There, on the trunk of an old birch, were the remains of an iron cable. Once the cable would have been attached to the yoke of the oxen, so that if the animals slipped, they wouldn't tumble down the hill to their deaths.
His point? The trees around us were barely eighty years old.
Most of Vermont is like that. Despite two rounds of deforestation that laid the state bare, Vermont is now nearly eighty percent forest. Originally, man obliterated much of the forest at the end of the eighteenth century to make potash for gunpowder and soap, and to fuel iron forges. Then, once the land was cleared, it was kept free for the merino sheep that energized the economy through the Civil War. Vermont, however, was never great sheep country.
In reality, it has never been great farming country. The land is hilly, the soil is rocky, and the climate can be ornery. After the Civil War, both the people and the sheep left, often following the new railroads west, and trees returned to the meadows and pastures -- though this time the hardwoods returned in slightly greater numbers.
Still, even those trees didn't last long. The Vermonters who remained carved out a living any way they could, and that often meant logging. Despite the pleas of some of the first conservationists, the hillsides were soon cleared once again. Fortunately for leaf peepers, however, hardwoods like maples grow faster than pine. In torn, muddy ground no longer shielded from the sun by evergreens, the maple seeds took root and the trees quickly flourished. The configuration of the forest changed, with the result that the woods here comprise far more hardwoods and far fewer evergreens than two hundred years ago, and flatlanders have a reason to visit.
* * *
A dead leaf -- even a magnificent specimen from a healthy red maple -- is of little value. Preschoolers may trace its iconic fjords and bays, and stencil upon its topographic veins; idiosyncratic interior designers may shellac clusters of them onto walls and boxes and placemats. The reality, however, is this: once a leaf has fallen from a tree, it is well on its way toward decomposition. Either it will become part of the carpet of humus that covers the forest floor (cuisine at the very bottom of the food chain), or it will be raked (often by an exasperated elementary school student). A leaf, like the rest of us, loses its looks real fast after death.
Yet unlike the rest of us -- combinations of cells, animals or plants, it doesn't matter -- the leaves that make up the Vermont hillsides die dazzlingly beautiful deaths. That is, in essence, what we are watching when we gaze at the annual autumnal fireworks in the trees: we are watching leaves die.
The tree is preparing for winter, and a part of its process is the elimination of all those dainty leaves that are ill-equipped to endure the oncoming cold. The trees do so by slowly producing a layer of cells at the base of the leaf, thereby preventing fluids from reaching it.
The leaves, meanwhile, stop producing chlorophyll -- the chemical necessary for photosynthesis, the process by which a leaf uses sunlight to generate food. Chlorophyll is also the reason a leaf has such a rich green luster. When the chlorophyll is gone, however, the colors in the other chemicals (which have, of course, been there all along) become visible: the scarlet carotenoids of the maple tree, for example.
That beautiful red leaf, in other words, is slowly starving to death.
Often, leaf peepers (and the thousands of businesses that depend on them) worry about the summer weather and what effect it will have on the timing of the color. In reality, weather has little effect: an unusually hot, dry summer might put some stress on the trees and may cause the foliage to peak two or three days earlier than usual; conversely, a cooler summer with plenty of moisture and clouds might prolong it an extra half-week. But these swings are marginal. Leaves change because the days are growing shorter, and there is no variability there.
Sometimes weather can affect the brilliance of the foliage -- a drought can certainly dull the colors, just as sufficient moisture in the soil will enhance them -- but again, rainfall is a relatively small factor. The leaves are going to turn, and it will almost always be a remarkable spectacle to watch -- especially when it's part of a massive ribbon of color on a hill, with either a dairy farm or Norman Rockwell-esque village green in the foreground.
Douglas Mack, for years the chef and co-owner of a renowned bed and breakfast (and award-winning restaurant) in Vermont, believes that it is exactly this combination of natural beauty and archetypal New England imagery that generates such devotion to the state. "There's a decided homeyness that comes with the crisp autumn air, the changing leaves, and a fire in the fireplace. It's like coming home," he says. "Suddenly, your marriage looks wonderful and your kids have turned out OK. That's really what we're serving up here."
And that might be exactly why it touches some people more than the view of a garden from an ancient castle keep. The leaves signal the onset of winter and the desire in us all to cocoon in a place that is warm, cozy, and reminiscent of something called home.
June 6, 2024
Omaha Was No Walk on the Beach.
Omaha Was No Walk on the Beach.
6 June 2024
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
Eighty years ago yesterday, the late Ron Hadley was strolling down the streets of Weymouth, an English Channel port southwest of London, in his U.S. Navy’s ensign uniform.
Eighty years ago today he was skippering a 50-foot long landing craft through the rough waves at Omaha Beach on Normandy, the water around him churned high by the vast armada of boats and — as he approached the beach — the wind riddled with the rapid fire blasts of German 88-millimeter guns firing anti-personnel shells. He was a right flank commander of his wave of landing craft during the D-Day invasion and the eventual liberation of Europe from Hitler’s Germany.
He would pilot his LCM (landing craft medium) from the troop ship to the beach twice, the first time about 6:30 in the morning and the second time close to noon. Initially, he was a part of the fifth wave of boats, but the signalman at the picket boat about 2,000 yards from shore told him to ignore the planned pace and get to the beach as quickly as possible because the G.I.s were getting slaughtered and they needed men on the beach now. And so that first time Ron reached the shore he was actually in the midst of the second and third waves.
“I had 36 combat engineers on board and when we let down the ramp the Germans had set up a cross fire across our bow. Those 36 men never made it more than a few yards from the boat. They never made it on to the beach,” he recalled when I interviewed him before he died. When he was back at the shore five hours later with another three dozen men, the invasion had a foothold: This time his soldiers made it to the sand. On a ridge in the distance he even saw a column of German soldiers who had surrendered. Nevertheless, among the longest hours of his life were when he was ferrying that second group of soldiers to the landing site, because he couldn’t help but wonder if he was bringing them all to a certain death.
I had known Ron nearly two decades before I learned what he had endured and accomplished on June 6, 1944. Like so many veterans -- including my Uncle Warren Nelson, a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne -- he didn’t talk about it much. When he’d lived in Lincoln, Vermont we served together as board members on a senior citizen housing project in town. He had also been one of the leaders of the effort to raise the money to build a new library in the village. He was, as far as I knew, a retired executive who had had a successful career with AT&T, a guy from northern California who at some point had discovered Vermont and the small village we both called home. When I thought of him, I thought mostly of the hours he volunteered on behalf of the community and his gravelly, good-natured laugh.
At the time, I had no idea that he had been a part of the invasion of Normandy. Or, months later, the invasion of southern France. And in 1945 the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. “But D-Day,” he said, “was the most startling, the most dramatic, the most horrible — and the most memorable.”
As soon as he had graduated from San Jose State University in 1943, he would go east to the Columbia University Midshipman School. He would train there, then in Norfolk, Va., and finally at Loch Long in Scotland.
When I interviewed him, he still had the slender topographic map he had used that morning 80 years ago today: The elevation of the hills just beyond the beach and the church steeple that was one of his key landmarks. He had been back to the American cemetery on the bluff overlooking the beach. He died in 2019, forever a part of that greatest generation.
“It took me a long, long time before I could talk about it," he mused when we discussed June 6, 1944. "But people should know what took place — that people were giving up their lives for something that mattered. It’s important that people know about that moment in history.”
Indeed. And it’s important that we remember people like Ron.
All the best,
Chris
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (still), Litsy, TikTok (Very Badly), Goodreads
6 June 2024
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
Eighty years ago yesterday, the late Ron Hadley was strolling down the streets of Weymouth, an English Channel port southwest of London, in his U.S. Navy’s ensign uniform.
Eighty years ago today he was skippering a 50-foot long landing craft through the rough waves at Omaha Beach on Normandy, the water around him churned high by the vast armada of boats and — as he approached the beach — the wind riddled with the rapid fire blasts of German 88-millimeter guns firing anti-personnel shells. He was a right flank commander of his wave of landing craft during the D-Day invasion and the eventual liberation of Europe from Hitler’s Germany.
He would pilot his LCM (landing craft medium) from the troop ship to the beach twice, the first time about 6:30 in the morning and the second time close to noon. Initially, he was a part of the fifth wave of boats, but the signalman at the picket boat about 2,000 yards from shore told him to ignore the planned pace and get to the beach as quickly as possible because the G.I.s were getting slaughtered and they needed men on the beach now. And so that first time Ron reached the shore he was actually in the midst of the second and third waves.
“I had 36 combat engineers on board and when we let down the ramp the Germans had set up a cross fire across our bow. Those 36 men never made it more than a few yards from the boat. They never made it on to the beach,” he recalled when I interviewed him before he died. When he was back at the shore five hours later with another three dozen men, the invasion had a foothold: This time his soldiers made it to the sand. On a ridge in the distance he even saw a column of German soldiers who had surrendered. Nevertheless, among the longest hours of his life were when he was ferrying that second group of soldiers to the landing site, because he couldn’t help but wonder if he was bringing them all to a certain death.
I had known Ron nearly two decades before I learned what he had endured and accomplished on June 6, 1944. Like so many veterans -- including my Uncle Warren Nelson, a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne -- he didn’t talk about it much. When he’d lived in Lincoln, Vermont we served together as board members on a senior citizen housing project in town. He had also been one of the leaders of the effort to raise the money to build a new library in the village. He was, as far as I knew, a retired executive who had had a successful career with AT&T, a guy from northern California who at some point had discovered Vermont and the small village we both called home. When I thought of him, I thought mostly of the hours he volunteered on behalf of the community and his gravelly, good-natured laugh.
At the time, I had no idea that he had been a part of the invasion of Normandy. Or, months later, the invasion of southern France. And in 1945 the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. “But D-Day,” he said, “was the most startling, the most dramatic, the most horrible — and the most memorable.”
As soon as he had graduated from San Jose State University in 1943, he would go east to the Columbia University Midshipman School. He would train there, then in Norfolk, Va., and finally at Loch Long in Scotland.
When I interviewed him, he still had the slender topographic map he had used that morning 80 years ago today: The elevation of the hills just beyond the beach and the church steeple that was one of his key landmarks. He had been back to the American cemetery on the bluff overlooking the beach. He died in 2019, forever a part of that greatest generation.
“It took me a long, long time before I could talk about it," he mused when we discussed June 6, 1944. "But people should know what took place — that people were giving up their lives for something that mattered. It’s important that people know about that moment in history.”
Indeed. And it’s important that we remember people like Ron.
All the best,
Chris
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (still), Litsy, TikTok (Very Badly), Goodreads
March 20, 2024
On sale now! Pick up your copy of The Princess of Las Vegas!
"Riveting... Same old same old isn't something you get from Chris Bohjalian. No ruts for this author... Bohjalian nails the seedy atmosphere of Las Vegas off the strip.” — Gail Pennington, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
20 March 2024
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
You've all been so patient. Well, wherever you are, today you can meet The Princess of Las Vegas.
This new novel, my 24th? Imagine the TV series "Hacks" meets "The Crown," or the movie "Oceans 11" meets "The Queen." (If you view a Lady Di meets Las Vegas cocktail as a surprising concoction, well. . .the only Princess Diana museum in America is in -- wait for it -- Sin City.)
Yes, the princess is fake, but the murders are real.
Nevertheless, rather like The Flight Attendant or The Lioness, I view this new novel as a character study in the guise of a thriller.
And who isn't fascinated by Las Vegas, that fiery meteorite that shoots across the night sky, that phantasmagoric fun house mirror for the damaged and dreamers alike? Yes, I am fascinated by Vegas. My lovely bride and I renewed our wedding vows at the iconic Little White Chapel with Elvis as our officiant. And everyone, once in their life, should have the privilege of seeing their soulmate walked down the aisle by an Elvis impersonator singing "Love Me Tender," with a really tight karaoke machine as his band.
Order your copy or learn more today by clicking here: https://chrisbohjalian.com/the-prince... .
And find me on tour this month and next by clicking here: https://chrisbohjalian.com/meet-chris/
I will be in two dozen cities over the next month.
As always, thank you for your faith in my work!
All the best,
Chris
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (yes, still), Litsy, TikTok (Very Badly), Goodreads
"Chris Bohjalian has a type. His recent thrillers are about glamorous, imperiled women who may not be trustworthy but whose senses of humor makes us like them anyway…[He] writes with verve and humor, and his depiction of a seedy, past-its prime casino feels just right… [and he] keeps us guessing until the end.” Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
20 March 2024
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
You've all been so patient. Well, wherever you are, today you can meet The Princess of Las Vegas.
This new novel, my 24th? Imagine the TV series "Hacks" meets "The Crown," or the movie "Oceans 11" meets "The Queen." (If you view a Lady Di meets Las Vegas cocktail as a surprising concoction, well. . .the only Princess Diana museum in America is in -- wait for it -- Sin City.)
Yes, the princess is fake, but the murders are real.
Nevertheless, rather like The Flight Attendant or The Lioness, I view this new novel as a character study in the guise of a thriller.
And who isn't fascinated by Las Vegas, that fiery meteorite that shoots across the night sky, that phantasmagoric fun house mirror for the damaged and dreamers alike? Yes, I am fascinated by Vegas. My lovely bride and I renewed our wedding vows at the iconic Little White Chapel with Elvis as our officiant. And everyone, once in their life, should have the privilege of seeing their soulmate walked down the aisle by an Elvis impersonator singing "Love Me Tender," with a really tight karaoke machine as his band.
Order your copy or learn more today by clicking here: https://chrisbohjalian.com/the-prince... .
And find me on tour this month and next by clicking here: https://chrisbohjalian.com/meet-chris/
I will be in two dozen cities over the next month.
As always, thank you for your faith in my work!
All the best,
Chris
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (yes, still), Litsy, TikTok (Very Badly), Goodreads
"Chris Bohjalian has a type. His recent thrillers are about glamorous, imperiled women who may not be trustworthy but whose senses of humor makes us like them anyway…[He] writes with verve and humor, and his depiction of a seedy, past-its prime casino feels just right… [and he] keeps us guessing until the end.” Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
March 16, 2024
We Love Diana Because She Took on the Royals and Won
by Chris Bohjalian
(This essay appeared originally in The Daily Beast on March 16, 2024.)
Diana Spencer—aka Princess Diana, Lady Di, Dutch—lived barely a year as a divorced woman. Her divorce from Prince Charles was finalized on Aug. 28, 1996; she’d die in the infamous car crash in Paris a mere 368 days later on Aug. 31, 1997.
She had, in fact, been separated from Charles since December 1992, living in a murky marital purgatory for nearly four years before their divorce—a limbo, given her status as “royal but not royal,” that arguably continued even those last 368 days between divorce and death. She was a thirty-something single mom of two boys figuring out how to date… in a fishbowl. That was (speaking metaphorically) a minefield and took, I’m confident, more courage than her walks into actual minefields.
There are a variety of reasons why many of us remain obsessed with her and her progeny. The movies, the books, the documentaries, the musicals, the plays, and the TV series are an indication of the depth and breadth of our addiction.
OK, only some of us are addicted, and most of that “us” is female. I happen to be that rare male who, apparently, knows more about the royal family than I do about Rome.
I am fascinated by Diana. I’ve had historical figures in some of my earlier books, such as Hour of the Witch and The Lioness, but my new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, is the first time I’ve attempted to explore why one of them remains in the zeitgeist long after she’s gone.
Long after she’s gone.
Perhaps I should have written, “after she’s gone.” Because it hasn’t been all that long. And we know that. The wounds certainly haven’t healed for the Spencers and Windsors, for her friends and lovers and butlers and handlers and, yes, children. What must it be like for them to see her mythologized? Just when the scab might be healing, along comes another re-imagining of the woman. And what does it say about the rest of us that we can’t get enough of Lady Di?
I can’t speak for the playwrights, novelists, and screenwriters who’ve attempted to resurrect a woman gone barely a quarter of a century, but I know for me it’s too soon.
And so the titular “princess” of my new novel is not the woman herself, but instead a Princess Diana impersonator in a tribute show at a shabby, off-the-strip Las Vegas casino. People who know bits of Diana’s biography will recognize some moments: there she is dancing with John Travolta at the Reagan White House, there she is embracing her two little boys, there she is trying to cope with a debilitating eating disorder. (There’s only one instance we know when Diana wrote to someone about bulimia. In January 1996, she penned a letter to Richard Saunders on Kensington Palace stationery to comfort him, reassuring him that if she could conquer bulimia, he could, too. The letter is part of the collection of Diana memorabilia at the Princess Diana Exhibit in—wait for it—Las Vegas.)
But by writing a novel about an impersonator, rather than the princess herself, I was hoping to examine why we commoners are drawn to her—and, perhaps, to understand her particular appeal for the lonely and damaged, and why we remain fixated on those cobalt eyes and iconic lowered chin. The blond bob.
Now, The Princess of Las Vegas is, like easily a half-dozen of my novels, a character study in the guise of a slow-burn thriller. The setting is Vegas, and so there are mobsters and schemers and dreamers, as well as the wounded and the just plan sad. There are fake Elvises, Sinatras, and Michel Jacksons. And there are, yes, a couple of corpses. But lots of it, for me, was a journey into why we won’t let Diana go, why we insist on revisiting her story.
And the answer is not, it seems to me, the tragedy of her death at 36. Heaven, if it’s real, is packed with dead, young celebrities who no longer loom large in our minds, including the infamous “27 Club” of musicians who died at that age. Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, and Janis Joplin are only four of the most well-known.
Nor is it the idea that all of us supposed when Diana and Charles had their fairy tale wedding in 1981 that this would be a fairy tale marriage. (Oh, possibly it was. But, if so, the saga was spun by Grimm, not Disney.)
Rather, I suspect, we are still riveted by Diana because that 20-year-old girl in a wedding train the length of the river Thames would grow into a woman who did not simply take on a millennial-old monarchy—she’d beat it. She’d beat them, the people behind all that rigidity and tradition, at least some of whom would prove to be soulless hypocrites. She’d win. Her knees might have been buckled by betrayal and heartbreak, but she got off the mat and, in the end, stood tall. She stopped slouching against her statuesque height and denying who she was inside.
Which, perhaps, might also explain why so many more women than men follow the royals. The men in all those castles, most of the time, behaved a lot worse than the women. I find it interesting that even Queen Elizabeth, so vilified in the days after Diana’s death, would have her image rehabilitated by the time she died in 2022. (I credit our adoration for Claire Foy in the first two seasons of The Crown.)
Moreover, Diana was so fearless that she would do the most courageous thing imaginable. She would share her vulnerabilities and brokenness with the world. Whether it was her eating disorder or her despair at the idea she had married the wrong man—and that man had married the wrong woman—she would allow us a window into her pain. That, I suppose, is the same part of her that reached out to men stricken with AIDS and children injured by landmines, and would lead millions of people around the world to “identify” with her. We saw her as an underdog for whom we could root, a princess who led (her words) “from the heart, not the head.” She was the woman whom then Prime Minister Tony Blair christened “the people’s princess” while mourning her the day that she died. (Isn’t it fascinating to realize she was never called “the people’s princess” when she was alive?)
And, yes, Diana defeated the monarchy not because she was sweet and humble. Let’s face it, rarely do the meek in point of fact inherit the Earth. She won because she played the game better than the royals themselves, and while the press, in the end, deserves much of the blame for her death, she herself could be a Machiavellian publicist who used them, too. (Who knows? If she’d lived, perhaps she would have taught her daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton, how to Photoshop an image for the social networks so you don’t fuel conspiracy theories that you’re dead, rather than merely recuperating from abdominal surgery in private. I think Diana would have been one hell of an Instagram star.)
Even in the days before that cataclysmic car accident in Paris, Diana was wielding that double-edged sword as if she were fighting for her life in Game of Thrones—which she was. Take, for instance, those iconic images of her on the Jonikal, the yacht owned by the father of her last paramour, Dodi Fayed, in the Mediterranean waters off Corsica. There are the photos of the kiss with Fayed and the poignant snapshot of her alone in a light blue tank suit on the yacht’s diving board, an image beloved because it seems to capture her loneliness on the one hand—a solitary woman with so much sea and sky around her—while conjuring the idea that the poor girl is about to walk the plank on a pirate ship. The fact she’d be gone within days makes it all the more dramatic in hindsight.
ut here’s the thing about those photographs. While Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, may have thought he was the puppet master pulling the strings of the media, biographer Tina Brown, among others, suggests that Diana herself may have been tipping off the paparazzi. When those images would appear in the tabloids, she called one photographer not to complain that she felt her privacy had been violated, but to grumble that they were fuzzy. Let’s not forget, this was a woman so media savvy by 1994 that while Charles was confessing to the world on British television that he had indeed been unfaithful to Diana, she showed up at a gala in what has come to be called the “revenge dress,” a tight, black, off-the-shoulder sheath that fell to mid-thigh.
Diana’s trajectory may have begun as a victim, but it didn’t end there. She was no milquetoast princess. She was a fighter who knew what she wanted—and that, I believe, is why we still love her today.
_____________________________________
Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 24 books, including his new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, to be published this Tuesday, March 19. You can read all about it right here on Goodreads.
(This essay appeared originally in The Daily Beast on March 16, 2024.)
Diana Spencer—aka Princess Diana, Lady Di, Dutch—lived barely a year as a divorced woman. Her divorce from Prince Charles was finalized on Aug. 28, 1996; she’d die in the infamous car crash in Paris a mere 368 days later on Aug. 31, 1997.
She had, in fact, been separated from Charles since December 1992, living in a murky marital purgatory for nearly four years before their divorce—a limbo, given her status as “royal but not royal,” that arguably continued even those last 368 days between divorce and death. She was a thirty-something single mom of two boys figuring out how to date… in a fishbowl. That was (speaking metaphorically) a minefield and took, I’m confident, more courage than her walks into actual minefields.
There are a variety of reasons why many of us remain obsessed with her and her progeny. The movies, the books, the documentaries, the musicals, the plays, and the TV series are an indication of the depth and breadth of our addiction.
OK, only some of us are addicted, and most of that “us” is female. I happen to be that rare male who, apparently, knows more about the royal family than I do about Rome.
I am fascinated by Diana. I’ve had historical figures in some of my earlier books, such as Hour of the Witch and The Lioness, but my new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, is the first time I’ve attempted to explore why one of them remains in the zeitgeist long after she’s gone.
Long after she’s gone.
Perhaps I should have written, “after she’s gone.” Because it hasn’t been all that long. And we know that. The wounds certainly haven’t healed for the Spencers and Windsors, for her friends and lovers and butlers and handlers and, yes, children. What must it be like for them to see her mythologized? Just when the scab might be healing, along comes another re-imagining of the woman. And what does it say about the rest of us that we can’t get enough of Lady Di?
I can’t speak for the playwrights, novelists, and screenwriters who’ve attempted to resurrect a woman gone barely a quarter of a century, but I know for me it’s too soon.
And so the titular “princess” of my new novel is not the woman herself, but instead a Princess Diana impersonator in a tribute show at a shabby, off-the-strip Las Vegas casino. People who know bits of Diana’s biography will recognize some moments: there she is dancing with John Travolta at the Reagan White House, there she is embracing her two little boys, there she is trying to cope with a debilitating eating disorder. (There’s only one instance we know when Diana wrote to someone about bulimia. In January 1996, she penned a letter to Richard Saunders on Kensington Palace stationery to comfort him, reassuring him that if she could conquer bulimia, he could, too. The letter is part of the collection of Diana memorabilia at the Princess Diana Exhibit in—wait for it—Las Vegas.)
But by writing a novel about an impersonator, rather than the princess herself, I was hoping to examine why we commoners are drawn to her—and, perhaps, to understand her particular appeal for the lonely and damaged, and why we remain fixated on those cobalt eyes and iconic lowered chin. The blond bob.
Now, The Princess of Las Vegas is, like easily a half-dozen of my novels, a character study in the guise of a slow-burn thriller. The setting is Vegas, and so there are mobsters and schemers and dreamers, as well as the wounded and the just plan sad. There are fake Elvises, Sinatras, and Michel Jacksons. And there are, yes, a couple of corpses. But lots of it, for me, was a journey into why we won’t let Diana go, why we insist on revisiting her story.
And the answer is not, it seems to me, the tragedy of her death at 36. Heaven, if it’s real, is packed with dead, young celebrities who no longer loom large in our minds, including the infamous “27 Club” of musicians who died at that age. Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, and Janis Joplin are only four of the most well-known.
Nor is it the idea that all of us supposed when Diana and Charles had their fairy tale wedding in 1981 that this would be a fairy tale marriage. (Oh, possibly it was. But, if so, the saga was spun by Grimm, not Disney.)
Rather, I suspect, we are still riveted by Diana because that 20-year-old girl in a wedding train the length of the river Thames would grow into a woman who did not simply take on a millennial-old monarchy—she’d beat it. She’d beat them, the people behind all that rigidity and tradition, at least some of whom would prove to be soulless hypocrites. She’d win. Her knees might have been buckled by betrayal and heartbreak, but she got off the mat and, in the end, stood tall. She stopped slouching against her statuesque height and denying who she was inside.
Which, perhaps, might also explain why so many more women than men follow the royals. The men in all those castles, most of the time, behaved a lot worse than the women. I find it interesting that even Queen Elizabeth, so vilified in the days after Diana’s death, would have her image rehabilitated by the time she died in 2022. (I credit our adoration for Claire Foy in the first two seasons of The Crown.)
Moreover, Diana was so fearless that she would do the most courageous thing imaginable. She would share her vulnerabilities and brokenness with the world. Whether it was her eating disorder or her despair at the idea she had married the wrong man—and that man had married the wrong woman—she would allow us a window into her pain. That, I suppose, is the same part of her that reached out to men stricken with AIDS and children injured by landmines, and would lead millions of people around the world to “identify” with her. We saw her as an underdog for whom we could root, a princess who led (her words) “from the heart, not the head.” She was the woman whom then Prime Minister Tony Blair christened “the people’s princess” while mourning her the day that she died. (Isn’t it fascinating to realize she was never called “the people’s princess” when she was alive?)
And, yes, Diana defeated the monarchy not because she was sweet and humble. Let’s face it, rarely do the meek in point of fact inherit the Earth. She won because she played the game better than the royals themselves, and while the press, in the end, deserves much of the blame for her death, she herself could be a Machiavellian publicist who used them, too. (Who knows? If she’d lived, perhaps she would have taught her daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton, how to Photoshop an image for the social networks so you don’t fuel conspiracy theories that you’re dead, rather than merely recuperating from abdominal surgery in private. I think Diana would have been one hell of an Instagram star.)
Even in the days before that cataclysmic car accident in Paris, Diana was wielding that double-edged sword as if she were fighting for her life in Game of Thrones—which she was. Take, for instance, those iconic images of her on the Jonikal, the yacht owned by the father of her last paramour, Dodi Fayed, in the Mediterranean waters off Corsica. There are the photos of the kiss with Fayed and the poignant snapshot of her alone in a light blue tank suit on the yacht’s diving board, an image beloved because it seems to capture her loneliness on the one hand—a solitary woman with so much sea and sky around her—while conjuring the idea that the poor girl is about to walk the plank on a pirate ship. The fact she’d be gone within days makes it all the more dramatic in hindsight.
ut here’s the thing about those photographs. While Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, may have thought he was the puppet master pulling the strings of the media, biographer Tina Brown, among others, suggests that Diana herself may have been tipping off the paparazzi. When those images would appear in the tabloids, she called one photographer not to complain that she felt her privacy had been violated, but to grumble that they were fuzzy. Let’s not forget, this was a woman so media savvy by 1994 that while Charles was confessing to the world on British television that he had indeed been unfaithful to Diana, she showed up at a gala in what has come to be called the “revenge dress,” a tight, black, off-the-shoulder sheath that fell to mid-thigh.
Diana’s trajectory may have begun as a victim, but it didn’t end there. She was no milquetoast princess. She was a fighter who knew what she wanted—and that, I believe, is why we still love her today.
_____________________________________
Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 24 books, including his new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, to be published this Tuesday, March 19. You can read all about it right here on Goodreads.
March 13, 2024
A Royal Face Plant, yes. A Royal Cover-up, probably not.
Sarah, Duchess of York — the other Fergie, the one who didn’t sing with the Black Eyed Peas — once called her sister-in-law, Diana Spencer, “the best publicist in history.”
I agree. It was how, in the end, Diana, would beat the monarchy at their own game. (Of course, that was one hell of a pyrrhic victory, since it was the public relations pandora’s box she opened that would lead, in large measure, to her cataclysmic death in a Paris tunnel in 1997.)
How would Diana have done in the era of smart phones and Instagram? I’d wager pretty well: this was a woman, for instance, who knew that the one that she wanted — to paraphrase the musical, “Grease” — at the Reagan White House in 1984 was John Travolta, with whom she would dance as the clock neared midnight. The photos are epic.
Which brings me to the kerfuffle surrounding the current Princess of Wales, Catherine, a.k.a., Kate Middleton.
First of all, my hope is that Kate is healing and will soon be performing her royal duties once again. She had abdominal surgery of an undisclosed sort in January and has only been seen since then in one paparazzi photo of her in a car.
Until, perhaps, this past Sunday, when Kensington Palace released a photo of her looking every bit the beatific mom with her three adorable children. The photo was in honor of British Mother’s Day and was, I suppose, an attempt to reassure the world that she was fine.
But then people spotted small anomalies in the photo, things like the position of Prince’s Louis’s hand or the alignment of Princess Charlotte’s sleeve. Pretty minor stuff. . .but it was enough to impugn the veracity of the image and for news services, newspapers, and websites to withdrew the image. And then, on Monday, Kate issued an apology on the Kensington Palace socials: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”
And so instead of quelling fears that the next Queen Consort – the wife of King William – is still ailing, she seems to have fanned the flames of all sorts of royal conspiracies (including, yes, the idea that Kate died on the operating room table).
I view most of those stories as rubbish. Flat earther or we-never-went-to-the-moon nonsense. My personal belief is that Kate is mending and someday we’ll know precisely what the surgery was, and I will be thrilled if it was something cosmetic, not life-threatening. Good Lord, maybe it was a hernia and there was a complication.
But what this kerfuffle does make clear is that the Windsors are still their own worst enemies when it comes to p.r.
Diana Spencer is revered today for a lot of reasons, including the reality she was decent and kind and reached out to the sick and the lame: to men dying of AIDS and children dying from or disfigured by landmines. But no one used the media with her alacrity. She was a young woman who felt isolated and alone in the castles she’d lionized in her adolescent fairy tale dreams, and woke up fast to the reality that if she were going to ever tell her side of the story, she needed to be better than the armies of men and women around the royal family who thought they could control the media.
The fact is, they couldn’t.
But Diana could (until, alas, she couldn’t either, and the monster she created turned on her).
Diana, if she were alive today, likely would have photoshopped her photos shamelessly. Good Lord, I do. We all do.
My sense is that Kate Middleton committed no crime other than photoshop ineptitude. But it is also the sort of face plant that, alas, makes the Windsors sometimes their own worst enemies.
______
Chris Bohjalian is a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist sufficiently obsessed with the royals that his new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, features a Princess Diana impersonator at a Las Vegas casino. It arrives March 19 and you can learn all about here on Goodreads or on www.ChrisBohjalian.com .
I agree. It was how, in the end, Diana, would beat the monarchy at their own game. (Of course, that was one hell of a pyrrhic victory, since it was the public relations pandora’s box she opened that would lead, in large measure, to her cataclysmic death in a Paris tunnel in 1997.)
How would Diana have done in the era of smart phones and Instagram? I’d wager pretty well: this was a woman, for instance, who knew that the one that she wanted — to paraphrase the musical, “Grease” — at the Reagan White House in 1984 was John Travolta, with whom she would dance as the clock neared midnight. The photos are epic.
Which brings me to the kerfuffle surrounding the current Princess of Wales, Catherine, a.k.a., Kate Middleton.
First of all, my hope is that Kate is healing and will soon be performing her royal duties once again. She had abdominal surgery of an undisclosed sort in January and has only been seen since then in one paparazzi photo of her in a car.
Until, perhaps, this past Sunday, when Kensington Palace released a photo of her looking every bit the beatific mom with her three adorable children. The photo was in honor of British Mother’s Day and was, I suppose, an attempt to reassure the world that she was fine.
But then people spotted small anomalies in the photo, things like the position of Prince’s Louis’s hand or the alignment of Princess Charlotte’s sleeve. Pretty minor stuff. . .but it was enough to impugn the veracity of the image and for news services, newspapers, and websites to withdrew the image. And then, on Monday, Kate issued an apology on the Kensington Palace socials: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.”
And so instead of quelling fears that the next Queen Consort – the wife of King William – is still ailing, she seems to have fanned the flames of all sorts of royal conspiracies (including, yes, the idea that Kate died on the operating room table).
I view most of those stories as rubbish. Flat earther or we-never-went-to-the-moon nonsense. My personal belief is that Kate is mending and someday we’ll know precisely what the surgery was, and I will be thrilled if it was something cosmetic, not life-threatening. Good Lord, maybe it was a hernia and there was a complication.
But what this kerfuffle does make clear is that the Windsors are still their own worst enemies when it comes to p.r.
Diana Spencer is revered today for a lot of reasons, including the reality she was decent and kind and reached out to the sick and the lame: to men dying of AIDS and children dying from or disfigured by landmines. But no one used the media with her alacrity. She was a young woman who felt isolated and alone in the castles she’d lionized in her adolescent fairy tale dreams, and woke up fast to the reality that if she were going to ever tell her side of the story, she needed to be better than the armies of men and women around the royal family who thought they could control the media.
The fact is, they couldn’t.
But Diana could (until, alas, she couldn’t either, and the monster she created turned on her).
Diana, if she were alive today, likely would have photoshopped her photos shamelessly. Good Lord, I do. We all do.
My sense is that Kate Middleton committed no crime other than photoshop ineptitude. But it is also the sort of face plant that, alas, makes the Windsors sometimes their own worst enemies.
______
Chris Bohjalian is a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist sufficiently obsessed with the royals that his new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, features a Princess Diana impersonator at a Las Vegas casino. It arrives March 19 and you can learn all about here on Goodreads or on www.ChrisBohjalian.com .
March 7, 2024
The Princess of Las Vegas Roll the Dice Book Tour
“Subsisting on Adderall and Valium, a slim, beautiful Princess Diana impersonator makes a good living in Vegas until the day her estranged sister shows up, setting in motion a thriller that involves organized crime, unscrupulous cryptocurrency bros and shady politicians.” -- The New York Times, "15 Books Coming in March"
7 March 2024
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
One of the joys of reading is sharing the experience. We all love to talk about the tales we're devouring, and debate what worked and what didn't, and whether (or not) we had "all the feels."
The main reason I get to do what I do -- write books and plays -- is because of all of you. And for that I am more grateful than I can tell you.
Which is why I can't wait to hit the road again on THE PRINCESS OF LAS VEGAS "Roll the Dice" Book Tour.
Viva Las Vegas!
You can read all about my new novel right here on Goodreads, so let's leave it at this: it's the TV series "Hacks" meets "The Crown," or the movie "Oceans 11" meets "The Queen."
As we say on the cover: the princess is fake, but the murders are real.
In any case, the book tour runs from March 16 - April 28. I will be in 20 cities in 13 states, and joined by some of my favorite writers, including Laura Zigman, Margot Harrison, and Lisa Unger.
Here are the venues, with events stretching from San Diego, CA to Burlington, VT and Tampa, FL to Turlock, CA. Click here to see them all:
https://chrisbohjalian.com/events/
Now, if you want signed books but I'm not coming to your town...visit the websites for the Vermont Book Shop, Phoenix Books (in Vermont), or bn.com .
And, of course, you can always preorder it wherever you buy your books:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
In the meantime, thank you for your faith in my work.
I hope to see lots of you on the road!
All the best,
Chris
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (still), Litsy, TikTok (Very Badly), and right here on Goodreads!
“A thrilling symphony of royal impersonators, teenage hackers and run-down casinos with multiple mysteries at its core. . . Bohjalian is no stranger to quirky folks in increasingly twisted situations. . . [and in Crissy and Betsy he] has created two distinctively fascinating narrators. . . THE PRINCESS OF LAS VEGAS will leave the reader with both a yearning for Sin city excitement and a deep sigh of relief at being exactly where they are.” -- Lauren Emily Whalen, BookPage, Starred Review
7 March 2024
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
One of the joys of reading is sharing the experience. We all love to talk about the tales we're devouring, and debate what worked and what didn't, and whether (or not) we had "all the feels."
The main reason I get to do what I do -- write books and plays -- is because of all of you. And for that I am more grateful than I can tell you.
Which is why I can't wait to hit the road again on THE PRINCESS OF LAS VEGAS "Roll the Dice" Book Tour.
Viva Las Vegas!
You can read all about my new novel right here on Goodreads, so let's leave it at this: it's the TV series "Hacks" meets "The Crown," or the movie "Oceans 11" meets "The Queen."
As we say on the cover: the princess is fake, but the murders are real.
In any case, the book tour runs from March 16 - April 28. I will be in 20 cities in 13 states, and joined by some of my favorite writers, including Laura Zigman, Margot Harrison, and Lisa Unger.
Here are the venues, with events stretching from San Diego, CA to Burlington, VT and Tampa, FL to Turlock, CA. Click here to see them all:
https://chrisbohjalian.com/events/
Now, if you want signed books but I'm not coming to your town...visit the websites for the Vermont Book Shop, Phoenix Books (in Vermont), or bn.com .
And, of course, you can always preorder it wherever you buy your books:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
In the meantime, thank you for your faith in my work.
I hope to see lots of you on the road!
All the best,
Chris
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (still), Litsy, TikTok (Very Badly), and right here on Goodreads!
“A thrilling symphony of royal impersonators, teenage hackers and run-down casinos with multiple mysteries at its core. . . Bohjalian is no stranger to quirky folks in increasingly twisted situations. . . [and in Crissy and Betsy he] has created two distinctively fascinating narrators. . . THE PRINCESS OF LAS VEGAS will leave the reader with both a yearning for Sin city excitement and a deep sigh of relief at being exactly where they are.” -- Lauren Emily Whalen, BookPage, Starred Review
January 28, 2024
A new book -- and a new play.
The Princess of Las Vegas is "a wonderful book...I absolutely could not put it down."
-- Anne Lamott
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
It feels to me as if we are in the midst of a post-pandemic literary renaissance as remarkable as the one that followed the influenza pandemic after the First World War. The books I read in 2023, most of which were written in 2020 and 2021, left me inspired and awed. Many of you saw my recommendations on-line the past two years – a LOT of five-star reviews here on my Goodreads page.
I want to share with you two pieces of news.
First, I have a new play opening next month at the George Street Playhouse, where many of you saw my adaptation of Midwives in January and February of 2020, just before. . .never mind.
That new play, The Club, begins previews on February 27 and opens on March 1. Three married couples collide in a suburban living room one autumn Sunday – what they think is a refuge from the rock ‘n roll turbulence outside their neighborhood – only to discover there’s no escape from the era’s cultural upheaval. It is (I hope) rich with biting wit and startling twists as it explores racism, marriage, and the lies we tell ourselves daily. And though the play is set in 1968, it’s eerily timely.
The play is directed by the brilliant David Saint. Learn more and get your tickets here:
https://www.georgestreetplayhouse.org...
Second, my new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, arrives in six weeks.
If you devoured Netflix’s The Crown or remain fascinated by the Royals — and Sin City — well, it might be your cup of tea. (As Kirkus wrote, "Diana goes Vegas...in Bohjalian's latest lively romp.")
A Princess Diana impersonator and her estranged sister find themselves drawn into a dangerous game of money and murder in a twisting tale of organized crime, cryptocurrency, and family secrets on the Las Vegas strip. Yes, I have always been interested in the Royals and fascinated by Las Vegas. My hope is the ingredients mesh as well as peanut butter and chocolate.
You can learn more at www.chrisbohjalian.com .
I’m right chuffed about this one, and would be gobsmacked and grateful if you preordered it wherever you buy your books.
Want personalized copies and special swag? Visit two of my local bookstores, the Vermont Book Shop or Phoenix Books. They both ship!
https://www.phoenixbooks.biz/princess...
https://www.vermontbookshop.com/book/...
As always, thank you for your faith in my work. It means more to me than you know.
Sincerely,
Chris B.
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X
(still), Litsy, Goodreads, TikTok (very, very badly)
“Bohjalian’s lightning-speed page-turner delivers a dishy, twisty tale of suspense tempered with intriguing insights into the nature of ego, fame, and family. . .Bohjalian offers a full deck of irresistible elements in this novel of endangered Vegas royalty.” — Carol Haggas, Booklist
.
-- Anne Lamott
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who Are Friends,
It feels to me as if we are in the midst of a post-pandemic literary renaissance as remarkable as the one that followed the influenza pandemic after the First World War. The books I read in 2023, most of which were written in 2020 and 2021, left me inspired and awed. Many of you saw my recommendations on-line the past two years – a LOT of five-star reviews here on my Goodreads page.
I want to share with you two pieces of news.
First, I have a new play opening next month at the George Street Playhouse, where many of you saw my adaptation of Midwives in January and February of 2020, just before. . .never mind.
That new play, The Club, begins previews on February 27 and opens on March 1. Three married couples collide in a suburban living room one autumn Sunday – what they think is a refuge from the rock ‘n roll turbulence outside their neighborhood – only to discover there’s no escape from the era’s cultural upheaval. It is (I hope) rich with biting wit and startling twists as it explores racism, marriage, and the lies we tell ourselves daily. And though the play is set in 1968, it’s eerily timely.
The play is directed by the brilliant David Saint. Learn more and get your tickets here:
https://www.georgestreetplayhouse.org...
Second, my new novel, The Princess of Las Vegas, arrives in six weeks.
If you devoured Netflix’s The Crown or remain fascinated by the Royals — and Sin City — well, it might be your cup of tea. (As Kirkus wrote, "Diana goes Vegas...in Bohjalian's latest lively romp.")
A Princess Diana impersonator and her estranged sister find themselves drawn into a dangerous game of money and murder in a twisting tale of organized crime, cryptocurrency, and family secrets on the Las Vegas strip. Yes, I have always been interested in the Royals and fascinated by Las Vegas. My hope is the ingredients mesh as well as peanut butter and chocolate.
You can learn more at www.chrisbohjalian.com .
I’m right chuffed about this one, and would be gobsmacked and grateful if you preordered it wherever you buy your books.
Want personalized copies and special swag? Visit two of my local bookstores, the Vermont Book Shop or Phoenix Books. They both ship!
https://www.phoenixbooks.biz/princess...
https://www.vermontbookshop.com/book/...
As always, thank you for your faith in my work. It means more to me than you know.
Sincerely,
Chris B.
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X
(still), Litsy, Goodreads, TikTok (very, very badly)
“Bohjalian’s lightning-speed page-turner delivers a dishy, twisty tale of suspense tempered with intriguing insights into the nature of ego, fame, and family. . .Bohjalian offers a full deck of irresistible elements in this novel of endangered Vegas royalty.” — Carol Haggas, Booklist
.
December 31, 2022
This Year, Take a Deep Breath and Focus on Others
When I was a boy, my parents’ New Year’s Eve parties were not precisely chaotic studies in dissolution and debauchery, but once when I was in elementary school, I walked in on two of their married friends necking in the bathtub in an upstairs bathroom. This wouldn’t have been quite so disturbing for the three of us if the couple in the tub had been married to each other.
The parties were actually pretty standard fare for that era and that geography: the hard-drinking, hard-working, hard-playing suburbs of New York City in the 1970s. Moreover, it didn’t have to be New Year’s Eve for the parties to cross the line between boisterous and bacchanalian. They had doozies in the summer, too.
My parents loved their neighbors and they loved to entertain, but I always suspected there was something a little desperate in their friends’ behavior at those parties, especially the ones on Dec. 31. I had the sense that for many of the grownups, all that alcohol and all those cigarettes and all that forced bonhomie was a camouflage for wistfulness and regret.
The reality is that New Year’s Eve has the potential to be spectacularly depressing. Often we look back on the last year with a combination of disappointment and self-loathing. We make resolutions for the purpose of trying to will the coming year to be better — to see if we can somehow stop making the same mistakes year after year.
Consequently, I rarely make resolutions, and it’s not simply because I know I’m a lost cause. One year I resolved to stop biting my nails, but by Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I was back on the keratin. Likewise, I tend to steer clear of New Year’s Eve parties because there are too many middle-aged ghosts from my childhood at the punch bowls.
If we are lucky, we can find a moment on the 31st to take a deep breath and sit very still. We can focus on all that is right with the world and all that is wrong — on all the ways we have striven for personal decency in our lives and, alas, on all the ways we have failed. We can recall the people we have loved who we have lost, and ponder the friends and family who deserve more attention than we give them.
And maybe those are the only resolutions that matter: the ones that focus on others.
_____________________________________
This essay appeared originally in the New York Times on December 30, 2015.
The parties were actually pretty standard fare for that era and that geography: the hard-drinking, hard-working, hard-playing suburbs of New York City in the 1970s. Moreover, it didn’t have to be New Year’s Eve for the parties to cross the line between boisterous and bacchanalian. They had doozies in the summer, too.
My parents loved their neighbors and they loved to entertain, but I always suspected there was something a little desperate in their friends’ behavior at those parties, especially the ones on Dec. 31. I had the sense that for many of the grownups, all that alcohol and all those cigarettes and all that forced bonhomie was a camouflage for wistfulness and regret.
The reality is that New Year’s Eve has the potential to be spectacularly depressing. Often we look back on the last year with a combination of disappointment and self-loathing. We make resolutions for the purpose of trying to will the coming year to be better — to see if we can somehow stop making the same mistakes year after year.
Consequently, I rarely make resolutions, and it’s not simply because I know I’m a lost cause. One year I resolved to stop biting my nails, but by Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I was back on the keratin. Likewise, I tend to steer clear of New Year’s Eve parties because there are too many middle-aged ghosts from my childhood at the punch bowls.
If we are lucky, we can find a moment on the 31st to take a deep breath and sit very still. We can focus on all that is right with the world and all that is wrong — on all the ways we have striven for personal decency in our lives and, alas, on all the ways we have failed. We can recall the people we have loved who we have lost, and ponder the friends and family who deserve more attention than we give them.
And maybe those are the only resolutions that matter: the ones that focus on others.
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This essay appeared originally in the New York Times on December 30, 2015.
