Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 51

SECRETS OF EDEN -- an excerpt

I'm happy to tell my friends at goodreads that readers can now find an excerpt from "Secrets of Eden" on the novel's page on the Random House web site - and that there are four short excerpts, introducing each of the four narrators. Here you can meet the Reverend Stephen Drew, State's Attorney Catherine Benincasa, bestselling angel aficionado Heather Laurent, and 15-year-old orphan Katie Hayward.

To read the excerpt, visit:

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/di...

Fingers crossed it doesn't disappoint you.

Thanks, Indie Next!

"Secrets of Eden" is an Indie Next Selection for February 2010. A thousand thanks to Indie Bound and the independent booksellers.

The real God of Fire

We've now reached that stage in the winter when each of my family's four cats sits like the Sphinx, head up, paws straight before her, facing the wood stove as it heats the den, the kitchen and the library in which I write. My friend Adam Turteltaub once saw the cats sit like this and remarked, "They think the wood stove's a god, you know. They're worshipping it."

He may be right. This time of year, I think pretty highly of the wood stove, too.

But there are a lot of reasons why I like the contraption that transcend its most obvious purpose.

First of all, it has helped me to get to know my neighbors, especially the folks in the Lincoln Volunteer Fire Company. Sure, we haven't had a chimney fire in 15 years, but in those first winters when we were heating with wood, we had three. And the wonderful thing about my neighbors who fight fires isn't merely their competence, it's their patience and camaraderie. They do good work and they do it cheerfully. I will never forget standing in my driveway around midnight one Saturday night in January with my next-door neighbor Jim Brown as the two of us gazed up at the peak of my Metalbestos chimney.

"What do you think, Jim?" I asked. "Is that a chimney fire?"

And Jim nodded sagely and said, "See those flames peaking out of the top? That's usually a sign you have yourself a chimney fire."

That was way back in 1995, and it was the last of our chimney fires (Some people thus think I'm due, but I hope not). We clean the chimney twice a year and after that third chimney fire, we changed the configuration of the Metalbestos chimney itself. The one that was put in when we bought the wood stove made two tight turns, first on the second floor of the house and then in the attic. The creosote would cake to the sides of the chimney in those spots and the next thing I knew, I was asking a bunch of volunteer firefighters if they wanted any coffee.

But I also like stacking wood in the summer, a part of the preparation for burning it in the winter. Thomas Moore, author of "Care of the Soul," has described how he derives enormous satisfaction from washing the family dishes by hand. It's a task that is giving and it's a task that allows his mind the chance to roam as he works. I feel the same way about stacking wood. I've figured out a lot about characters in my novels while angling a few cords so it has the best chance to dry in time for the burning season. I have also solved a lot of personal problems in my life while putting in wood, such as making peace with the reality that I am never going to be a serious contender on "So You Think You Can Dance."

In addition, I savor the way the wood stove efficiently dries the clothes that become saturated with ice and snow as my wife or I shovel the walkway or roof or when we return from an afternoon of cross-country skiing. Most winter days, the cats will have to nudge their way past a pair of boots or wet gloves to find the perfect spot by the stove.

But the most important gift that we derive from the soapstone box is this: It is indeed the family hearth, with all that word connotes in terms of warmth and comfort and family. Our house doesn't have a fireplace but it has that stove, and when the winter sets in, the wood stove is where we tend to congregate. My cats might not show great common sense: To wit, only two know their names and all four seem to believe that if you stare at a door long enough, it will open.

But they do choose their gods well.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on January 10, 2010.)

Thank you. Booklist!

Bohjalian "drops bombshell clues...and weaves subtle nuances of doubt and intrigue into a taut, read-in-one-sitting murder mystery."
-- Booklist, Starred and Boxed Review of SECRETS OF EDEN

Thanks for the memories, Tiger and Jon.

New Year's Eve is behind us and it's time to recycle the holiday cards and the holiday letters -- those single-page updates that people send to let friends and family know how the children are doing and what they or their spouse may have accomplished in the previous 12 months. The following are some of the moments from 2009 that I tend to doubt these celebrities, politicians and criminals shared in their annual holiday letters, but I nevertheless would like to have read.

• Tiger Woods: "I know a lot of you are worried about Elin and me. To use a golf analogy, I was out of bounds and took a stroke. But we'll be fine."

• Kris Allen: "I did win American Idol. I really did. I mean, I know everyone thinks Adam Lambert won, but he was actually the runner-up. Anyway, I just bought some leather pants and left the makeup counter at Macy's, so look for big things from me in 2010!"

• Jon Gosselin: "Never thought Kate and I would be sending separate holiday letters. But the good news? My agent is in discussion with Octo-mom Nadya Suleman for a reality TV show with my eight kids and her octuplets: 'Jon and Nadya plus 16.' I know the title needs work, but we'll straighten it out. Stay tuned!"

• Lindsay Lohan: "Not a great year in the romance department, but at least I wasn't on Tiger Woods's cell phone. Also, I wasn't in rehab. Not shabby!"

• Bernie Madoff: "First of all, I don't want to hear any more insider trading jokes now that I'm behind bars. Everyone's making them. Second, I have a new fund which has dramatically increased my cellmate's portfolio. We're investing in forward-thinking companies that make signs for flea markets and going-out-of-business sales."

• Susan Boyle: "I dreamed a dream that Simon Cowell took off his T-shirt."

• David Letterman: "I'm a total hacker compared to Tiger Woods. Woods, I imagine, is also a much better golfer."

• Mark Sanford: "I'm a total hacker compared to Tiger Woods. Frankly, I would have stepped down as South Carolina governor, but the Republicans had already had one governor leave office early this year, and I didn't want people to think we were all a bunch of quitters."

• Sarah Palin: "It's sad, but the elitist East Coast media think if you leave an elected position early you're either a quitter or you had an extramarital affair like Mark Sanford. The fact I left early just shows I am not a quitter and I did not have an affair. Those other guys are rogues -- I mean, cads. Rogue is good; cad is bad."

• Richard Heene: "'Wife Swap' was a mistake. I admit it. And having my son pretend he was trapped on a runaway balloon was, in hindsight, a very bad idea. But I have vowed in 2010 to show the world what a fit parent I am with a brand new reality TV show, Antique Child Roadshow, in which my wife and I will travel around in a balloon and appraise antiques and children. Also, I have changed my son's name from Falcon to eBay."

The amazing thing, of course, is how many of these names we will have forgotten completely a year from now. Oh, Lindsay Lohan, Sarah Palin, and certainly Tiger Woods will still be entertaining us. As Stephen Schwartz wrote in the musical, "Wicked," "The most celebrated are the rehabilitated." So for all I know, by the end of 2010 Woods will be back in all of our good graces. Perhaps he won't be endorsing only text messaging programs for cell phones.

In the meantime, to the New Year! May there always be people out there to remind us that to err is human, and to tweet about it sublime.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on January 3, 2010.)

SECRETS OF EDEN -- an audio preview

The SECRETS OF EDEN audio has four actors: One for each of the novel's four narrators. You can hear one of them, the Reverend Stephen Drew, at this site:

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/di...

A dynamite day at the bridge

Some people think 800 pounds of ex­plosives and champagne mimosas might not be a smart combination, but they've never met Heidi Brous­seau. Heidi is an accountant and she hap­pens to live in a house on Lake Champlain perhaps a half-mile south of where the Lake Champlain Bridge stood regally as late as 9:59 a.m. Monday morning. Frankly, I think Heidi is on to something.

About two hours before the blast would crackle through the falling snow, I was looking for a nearby place to park and I saw the remnants of a boat dock with a picture postcard view of the bridge. Standing in the driveway across the street from the dock was a woman who would prove to be an accountant but in reality should be catering Super Bowl parties. This was Heidi, and she said two things to me: First, I could park in her driveway. Second, she was serving mimosas.

When I got inside her house to warm up, I saw she was also serving chicken wings, fruit, chips, dips, pickles, sandwiches, deviled eggs, doughnuts and hot coffee. She was entertaining close to two dozen of her friends, opening her house and giving them front-row seats for a moment in Champlain Valley history that was both poignant and powerful and sure to appeal to the 8-year-old child in all of us.

Sure enough, among her guests was 8-year-old Jack Halpin of Vergennes. I think Jack and I would have been fast friends if I were four decades younger: He told me he likes snowboarding and dynamite, though he admits that he has a lot more experience with the former. Also present was Barbara Fitz-Gerald, perhaps among the more elderly guests at Heidi's: She has been traveling across the Champlain Bridge since 1952. Her granddaughter, Jill Fitz-Gerald, a junior at the University of Vermont told me, "Gran has always thought it would be fun to jump off that bridge." Barbara smiled and did not deny this ambition.

For the next two hours, the snow swirled across Vermont, and from my vantage point on Heidi's dock, the bridge would appear and disappear and reappear in the storm. One moment it would be clearly visible, and in the next only the barest outlines could be seen through the squall. There was something Narnia-like about the vista and the way the bridge would dissolve in the snow.

At one point I wandered a half-mile up the road to the Bridge Restaurant, about as close as most of us could get to the demolition. The Bridge Restaurant is open all year long when there's a bridge. That means, these days it's closed. But the "No-Bridge Cafe" on the restaurant's front porch was selling doughnuts and coffee and T-shirts. And while the snowstorm might have meant I would have a better view from there, it was hard to beat the mimosas and the hospitality back at Heidi's.

Heidi told me she was having a party because she "wanted people to watch this historic moment. It means a lot to people in this area."

She's right. Jack Halpin's grandmother had come up from Brandon in 1929 to see the dedication when the bridge opened. Now Jack and his mom and dad were present to see its demolition.

Soon enough, we all heard the first of the three warning sirens from our perch on the dock and the shoreline just north and south of it. There were people braving the snow all along the slope at the edge of the lake, but it wasn't so crowded that anyone's view was obstructed. And then we saw the dim sketch of the bridge grow indistinct and a millisecond later heard the explosion as the structure pancaked into the water amidst a cloud of dust.

It was over so quickly that for an instant I feared that the death of an 80-year-old bridge opened by Franklin Roosevelt had been overshadowed by the snow. But then I turned to Jack and asked him what he thought. A little wide-eyed he said simply, "I could feel the vibration." And another adult just off the dock added, "That's history."

And so even though I hadn't one of Heidi's mimosas there with me on the dock, I raised my gloved hand symbolically and toasted to the bridge.

Then I got the heck out of the cold.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 29, 2009.)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Yes.

When I was a child, my parents' New Year's Eve parties were not precisely chaotic studies in decadence, dissolution and debauchery, but once when I was in elementary school, I did accidentally walk 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.

Another time, when I was in middle school, my mother was having so much fun at the New Year's Eve dinner party that she and my father were hosting that she forgot to serve dinner. It is an indication of the amount of liquor being consumed that it was only when the dozen or so adults were gathered around the television to watch the great ball descend on Broadway that one of the guests first asked whether the group was ever going to eat.

Their 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 some doozies in the summer, too.

My father is Armenian and his first name is Aram, and one July they had a costume soiree they called a "Harem with Aram." This politically incorrect affair confused me even as a sixth-grader since, as far as I knew, neither harems nor polygamy figured prominently in Armenian culture. It was, like most of their parties, a fairly raucous bash. One couple brought goats.

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 have resolutions for the purpose of trying to make the coming year better -- to see if we can somehow stop making the same mistakes year after year ... after year.

Consequently, I don't make resolutions, and it's not simply because I know I am a total lost cause. Likewise, I tend to steer clear of most New Year's Eve parties because there are too many middle-aged ghosts from my childhood at the punch bowls.

On the other hand, I am a big fan of the Best Night and First Night celebrations that so many towns and cities now organize. Even Bristol, a reasonably small Green Mountain hamlet, this year boasts among its Best Night entertainers magician Tom Verner, composer and musician Pete Sutherland and the delightful women's a cappella group, Maiden Vermont.

The performers and performances I've savored over the years at Burlington, Vermont's annual First Night -- all of whom will be back again this year -- include Anais Mitchell, Circus Smirkus, Kamikaze Comedy and Spotlight on Dance. I was a Lyric Theatre board member for six years, which means I have also savored that group's annual New Year's Eve cabaret close to a dozen times.

Now, I have not shared my New Year's Eve demons with you this morning because I want to discourage anyone from partying in a reasonable fashion this coming Thursday night. But I have found that for me, the best way to keep longing and sorrow at bay on New Year's Eve may be to look neither backward nor forward, but instead to live entirely in the moment with the songs and stories of some of Vermont's premier entertainers.

May 2010 bring us all peace and wonder and joy. Happy New Year.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 27, 2009.)

Better safe than sorry? Not in 1967.

My parents may not have been perfect, but there is one thing they always did right: When I would race downstairs on Christmas morning, I could be assured of finding under the tree at least one present with which I could inflict serious damage on either myself or my brother or the house.

Now, I am not one of those generational Luddites who moans that kids' toys aren't as cool as they were 30 or 40 years ago. But they are safer. It's hard to hurt yourself with a Wii.

Ah, but the toys of my childhood were a different story. I am not referring to the harmless playthings found in baby boomer catalogs such as the Magic 8 Ball or the Wham-O Monster Magnet. I'm fondly recalling the lethal ones with sharp points, electric heaters and catapult arms. Yup, they just don't make 'em like the original Lawn Darts anymore.

The original Lawn Darts -- also called Jarts -- were foot-long darts that differed from the current version in one important way. Instead of a rounded plastic tip, they had a thick metal point. And instead of gently tossing them underhand at small rings you placed in the lawn, my boyhood friends and I would throw them as high into the air as we could and watch them fall from the skies like missiles. Half the time we would have to dive under a tree, absolutely terrified, our hands cupping our skulls. The Internet is filled with Lawn Dart horror stories -- and lawsuits. Lawn darts with metal tips were banned in the United States in 1988.

Likewise, the original Creepy Crawlers was far more dangerous than the modern incarnation. In the version I had as a boy, I would pour the "plastigoop" into a metal mold, place the metal mold in the "Thing Maker," and out would come a colorful, squishy, rubber bug. First, however, I would have to burn off every single one of my fingerprints. Those original metal molds and that original "Thing Maker" had to have been hotter than a pizza oven. The new Creepy Crawlers looks much safer, largely because it comes with a handle to hold the metal trays and the "plastigoop" is cooked by a light bulb -- which is sold separately, making it really hard for kids to burn themselves on Christmas morning if mom and dad miss that tiny detail.

Sadly, my two favorite scary toys seem not to have been reincarnated.

The first was a robot that was just about my height when I was in first grade. If you filled it with a lunchbox-worth of D batteries, it would rumble forward on tank treads. The best part? It shot darts from its eyes. And while the darts that came with the robot had flat rubber tips, I figured out quickly that those bad boy pupils would also fire sharpened pencils, plastic pens, and nails. Yup, nails. It's amazing that my older brother and I didn't accidentally blind each other.

The second toy was a battleship that was about a yard long and perhaps 18 inches high. Again, what made it special was one particular design element: It came with a catapult to launch anti-submarine depth charges. The depth charges were hollow plastic and weighed about as much as a butterfly. They were the size of my thumb. But the catapult, I discovered, was powerful enough to sling Lincoln Logs, too. The result? When we were selling the house, my parents found Lincoln Log-shaped indentations in the Sheetrock in every room where my battleship and I kept the world safe for democracy.

Now, be warned. There may still be spectacularly dangerous toys under the trees in a few days. In the annual tsunami of consumption that swamps shoppers this time of the year, even the most diligent mom or dad may accidentally put a dart-shooting cyborg beside the holiday balsam. But we're getting better as a culture and as parents.

May 2010 bring us all peace and wonder and joy. And if you see an original Lawn Dart falling from the sky, run for cover.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 20, 2009.)

A Speck of Dirt Before We Die

I've always taken great pride in my fanatic germophobia. I used to believe I was truly Olympian when it came to charmless, off-putting, vaguely sociopathic don't-breathe-in-my-airspace-because-you-coughed behavior. No more. As a result of our apocalyptic fears of the H1N1 virus, I am no longer the most neurotic germophobe in town. Far from it. The following are some of the extremes to which some readers have gone this flu season in their feverish attempts to steer clear of fevers.

Beth McCall Moore: "I am all about the towels on the floor of the hotels. UGH! I have to spray down the whole place with Lysol -- especially doorknobs."

Dawn Hoffman Price: "I will not use the store pen, especially the pharmacy pen. I always bring my own. When my son figured this out, he would take the store pen and hold it near my hand in a threatening manner."

Gary R. Cohan: "I use Purell as hair gel." Gary, it should be noted, is a physician and the host of a weekly, live, call-in medical radio show. We lived on the same floor in the same dorm our first year of college, and it is a testimony to the magic of the human immune system that any college freshman makes it to middle age.

Elizabeth H. Herndon Potts. "Only use shopping carts that have been sitting in the sun; never read doctor's office magazines; tap (retail) keypads with keys; wash off restaurant tables (and seats) with disinfecting wipes."

Dana Lorway. "I can get in and out of a public bathroom without touching any alien surface: I use paper towels as hand-guards for the faucets, the paper towel dispenser and the bathroom stall door. I push the flush lever with my foot. You know those public toilets that have the handle practically on the floor? Sorry ladies, if it's me you see coming out of the stall, you might want to flush with your Jimmy Choos, too." Dana's mother taught her these tricks when she was a child; her mother grew up when polio was still common and it was believed a person could catch the disease from a public surface.

Now, Joanne Mahannah offers a warning that should be considered when you contemplate Lorway's suggestion: "Be careful when flushing with your foot, especially when wearing clogs! It's really gross fishing your shoe out of a public toilet while balancing on one foot and trying to hold on to a 3-year-old's hands so she won't touch anything germ-infested until the two of you can make a break for it!"

Todd Goodyear: "Don't feel you have to shake hands while greeting people at church. Consider the fist tap or the chest bump instead." It is worth noting that Todd is the youth pastor at the United Church of Lincoln.

Teressa Corson: "I push doors with my feet and flush public toilets with my feet. But otherwise I try to stay healthy the old-fashioned way: exercise, diet and a little Airborne when everyone around me is coughing and sneezing."

Finally, a friend of mine shared with me this story. I should note that I do not view it as corroboration of the urban legend that a dog's mouth is as clean as an operating room. But perhaps it is an indication that neither is a dog's mouth the Petri dish of disease that some people fear it is. Either way, the story is a reality check that there is only so much a person can do to keep germs at bay.

Lisa Apostle Coleman. "I hosted a group of six ladies in Mexico for the weekend. They were all afraid of the swine flu and the Purell was flying. But they ate everything in sight: street food, local dairy products, fruits and nuts. I put out a bowl of sweet and savory coated peanuts for them to eat all weekend long. On the last day of the trip, we realized that my dog had been eating the peanuts right out of the bowl, too. So much for the germ patrol."

I applaud all of you. Thank you for making my neuroses more socially acceptable.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 13, 2009.)