Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 5
February 29, 2020
The Prologue to The Red Lotus
Good morning -- and Happy Saturday,
It's the weekend and, just maybe, your life has slowed down a tad.
If that's the case, here's a little reading that I hope with all my heart you enjoy: the prologue to my March 17 thriller, THE RED LOTUS.
Fingers crossed my work never disappoints any of you.
All the best,
Chris B.
********
Prologue
by Chris Bohjalian
The opposite of a hospice? Not a maternity ward or a NICU. It’s a trick question.
The correct answer? An emergency room. In a hospice, you do everything you can to allow people to die. In the ER? You do all that you can to keep them alive.
It was why she loved the ER, especially the night shift in the city. The relentlessness. The frenetic drive to keep a heart beating or to get someone breathing. Oh, sometimes you lost. You called it. You declared the suicide or the stroke victim or the accidental overdose dead. But far more often you won. Or, at least, you won long enough to get the patient into the OR or into a room upstairs, you won long enough that whatever happened to the man or woman or child or toddler or (dear God) baby was someone else’s problem. And so she became a different person in the ER. She had, in fact, become a different person there. She was a tectonic recreation that was unrecognizable even to her own mother, an evolution wrought in months rather than millennia – sixty-six months, if she was going to be precise – that had begun in her first rotation and culminated during her first July night as an attending physician. In the midst of the ER madness – the light and the sound (and there were just so many sounds, the human and the mechanical, the dying and the wounded and the supportive and the scared) that she morphed into an adrenaline junkie. She was no longer a shy soul that balked at attention, a girl as wary of kindness as shelter cats with torn ears that even after adopted would shrink into the dark of the closet. She was something bigger, inexorable and unyielding.
There was just so much pain and so much fear and so much incredulity in the ER. So many tales Alexis heard that began, “It’s a long story” or “It happened so fast” or “You won’t believe it when I tell you” – and so much urgency, that she could forget who she once was. In the ER, there was no chance that she might slip back into the anxiety or the despair or the self-loathing that as a teenager had her using an old-fashioned razor blade or X-Acto knife to cut deep into her thighs. To feel something other than depression or doubt, to be the captain of her own pain. She felt no need to tend to herself when she was tending to people who, at least that moment, were dramatically worse off than she was. Than she ever was (at least on the outside). She was just too busy.
And so it was perhaps fitting that it was in the ER that she met him. Just as fitting was how she met him.
Though he was probably in no danger of dying.
It was a bullet wound, but nothing like the horrors she’d seen bullets inflict in her years in trauma bays and cubicles. The worst (and worst was a high bar when it came to guns and emergency rooms), were the three teenage girls who were shot after school at field hockey practice by a boy (of course) for reasons that would remain forever unfathomable because then he’d gone home and shot himself. He’d used an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and the girls had holes in their abdomens and chests and legs. One of the three was still awake, and just before she was intubated, she begged Alexis to tell her that she wasn’t going to die, her voice so strong that when Alexis murmured, No, no, shhhhh, she believed it. She really did. One of the others had a heart that stopped beating twice as they worked, and so they gave her the paddles, and the child (and she was a child, she was fifteen for fuck’s sake) had lived long enough to die in the OR instead of the ER. Only one of that trio had lived, and when the last of the girls was gone from the room, Alexis had looked at the ER and how everything – everything – was awash in blood. The gloves and the gauze, the bone saw and retractors, the tubes and the tape and the trash cans. The sweatshirts and skirts the girls had been wearing. The white socks. Their cleats. The floor was streaked and splattered, and the team that had striven to save them had left footprints, the soles of their surgical booties sometimes traversing the red veins left on the tile by the wheels of the gurneys.
This was different.
Austin’s bullet wound was different.
He appeared on a Saturday night – Sunday morning technically – and Alexis was very, very good with a needle, a toothed forceps, and a pair of suturing scissors. With the trauma scissors, when she began by cutting away his sleeve. She was also very good with a scalpel (and probably would have been well before medical school), which mattered because the bullet was lodged near the largest bone in his right arm, three inches below the greater tuberosity of the humerus. It was a low velocity wound and had chipped off a piece of the bone, but it hadn’t shattered it. It hadn’t, thank God, ripped a hole in the brachial artery, which might have caused him to bleed out in the bar, and it hadn’t shredded his rotator cuff, which might have crippled him for life. He was in pain, but not so much that he couldn’t laugh at the fact he had only been in a dive bar in the East Village because he’d left a party and his Uber app had said the nearest vehicle was twenty minutes away. So, on a lark, he’d gone into the bar to watch a couple of guys throwing darts. His smile was ironic and crooked, but far more boyish than rakish. He’d been drinking, and that certainly ameliorated the pain, too, his eyes a little more narrow than she would come to know them, but still open enough that she could see instantly the intangible spark and the tangible green. The muscles in his jaw would tense and untense as she worked, his breath beery, as he grimaced like the men at the gym who would lie on a bench and press three-hundred pounds up off their chests. He had what she would eventually come to learn was a biker’s body: slender but a strong, solid core, and legs that were unexpectedly muscled. His hair was black-coffee dark. He and another dart player had taken a cab the twenty blocks north on First Avenue to the hospital – where, of all things, it would turn out, he worked, too. The two of them hadn’t waited for an ambulance, and they hadn’t waited for the cops. The guy who’d fired the shot? Some crazy junkie, homeless they presumed, who had run from the bar like a madman – no, he was a madman – when he realized that he’d actually discharged his crappy little handgun. Some ridiculous Remington pocket pistol.
“What do you do here?” she asked as she treated him. “At the hospital?”
And he told her. He told her that he worked directly for the hospital’s chief development officer. He raised money. He worked with the folks who managed the hospital’s money. They laughed about meeting here rather than, say, in the hospital cafeteria or along the promenade along the East River as she removed the bullet and stitched him up, and then as they sat in the ER cubicle behind the thick blue drapes and waited for the police to arrive so he could tell them what happened. He guessed that they were probably still at the bar interviewing the bartenders and anyone willing to stick around after someone had nearly killed some yuppie dart player at one in the morning. She asked him about the Band-Aids on the fingers on his left hand. He admitted – sheepishly – that he’d been bitten by a cat the day before. It had been in some woman’s lap in the bakery where he was getting a scone and a cup of coffee, and he startled it when he went to pet it as he was leaving.
“Flirting with the woman?” she’d asked him, which was, in truth, flirting itself.
“Nope. Just surprised to see a cat. The animal was sitting up in one of those cat carriers.”
She insisted on removing the three bandages, none very big, and was startled by how deep and ugly the cuts were. She disinfected them and they talked about rabies, and he was clear and he was adamant: the cat was fine. (And clearly the cat was fine, because it had been nearly seven months ago now that he had taken a cab that night to the hospital. If that cat had had rabies, he would have been long dead.) Still, she’d cleaned the wounds herself, applied an antibiotic ointment, and added a prescription for Augmentin. Meanwhile, his new friend (acquaintance, really) had sat outside in the bright lights of the ER waiting room, stewing, and seemed far more annoyed than scared that there was a guy in a cubicle with a bullet in his biceps.
She had tended to other patients as they waited for the police, pulling on and off the latex gloves, including a little boy with a fever whose mother was terrified (needlessly, it would turn out, when they looked at the blood work) and a deli man who’d snipped off a sizable chunk of his finger with a meat slicer – he was turning tongue into cold cuts – but hadn’t nicked bone and needed only stitches and antibiotics. Nothing very hard and nothing very stressful. No X-rays and no CT scan. For a Saturday night, there weren’t all that many to-be-seen clipboards hanging on pegs on the wall, there weren’t scads of bodies, some stoic and some whimpering, waiting on stretchers like supplicants before royalty.
Looking back on their first moments together, it wasn’t exactly a “meet cute,” but they knew if their relationship lasted until old age, it would be one hell of a good story for their grandchildren.
It's the weekend and, just maybe, your life has slowed down a tad.
If that's the case, here's a little reading that I hope with all my heart you enjoy: the prologue to my March 17 thriller, THE RED LOTUS.
Fingers crossed my work never disappoints any of you.
All the best,
Chris B.
********
Prologue
by Chris Bohjalian
The opposite of a hospice? Not a maternity ward or a NICU. It’s a trick question.
The correct answer? An emergency room. In a hospice, you do everything you can to allow people to die. In the ER? You do all that you can to keep them alive.
It was why she loved the ER, especially the night shift in the city. The relentlessness. The frenetic drive to keep a heart beating or to get someone breathing. Oh, sometimes you lost. You called it. You declared the suicide or the stroke victim or the accidental overdose dead. But far more often you won. Or, at least, you won long enough to get the patient into the OR or into a room upstairs, you won long enough that whatever happened to the man or woman or child or toddler or (dear God) baby was someone else’s problem. And so she became a different person in the ER. She had, in fact, become a different person there. She was a tectonic recreation that was unrecognizable even to her own mother, an evolution wrought in months rather than millennia – sixty-six months, if she was going to be precise – that had begun in her first rotation and culminated during her first July night as an attending physician. In the midst of the ER madness – the light and the sound (and there were just so many sounds, the human and the mechanical, the dying and the wounded and the supportive and the scared) that she morphed into an adrenaline junkie. She was no longer a shy soul that balked at attention, a girl as wary of kindness as shelter cats with torn ears that even after adopted would shrink into the dark of the closet. She was something bigger, inexorable and unyielding.
There was just so much pain and so much fear and so much incredulity in the ER. So many tales Alexis heard that began, “It’s a long story” or “It happened so fast” or “You won’t believe it when I tell you” – and so much urgency, that she could forget who she once was. In the ER, there was no chance that she might slip back into the anxiety or the despair or the self-loathing that as a teenager had her using an old-fashioned razor blade or X-Acto knife to cut deep into her thighs. To feel something other than depression or doubt, to be the captain of her own pain. She felt no need to tend to herself when she was tending to people who, at least that moment, were dramatically worse off than she was. Than she ever was (at least on the outside). She was just too busy.
And so it was perhaps fitting that it was in the ER that she met him. Just as fitting was how she met him.
Though he was probably in no danger of dying.
It was a bullet wound, but nothing like the horrors she’d seen bullets inflict in her years in trauma bays and cubicles. The worst (and worst was a high bar when it came to guns and emergency rooms), were the three teenage girls who were shot after school at field hockey practice by a boy (of course) for reasons that would remain forever unfathomable because then he’d gone home and shot himself. He’d used an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and the girls had holes in their abdomens and chests and legs. One of the three was still awake, and just before she was intubated, she begged Alexis to tell her that she wasn’t going to die, her voice so strong that when Alexis murmured, No, no, shhhhh, she believed it. She really did. One of the others had a heart that stopped beating twice as they worked, and so they gave her the paddles, and the child (and she was a child, she was fifteen for fuck’s sake) had lived long enough to die in the OR instead of the ER. Only one of that trio had lived, and when the last of the girls was gone from the room, Alexis had looked at the ER and how everything – everything – was awash in blood. The gloves and the gauze, the bone saw and retractors, the tubes and the tape and the trash cans. The sweatshirts and skirts the girls had been wearing. The white socks. Their cleats. The floor was streaked and splattered, and the team that had striven to save them had left footprints, the soles of their surgical booties sometimes traversing the red veins left on the tile by the wheels of the gurneys.
This was different.
Austin’s bullet wound was different.
He appeared on a Saturday night – Sunday morning technically – and Alexis was very, very good with a needle, a toothed forceps, and a pair of suturing scissors. With the trauma scissors, when she began by cutting away his sleeve. She was also very good with a scalpel (and probably would have been well before medical school), which mattered because the bullet was lodged near the largest bone in his right arm, three inches below the greater tuberosity of the humerus. It was a low velocity wound and had chipped off a piece of the bone, but it hadn’t shattered it. It hadn’t, thank God, ripped a hole in the brachial artery, which might have caused him to bleed out in the bar, and it hadn’t shredded his rotator cuff, which might have crippled him for life. He was in pain, but not so much that he couldn’t laugh at the fact he had only been in a dive bar in the East Village because he’d left a party and his Uber app had said the nearest vehicle was twenty minutes away. So, on a lark, he’d gone into the bar to watch a couple of guys throwing darts. His smile was ironic and crooked, but far more boyish than rakish. He’d been drinking, and that certainly ameliorated the pain, too, his eyes a little more narrow than she would come to know them, but still open enough that she could see instantly the intangible spark and the tangible green. The muscles in his jaw would tense and untense as she worked, his breath beery, as he grimaced like the men at the gym who would lie on a bench and press three-hundred pounds up off their chests. He had what she would eventually come to learn was a biker’s body: slender but a strong, solid core, and legs that were unexpectedly muscled. His hair was black-coffee dark. He and another dart player had taken a cab the twenty blocks north on First Avenue to the hospital – where, of all things, it would turn out, he worked, too. The two of them hadn’t waited for an ambulance, and they hadn’t waited for the cops. The guy who’d fired the shot? Some crazy junkie, homeless they presumed, who had run from the bar like a madman – no, he was a madman – when he realized that he’d actually discharged his crappy little handgun. Some ridiculous Remington pocket pistol.
“What do you do here?” she asked as she treated him. “At the hospital?”
And he told her. He told her that he worked directly for the hospital’s chief development officer. He raised money. He worked with the folks who managed the hospital’s money. They laughed about meeting here rather than, say, in the hospital cafeteria or along the promenade along the East River as she removed the bullet and stitched him up, and then as they sat in the ER cubicle behind the thick blue drapes and waited for the police to arrive so he could tell them what happened. He guessed that they were probably still at the bar interviewing the bartenders and anyone willing to stick around after someone had nearly killed some yuppie dart player at one in the morning. She asked him about the Band-Aids on the fingers on his left hand. He admitted – sheepishly – that he’d been bitten by a cat the day before. It had been in some woman’s lap in the bakery where he was getting a scone and a cup of coffee, and he startled it when he went to pet it as he was leaving.
“Flirting with the woman?” she’d asked him, which was, in truth, flirting itself.
“Nope. Just surprised to see a cat. The animal was sitting up in one of those cat carriers.”
She insisted on removing the three bandages, none very big, and was startled by how deep and ugly the cuts were. She disinfected them and they talked about rabies, and he was clear and he was adamant: the cat was fine. (And clearly the cat was fine, because it had been nearly seven months ago now that he had taken a cab that night to the hospital. If that cat had had rabies, he would have been long dead.) Still, she’d cleaned the wounds herself, applied an antibiotic ointment, and added a prescription for Augmentin. Meanwhile, his new friend (acquaintance, really) had sat outside in the bright lights of the ER waiting room, stewing, and seemed far more annoyed than scared that there was a guy in a cubicle with a bullet in his biceps.
She had tended to other patients as they waited for the police, pulling on and off the latex gloves, including a little boy with a fever whose mother was terrified (needlessly, it would turn out, when they looked at the blood work) and a deli man who’d snipped off a sizable chunk of his finger with a meat slicer – he was turning tongue into cold cuts – but hadn’t nicked bone and needed only stitches and antibiotics. Nothing very hard and nothing very stressful. No X-rays and no CT scan. For a Saturday night, there weren’t all that many to-be-seen clipboards hanging on pegs on the wall, there weren’t scads of bodies, some stoic and some whimpering, waiting on stretchers like supplicants before royalty.
Looking back on their first moments together, it wasn’t exactly a “meet cute,” but they knew if their relationship lasted until old age, it would be one hell of a good story for their grandchildren.
January 20, 2020
You just looked around, and they were gone
This is the time of the year when we are most likely to hear “Abraham, Martin and John” on the radio. You know the song. It was a hit for Dion in 1968. It’s an homage to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., and John and Robert Kennedy. It’s wistful, elegiac, and perhaps a little saccharine. It has a harp.
We all, if we are a certain age, can ad-lib the lyrics pretty well, because the verses are nearly identical except for the names:
“Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he’s gone.”
There are verses for each of the four assassinated men. Three white, one black. Two brothers. Two killed within a three-month span in the first half of 1968.
When I heard the song on Sirius radio the other day, the deejay shared two pieces of trivia about its history, one surprising and one tragic. The surprising? The song was written by Dick Holler, the same songwriter who gave us the novelty fluff classic, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.” The tragic? According to the deejay, the song was written after King was murdered in April, but before Bobby Kennedy would be murdered in June. The verse with Bobby was not part of the original composition (hence the title, “Abraham, Martin, and John”). It was, the deejay explained, added just before Dion went into the studio that summer. I have no idea if that’s true, but it’s a little wrenching to consider.
I am, of course, reminding you of the song because today is the day when we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. The nation once more will pause to mourn, to remember, and to look back on the life and accomplishments of the clergyman and civil rights leader who quite literally helped change the face of America.
Whenever I am on a book tour in Memphis, I take time out to visit the National Civil Rights Museum. It’s built on the site of the Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated, and visitors can see the balcony where he was standing when he was killed. We can see Room 306, where he was staying. There is, obviously, a lot more. The museum offers a powerful history of the civil rights struggle in the United States.
If I ever needed a history lesson of why we needed King – and why we need him still – I got that reminder the first time I went to the museum. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the sky cerulean, and I asked the concierge at the hotel where I was staying the best way to get to the museum. He put me in a cab and I was driven. . .less than a mile. Not kidding.
I walked back to the hotel after I toured the museum and asked the concierge, “Wow, do I look that old and infirm that you thought I needed a cab?”
He looked concerned. “Not at all,” he said. “But the neighborhood can be a little. . .sketchy.”
That’s when I got it. I understood the subtext. The concierge was white.
I told him I was appalled. He told me he had to look out for the safety of his guests.
When you hear Dion’s song today – and there really is a chance you will – try not to get lost in the repeated verses. Listen for what is, in my opinion, its best lyric, powerful because you only hear it once:
“Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?”
Indeed. That’s why we take a moment tomorrow to honor Dr. King: It’s not merely what he accomplished. It’s what, even decades after his death, he stands for.
*. *. *. *.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 19, 2014. Chris’s new novel, “The Red Lotus” will be published in March. His first play, “Midwives,” opens this week at the George Street Playhouse)
We all, if we are a certain age, can ad-lib the lyrics pretty well, because the verses are nearly identical except for the names:
“Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he’s gone.”
There are verses for each of the four assassinated men. Three white, one black. Two brothers. Two killed within a three-month span in the first half of 1968.
When I heard the song on Sirius radio the other day, the deejay shared two pieces of trivia about its history, one surprising and one tragic. The surprising? The song was written by Dick Holler, the same songwriter who gave us the novelty fluff classic, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.” The tragic? According to the deejay, the song was written after King was murdered in April, but before Bobby Kennedy would be murdered in June. The verse with Bobby was not part of the original composition (hence the title, “Abraham, Martin, and John”). It was, the deejay explained, added just before Dion went into the studio that summer. I have no idea if that’s true, but it’s a little wrenching to consider.
I am, of course, reminding you of the song because today is the day when we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. The nation once more will pause to mourn, to remember, and to look back on the life and accomplishments of the clergyman and civil rights leader who quite literally helped change the face of America.
Whenever I am on a book tour in Memphis, I take time out to visit the National Civil Rights Museum. It’s built on the site of the Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated, and visitors can see the balcony where he was standing when he was killed. We can see Room 306, where he was staying. There is, obviously, a lot more. The museum offers a powerful history of the civil rights struggle in the United States.
If I ever needed a history lesson of why we needed King – and why we need him still – I got that reminder the first time I went to the museum. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, the sky cerulean, and I asked the concierge at the hotel where I was staying the best way to get to the museum. He put me in a cab and I was driven. . .less than a mile. Not kidding.
I walked back to the hotel after I toured the museum and asked the concierge, “Wow, do I look that old and infirm that you thought I needed a cab?”
He looked concerned. “Not at all,” he said. “But the neighborhood can be a little. . .sketchy.”
That’s when I got it. I understood the subtext. The concierge was white.
I told him I was appalled. He told me he had to look out for the safety of his guests.
When you hear Dion’s song today – and there really is a chance you will – try not to get lost in the repeated verses. Listen for what is, in my opinion, its best lyric, powerful because you only hear it once:
“Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?”
Indeed. That’s why we take a moment tomorrow to honor Dr. King: It’s not merely what he accomplished. It’s what, even decades after his death, he stands for.
*. *. *. *.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 19, 2014. Chris’s new novel, “The Red Lotus” will be published in March. His first play, “Midwives,” opens this week at the George Street Playhouse)
January 14, 2020
Meet an ER Doctor and a Midwife
14 January 2020
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who are Friends,
This month I want to celebrate two remarkable women. An ER doctor and a midwife. Both are characters from novels of mine.
First of all, I want you to meet Alexis Remnick — the heroine in my next book, THE RED LOTUS, a novel that Kirkus called a "breathless thriller,” and Booklist described as a "masterful merging of setting and plot [that] delivers a cerebral and dramatic dive into what happens when love turns to agony.”
Alexis is an ER doctor in New York City who goes on a bike tour with her boyfriend in Vietnam — where he disappears. The thriller asks the fundamental question: How well do we really know the person we love?
Although THE RED LOTUS does not bloom until March 17, you can meet Alexis right now in this two chapter excerpt we have posted on my web site:
https://chrisbohjalian.com/the-red-lo...
If you like what you read, please preorder it or ask your local bookseller to put a copy aside for you today.
The second woman I want you to meet is midwife Sibyl Danforth. Many of you have already met her in the pages of my novel, MIDWIVES — but now you can see her on stage. A week from today is the very first preview of my two-act adaptation of MIDWIVES at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ. Sibyl Danforth will be played by Ellen McLaughlin, the mesmerizing actor (and playwright!) who brought to life on Broadway the angel in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” The visionary behind this production is the brilliant director, David Saint.
Please join me: here is the link to the theatre where you can learn more and order tickets.
https://georgestreetplayhouse.org/sho...
Thank you, as always, for your faith in my work. Tour details for THE RED LOTUS are coming soon.
All the best,
Chris B.
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who are Friends,
This month I want to celebrate two remarkable women. An ER doctor and a midwife. Both are characters from novels of mine.
First of all, I want you to meet Alexis Remnick — the heroine in my next book, THE RED LOTUS, a novel that Kirkus called a "breathless thriller,” and Booklist described as a "masterful merging of setting and plot [that] delivers a cerebral and dramatic dive into what happens when love turns to agony.”
Alexis is an ER doctor in New York City who goes on a bike tour with her boyfriend in Vietnam — where he disappears. The thriller asks the fundamental question: How well do we really know the person we love?
Although THE RED LOTUS does not bloom until March 17, you can meet Alexis right now in this two chapter excerpt we have posted on my web site:
https://chrisbohjalian.com/the-red-lo...
If you like what you read, please preorder it or ask your local bookseller to put a copy aside for you today.
The second woman I want you to meet is midwife Sibyl Danforth. Many of you have already met her in the pages of my novel, MIDWIVES — but now you can see her on stage. A week from today is the very first preview of my two-act adaptation of MIDWIVES at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ. Sibyl Danforth will be played by Ellen McLaughlin, the mesmerizing actor (and playwright!) who brought to life on Broadway the angel in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” The visionary behind this production is the brilliant director, David Saint.
Please join me: here is the link to the theatre where you can learn more and order tickets.
https://georgestreetplayhouse.org/sho...
Thank you, as always, for your faith in my work. Tour details for THE RED LOTUS are coming soon.
All the best,
Chris B.
www.ChrisBohjalian.com
January 5, 2020
Only two days left to enter The Red Lotus Giveaway
Happy New Year and Merry Armenian Christmas,
There are now only two days left to win an advance copy of THE RED LOTUS here on Goodreads.
Here is what Kirkus said about it:
“In Bohjalian’s breathless thriller, the death of an American bicyclist in Vietnam sets off a race to avert further catastrophe… Tantalizing… Keep[s] us guessing and turning the pages until the very end.”
—Kirkus Reviews
And Booklist has weighed in, too:
"[A] tightly drawn, steadily hair-raising thriller… [Bohjalian’s] masterful merging of setting and plot delivers a cerebral and dramatic dive into what happens when love to turns to agony.”
—Carol Haggas, Booklist
The thriller about a bike tour gone bad and the plague (yes, the plague) does not arrive until March 17, but right now Doubleday Books is giving away 25 advance copies here on Goodreads.
Click here to enter:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/en...
I thank you all so much.
All the best,
Chris B.
There are now only two days left to win an advance copy of THE RED LOTUS here on Goodreads.
Here is what Kirkus said about it:
“In Bohjalian’s breathless thriller, the death of an American bicyclist in Vietnam sets off a race to avert further catastrophe… Tantalizing… Keep[s] us guessing and turning the pages until the very end.”
—Kirkus Reviews
And Booklist has weighed in, too:
"[A] tightly drawn, steadily hair-raising thriller… [Bohjalian’s] masterful merging of setting and plot delivers a cerebral and dramatic dive into what happens when love to turns to agony.”
—Carol Haggas, Booklist
The thriller about a bike tour gone bad and the plague (yes, the plague) does not arrive until March 17, but right now Doubleday Books is giving away 25 advance copies here on Goodreads.
Click here to enter:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/en...
I thank you all so much.
All the best,
Chris B.
December 8, 2019
Giveaway Alert: The Red Lotus
Greetings,
We have a Giveaway Alert!
Want to win an advance copy of THE RED LOTUS?
The thriller about a bike tour gone bad and the plague (yes, the plague) does not arrive until March 17, but right now Doubleday Books is giving away 25 advance copies here on Goodreads.
Click here to enter:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/en...
I thank you all so much.
Fingers crossed my work never disappoints you.
All the best,
Chris B.
We have a Giveaway Alert!
Want to win an advance copy of THE RED LOTUS?
The thriller about a bike tour gone bad and the plague (yes, the plague) does not arrive until March 17, but right now Doubleday Books is giving away 25 advance copies here on Goodreads.
Click here to enter:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/en...
I thank you all so much.
Fingers crossed my work never disappoints you.
All the best,
Chris B.
November 29, 2019
A Black Friday Booklist
It’s Black Friday: here are a few of my favorite books published in 2019, all titles that I can recommend highly. Savor them yourself or share them with others this holiday season.
Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
The Better Sister by Alafair Burke
Toil & Trouble by Augusten Burroughs
Furious Hours by Casey Cep
Honorable Exit by Thurston Clarke
The Cheslsea Girls by Fiona Davis
Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
The World that We Knew by Alice Hoffman
The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
The Damascus Road by Jay Parini
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
You can peruse my reviews of them right here on my Goodreads page of books that I’ve read.
As always, thank you so much for your faith in my work – and in what stories can mean to the soul. Fingers crossed I meet many of you in 2020, either on tour for The Red Lotus or at the George Street Playhouse for Midwives.
All the best,
Chris B.
Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
The Better Sister by Alafair Burke
Toil & Trouble by Augusten Burroughs
Furious Hours by Casey Cep
Honorable Exit by Thurston Clarke
The Cheslsea Girls by Fiona Davis
Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
The World that We Knew by Alice Hoffman
The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
The Damascus Road by Jay Parini
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Stranger Inside by Lisa Unger
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
You can peruse my reviews of them right here on my Goodreads page of books that I’ve read.
As always, thank you so much for your faith in my work – and in what stories can mean to the soul. Fingers crossed I meet many of you in 2020, either on tour for The Red Lotus or at the George Street Playhouse for Midwives.
All the best,
Chris B.
September 15, 2019
A Goodreads Giveaway of The Red Lotus
Greetings,
Hoping all of you are having a nice start to autumn, with plenty of new books to excite you.
This is fun: Goodreads and Doubleday Books right now are giving away 25 advance copies of my March 17 novel, THE RED LOTUS.
The thriller about a New York City ER doctor is set in Vietnam and Manhattan.
Click below to enter to win one of them.
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
Thank you, as always, for your faith in my work!
All the best,
Chris B.
Hoping all of you are having a nice start to autumn, with plenty of new books to excite you.
This is fun: Goodreads and Doubleday Books right now are giving away 25 advance copies of my March 17 novel, THE RED LOTUS.
The thriller about a New York City ER doctor is set in Vietnam and Manhattan.
Click below to enter to win one of them.
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
Thank you, as always, for your faith in my work!
All the best,
Chris B.
June 27, 2019
Cover Reveal -- The Red Lotus
Greetings!
Behold the cover for my next novel. The Red Lotus arrives March 17, 2020 from Doubleday Books.
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant comes a twisting story of love and deceit: an American man vanishes on a rural road in Vietnam and his girlfriend, an emergency room doctor trained to ask questions, follows a path that leads her home to the very hospital where they met.
"The first time Alexis saw Austin, it was a Saturday night. Not in a bar, but in the emergency room where Alexis sutured a bullet wound in his arm. Six months later, on the brink of falling in love, they travel to Vietnam on a bike tour so that Austin can show her his passion for cycling and he can pay his respects to the place where his father and uncle fought in the war. But as Alexis sips white wine and waits at the hotel for him to return from his solo ride, two men emerge from the tall grass and Austin vanishes into thin air. The only clue he leaves behind is a bright yellow energy gel dropped on the road. As Alexis grapples with this bewildering loss, navigating the FBI, Austin's prickly family, and her colleagues at the hospital, Alexis uncovers a series of strange lies that force her to wonder: Where did Austin go? Why did he really bring her to Vietnam? And how much danger has he left her in? Set amidst the adrenaline-fueled world of the emergency room, The Red Lotus is a global thriller about those who dedicate their lives to saving people, and those who peddle death to the highest bidder."
You can add it now to your Want to Read list here on Goodreads.
As always, thank you so much for your faith in my work!
All the best,
Chris B.
Behold the cover for my next novel. The Red Lotus arrives March 17, 2020 from Doubleday Books.
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant comes a twisting story of love and deceit: an American man vanishes on a rural road in Vietnam and his girlfriend, an emergency room doctor trained to ask questions, follows a path that leads her home to the very hospital where they met.
"The first time Alexis saw Austin, it was a Saturday night. Not in a bar, but in the emergency room where Alexis sutured a bullet wound in his arm. Six months later, on the brink of falling in love, they travel to Vietnam on a bike tour so that Austin can show her his passion for cycling and he can pay his respects to the place where his father and uncle fought in the war. But as Alexis sips white wine and waits at the hotel for him to return from his solo ride, two men emerge from the tall grass and Austin vanishes into thin air. The only clue he leaves behind is a bright yellow energy gel dropped on the road. As Alexis grapples with this bewildering loss, navigating the FBI, Austin's prickly family, and her colleagues at the hospital, Alexis uncovers a series of strange lies that force her to wonder: Where did Austin go? Why did he really bring her to Vietnam? And how much danger has he left her in? Set amidst the adrenaline-fueled world of the emergency room, The Red Lotus is a global thriller about those who dedicate their lives to saving people, and those who peddle death to the highest bidder."
You can add it now to your Want to Read list here on Goodreads.
As always, thank you so much for your faith in my work!
All the best,
Chris B.
March 26, 2019
Wingspan has landed!
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who are Friends,
It's official: the audiobook of my first play, WINGSPAN, landed today. You can download it wherever you download your ebooks.
If you enjoy reading scripts, there is an ebook, too.
The one-act play premiered last year at 59E59 in New York City and ran throughout the summer as part of Summer Shorts. It was directed by Academy Award winner, Alexander Dinelaris (BIRDMAN and THE REVENANT).
WINGSPAN is the story of a young flight attendant with a fear of flying, who is about to work her first transatlantic trip. When a veteran co-worker tries to help her through the turbulent crossing, she discovers that a fear of flying is the least of the young woman's secrets.
Here is a link to learn more:
http://chrisbohjalian.com/chris-bohja...
I love that the second act of my life seems to be as a playwright as well as a novelist. My second play premieres at 59E59 this summer and my third, a brand new two-act adaptation of my novel, MIDWIVES, at the George Street Playhouse in January 2020.
I hope you enjoy WINGSPAN. I am so grateful to all of you for your faith in my work -- on the page and on the stage.
All the best,
Chris B.
It's official: the audiobook of my first play, WINGSPAN, landed today. You can download it wherever you download your ebooks.
If you enjoy reading scripts, there is an ebook, too.
The one-act play premiered last year at 59E59 in New York City and ran throughout the summer as part of Summer Shorts. It was directed by Academy Award winner, Alexander Dinelaris (BIRDMAN and THE REVENANT).
WINGSPAN is the story of a young flight attendant with a fear of flying, who is about to work her first transatlantic trip. When a veteran co-worker tries to help her through the turbulent crossing, she discovers that a fear of flying is the least of the young woman's secrets.
Here is a link to learn more:
http://chrisbohjalian.com/chris-bohja...
I love that the second act of my life seems to be as a playwright as well as a novelist. My second play premieres at 59E59 this summer and my third, a brand new two-act adaptation of my novel, MIDWIVES, at the George Street Playhouse in January 2020.
I hope you enjoy WINGSPAN. I am so grateful to all of you for your faith in my work -- on the page and on the stage.
All the best,
Chris B.
March 17, 2019
A playlist -- and a glimpse into how I write
Dear Friends Who Read and Readers Who are Friends,
I'm asked often about the process of writing: how I approach my day.
Invariably, my day begins by watching movie trailers or music videos to get into the right emotional space for whatever scene I am going to write that morning. Movie trailers and music videos are often a wonderful shorthand for very deep feelings.
For my most recent novel, THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT, I tended to watch more music videos than movie trailers.
Here's a playlist I created of the songs I listened to most often while writing that novel. Flight attendant Cassie Bowden's "anthem" would be Sia's poignant, wrenching "Chandelier." I know of no song that so perfectly captures "morning-after" self-loathing with such remarkable clarity. Click here to watch the whole playlist -- or whichever songs interest you most.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
I must admit, I love Cassie Bowden. She is among my favorite heroines. Yes, she's a mess and makes some terrible mistakes. I know what a disaster her childhood was and how those scars inform her choices and her adult behavior.
But I've always appreciated what John Gardner suggests in his terrific book on writing, "The Art of Fiction." He teaches us that the two points on a compass that matter most in fiction are conflict and human transformation. Can Cassie change before it's too late? (Good heavens, can any of us?) That was often the question I asked myself while writing the novel.
And I also know how many books we have all loved with main characters whose decisions we may not always have liked: think of such remarkable novels as THE GODFATHER, THE SECRET HISTORY, SHARP OBJECTS, or ANNA KARENINA.
In any case, I thought you might enjoy this playlist.
Happy reading -- and happy watching.
As always, thank you so much for your faith in my work!
All the best,
Chris B.
I'm asked often about the process of writing: how I approach my day.
Invariably, my day begins by watching movie trailers or music videos to get into the right emotional space for whatever scene I am going to write that morning. Movie trailers and music videos are often a wonderful shorthand for very deep feelings.
For my most recent novel, THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT, I tended to watch more music videos than movie trailers.
Here's a playlist I created of the songs I listened to most often while writing that novel. Flight attendant Cassie Bowden's "anthem" would be Sia's poignant, wrenching "Chandelier." I know of no song that so perfectly captures "morning-after" self-loathing with such remarkable clarity. Click here to watch the whole playlist -- or whichever songs interest you most.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
I must admit, I love Cassie Bowden. She is among my favorite heroines. Yes, she's a mess and makes some terrible mistakes. I know what a disaster her childhood was and how those scars inform her choices and her adult behavior.
But I've always appreciated what John Gardner suggests in his terrific book on writing, "The Art of Fiction." He teaches us that the two points on a compass that matter most in fiction are conflict and human transformation. Can Cassie change before it's too late? (Good heavens, can any of us?) That was often the question I asked myself while writing the novel.
And I also know how many books we have all loved with main characters whose decisions we may not always have liked: think of such remarkable novels as THE GODFATHER, THE SECRET HISTORY, SHARP OBJECTS, or ANNA KARENINA.
In any case, I thought you might enjoy this playlist.
Happy reading -- and happy watching.
As always, thank you so much for your faith in my work!
All the best,
Chris B.
