Tag Archives: Distant Thunder

How Many American Bodies?

 

How many American bodies had he sent home in the course of his career? Neal Hudson had not kept count, but he figured it must be close to fifty.

Dept of StateSo begins my novel, Distant Thunder, the story of Neal Hudson, a U.S. Foreign Service professional. Distant Thunder, like several of my books, deals with a Foreign Service officer, the official name for a U.S. diplomat. Most Americans have no idea our government has a Foreign Service. Thus, I often create a scene in my novels in which the officer has to explain what he or she does.

On rare visits to the States, strangers he’d meet in a hotel or a car rental would ask what he did for a living. He’d fumble around trying to explain. “I’m a consular officer.”

Raised eyebrows. “Oh?”

“A Foreign Service officer.”

“In the military, you mean?”

No, Neal says, and explains about overseas Americans and how Foreign Service officers notify loved ones when an American citizen dies overseas. They see that bodies are sent home. They visit imprisoned Americans and American children living with non-American parents. They perform more mundane tasks, acting as a notary in foreign countries and renewing passports.

Neal serves as a consular officer. Other specialities include political, economic, administrative, and security, to name a few.

Like professionals everywhere—firefighters, police officers, the military, nurses—Foreign Service officers are proud of their service and can never fully explain it to the uninitiated. The interweaving of tragedy, comedy, and an occasional happy ending with a touch of the exotic provides infinite plots for story telling.

To Community

 

A journalist friend of mine coined the verb phrase “to community.” He said we needed a verb form for the act of coming together in kinship-minded groups.

The protagonists in my stories often “community.” Their stories are sewn within the larger fabric of history, but the characters meld into community as they resolve issues in their lives. I don’t plan it that way, but for some reason, my characters can’t operate without this fellowship. It may be one of expatriate Americans in a foreign locale, or an impromptu group formed on a train, or a new family by marriage. The stories involve all kinds of plots, but the community forms in the midst of the action.

In Singing in Babylon, Kate and Philip find community in a home church in Saudi Arabia, then with Philip’s family. In Quiet Deception, a mystery set on a college campus, four students form friendships while some of their professors share shortcomings with their colleagues. In Searching for Home, Christian families bond in embassy communities in the Middle East as terrorism threatens. In Distant Thunder, it’s a group of strugglers who meet on a train, between Washington and Seattle, each at a decision point in their lives.

Communities are formed sometimes by age or interest and sometimes by circumstances that turn acquaintances into friends, then into members of a community. As my characters live out their stories, they teach me that Christianity is very much a community religion.

Stories Within Stories

 

A novel may unfold on several levels.  The first is the entertainment level. One can read it for pleasure and be perfectly satisfied. The story may also suggest deeper elements, if the reader wishes to explore them.

My newest novel, Distant Thunder, (OakTara Publishers), is, on one level, a romance. A divorced mom facing her only child’s deployment to Afghanistan, deals with anxiety over that, as well as the boring muddle her life has become. On a train ride, she meets a U.S. diplomat grieving the death of his wife in a car accident in the Middle East after a marital quarrel. A close friend was killed in a car accident a couple of weeks later. A coincidence? Was betrayal to country involved?

The two edge toward cautious friendship, but always with past hurts simmering below the surface.

So there you have it: a romance with a bit of mystery, even intrigue, thrown into the plot.

If you wish, you can fish for deeper elements, also.

Following are excerpts from a review by Bruce Judisch, who understood the different strands.

In Distant Thunder, Ms. O’Barr has melded a personal journey of searching and restoration with a candid, point-blank look at American culture and faith.  Okay, that’s been done before.  A lot.  But what makes this book unique is the author’s perspective on America through the eyes of Americans who have spent a considerable portion of their adult lives outside of America.   . . .

(Excerpted from  http://brucejudisch.blogspot.com/  May 13, 2012.)

You can read it for pure entertainment or go deeper, as you wish.

Distant Thunder: When Religions Compete

 

One of the underlying themes of my latest novel, Distant Thunder, as in my other stories, is the place of faith in a world where religious views are either abandoned or seized with fervor. It is a time when religions increasingly compete and sometimes cause suffering.

Distant Thunder can be read as a love story between two people no longer young who carry baggage from past choices. On another level, the characters, of varying shades of religious conviction, deal with other issues. They struggle to define faith, or even to accept faith, within a time that asks if faith does more harm than good.

Though Americans, they see domestic issues of their country through a global lens. The main protagonists are Christian, because I know more about Christians, being one myself. Yet they are interested in other religions, foreign affairs, and current events, areas not usually a subject of this type of fiction. Like characters from my previous novels, they are rooted in time and place because their struggles are the struggles of a particular  time and place: American Christians since the end of World War II to the post 9/11 era.

It is against this background that the characters change and mature in ways they would not in a purely domestic setting. Christianity is, after all, a world religion.

Thoughts On Themes As My Latest Book Is Published

The main protagonists in my stories suffer the death of loved ones, marriage breakups, career stress, romantic relationships, and challenges to childhood dreams. Deeper conflicts underlie these issues. Usually the characters are Americans of the Christian persuasion. But their conventional Christianity often is jarred by sojourns in countries influenced by other religions.

After the characters experience their faith as a minority religion, they can no longer accept it simply because it was a part of their upbringing. When they understand the unique message of Christianity, they return home stronger in this faith than when they left.

However, they remain, in a sense, in exile. Their conventional religion has become more subversive, standing in contrast to the materialism and self-centeredness they perceive “at  home.”

In both Singing in Babylon and Searching for Home, the protagonists live for a time in countries where another faith is predominant. In Quiet Deception, the background is the relentless change in the United States during the decades following World War II. This change is noted by one of the characters, a Vietnam veteran.

Distant Thunder, just released, happens in contemporary America, much of it in that iconic American experience of a journey west. But three of the characters have foreign experiences which contrast with those of the fourth, who’s never been out of the United States. One character recounts her experiences in the North African country of Algeria, once the domain of early church leaders like Augustine, but bereft of all but a few Christians today. “Nothing’s left but ruins,” another character agrees, referring to the ruins of ancient churches. Not persecution someone points out, “more like the Christian community just faded away.”

Perhaps by living “subversively,” not in violent subversion, but in the subversive life of love, they will be part of a renewal and prevent a similar fading away of their own faith communities.