Hartford Courant
April 11 2010

Jewish Festival
Chris Bohjalian At Jewish Book Festival In West Hartford April 13

By CAROLE GOLDBERG
Special to The Courant
April 11, 2010

He might have become a Mad Man.

After all, Chris Bohjalian’s father, brother, godfather and aunt
worked in the Madison Avenue advertising world. After growing up in
Stamford and Florida, he also followed that path when he graduated
from Amherst College in 1982.

"But I knew I wanted to write fiction," Bohjalian, 49, says in a phone
conversation from his home in Lincoln, Vt., where he lives with his
wife, photographer and artist Victoria Blewer, and their daughter,
Grace.

In New York, he worked for the J. Walter Thompson agency as an account
representative ‘ not as a copywriter ‘ "so as not to use up my
creativity," he says.

"I wrote from 5 to 7 a.m. and Monday and Tuesday nights for my first
three novels."

He has just published his 12th novel, "Secrets of Eden" (Shaye
Areheart, $25), a story of domestic violence. On Tuesday, Bohjalian
will visit Mandell Jewish Community Center in West Hartford, where he
will talk about his 11th novel, "Skeletons at the Feast," at a Jewish
Book Festival event.

Published in 2008 and set in the last months of World War II,
"Skeletons" tells how a German family from isolated East Prussia wakes
to the horrors their country has unleashed. They flee the vengeful
Russian Army’s eastward push, along with a Scottish prisoner of war
and a German Jew posing as a Nazi soldier to survive. Intertwined is
an account of Jewish women from a labor camp forced to march west,
shoeless and starving, by the crumbling Nazi regime, as well as love
that flourishes despite harrowing circumstances.

The book was inspired by a diary Bohjalian read in 1999 at the behest
of a friend, whose German grandmother had chronicled her family’s
experiences. Bohjalian envisioned a novel, but could not persuade a
publisher.

Eight years later, he read a nonfiction account of the period and was
struck by what he learned. There was nothing more savage or horrific
than the Eastern front, he says.

"The concentration camps were still functioning; of the 1.4 million
European citizens who were killed, about 800,000 died in those last
six months. "For the American and British forces, it was a war of
territorial liberation." But for the Russians, who had suffered under
the German onslaught, "it was a war of retribution and fury."

He began a novel based on the diary, and talked to Holocaust and
death-march survivors as well as German citizens.

"It was very difficult to interview them," he says.

Many elderly Germans insisted they knew nothing of the camps. Others
admitted they did know, but said they felt helpless to protest.
Bohjalian says he challenged those who claimed they were not aware:
"From 1933 to 1940 you knew that civil rights in Germany were being
abridged, you were aware of Kristallnacht, you were aware of the
deportation of Jewish neighbors, and you knew they were never coming
back.

"You knew."

That was "the crux of the issue," he says, recalling that the
interviews often left his subjects sobbing.

He was shaken by his research, "but it taught me about the resiliency
of the human spirit," as shown by Holocaust survivors.

"I will always be haunted by the stories people told me of what they
had endured and what they lived through," he says.

On Tuesday, he will speak for about 40 minutes and "take questions for
as long as people desire."

He estimates that he has spoken about "Skeletons" at Jewish centers at
least 20 times, finding the talks "poignant and powerful, because the
material is so relevant to so many in the audience, Holocaust
survivors or children of survivors."

The widespread killing of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century
also haunts Bohjalian, who is of Armenian and Swedish descent.

"About 1.5 million souls were slaughtered in 18 months," he says,
including his father’s grandparents, who were killed in 1915. "They
disappeared into the great morass."

"I call it a genocide," he says, noting that the term is not
"politically correct.

"It was primitive and barbaric," he says, "but the Holocaust was
modern and centralized. The murder of 6 million people demanded the
complicity of so many."

Bohjalian is drawn to social issues, such alternative medicine, animal
rights, homelessness and domestic violence, but his novels, he says,
"are not crusades." Such issues "offer conflict," which keeps readers
turning pages, "but what I am really interested in is characters."

Four people tell the story of domestic abuse and murder in "Secrets of
Eden." They are a minister who treats his congregation with an odd
mixture of compassion and contempt; an author whose "kindergarten
spirituality" leads her to believe angels visit Earth; a foul-mouthed
female state’s attorney; and the teenage daughter of a dead couple.

"I depend on characters to take me by the hand and lead me through the
dark of the story," Bohjalian says.

He "would like to believe in angels," and for him, Oprah Winfrey
played that role when she chose his novel "Midwives" for her book club
in 1998. It became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

"It was the greatest professional blessing I will ever have," he says.
"No one has done as much for books in this country. What a gift to the
reading culture."

"Secrets" explores domestic abuse, a problem that mars the idyllic
qualities of Vermont. Bohjalian says about two-thirds of all homicides
there since 1994 have been related to such violence.

The state is "small, crunchy, formerly agrarian and a microcosm for
national issues," he says. But Vermont "is still rural, with pockets
of isolation, and it’s hard for women to break the cycle and get help.
It’s a poor state, and economics can make women stay in an abusive
relationship.

"Winters are long, days are short and there’s a lot of beer," he adds.

"Secrets" was published in February, and he has already heard from
more than 60 women who have suffered abuse.

"This story is their story," he says, adding he received a similar
outpouring from thousands of rape survivors since he published "The
Double Bind" in 2007.

What he has learned about sexual violence and domestic abuse "is
disturbing to me as a guy," he says. "It makes me ashamed of my
gender."

Bohjalian’s nonfiction hits a lighter note. His amusing column about
life in Vermont, "Idyll Banter," began in 1988 and has run weekly in
the Burlington Free Press since 1992. "Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions
to a Very Small Town" was published in 2003, and he hopes to do one
more essay collection, focused on his daughter, whose name is Grace
Experience.

Her unusual middle name dates to the 1600s and his wife’s ancestry,
which includes Mayflower colonist William Brewster. The Bohjalians
considered three 17th-century names from her family: Free Love,
Patience and Experience.

"We couldn’t use Free Love; that doesn’t work now." Patience was a
character in his novel "Water Witches.

"But we loved Experience," he says.

Bohjalian is writing a novel about an airline pilot faced with an
emergency landing, for publication in 2012.

He also hopes to write the second part of a proposed trilogy set in
World War II. It would bring back Anna, the German girl who atones for
Nazi inhumanities, and Cecile, the Frenchwoman who endures the camps
and forced marches, as well as a third young woman not fully fleshed
out in the first book.

"I love those characters," he says.

Bohjalian remains fascinated by the notebooks that inspired "Skeletons."

"The teenage girl in that diary was the model for Anna," he says, "and
all that was good and interesting and kind and courageous about her is
in that real girl."

¢CHRIS BOHJALIAN ‘ who started his professional life as an advertising
account representative before becoming an acclaimed writer ‘ will
speak Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Jewish Book Festival at Mandell
Jewish Community Center, 335 Bloomfield Ave., West Hartford. Tickets
are $30. Information: 860-231-6316 or mandelljcc.org.

books/hc-chris-bohjalian-jewish-book-.artapr11,0,7 594439,full.story