On Monday, April 11, 2016 I read from my novel-in-progress, Palomar, in the beautiful gallery at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska. (That town is gorgeous in the spring!!) My fellow resident fiction writer, Melanie Westerberg, read a section from her vivid fantastical novel first, then I read a few pages of Palomar. Melanie’s picture is below (I forget to get a picture of myself at the podium). The reading was pulled together on short notice, so I was amazed to see over 30 people in attendance, including several I had met already in my short stay in Nebraska City. Thanks to Pat Friedli and Amanda Smith, staff of the Center, for arranging the reading.
Palomar is a novel sparked by my experiences in Colombia in the 1990’s, although fiction and time have taken me pretty far from the original events that I observed there. It is the story of how war — a decades-long war of ideology, counterinsurgency, and above all, competition for the land — affects people in the countryside. It focuses on the story of two men seeking to preserve some measure of dignity and safety in a world that allows very little of either. Victor opts to pick up arms and join the war as a combatant, while Dairo resists the war and its incursions on civilian space by becoming a peace activist of a sort. When their paths converge in the town they both call home, both their worlds explode.
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