‘Flight Attendant’ author turns to Old Hollywood for ‘Lioness’

In August 2019, creator Chris Bohjalian was at a matinee film in NYC when the inspiration for what would develop into his following novel, “The Lioness” (Doubleday), out now, struck. 

“I emerged from the theater into this cobalt blue sky, steaming heat. Ten minutes earlier I experienced been viewing this motion picture. And I considered, ‘My God, I appreciate Hollywood! Why have I in no way written a Hollywood novel?” he suggests.

“I realized my Hollywood novel would be set at some level in my childhood. So I went back again to a period of time of terrific social upheaval. And I didn’t want the locale to be just Hollywood. I imagined, ‘What is an unique place in 1964 the place a team of Hollywood actors and their entourage could get into all types of difficulty?’”

As it turns out, Tanzania. A-list actress Katie Barstow and her new spouse David have traveled there for a high-stop safari, accompanied by a couple buddies and fellow actors. The vacation guarantees to be a deluxe getaway, stuffed with wildlife and beautiful landscapes, until eventually the unthinkable takes place — a band of Russian mercenaries requires them hostage just after killing their safari guides. (“Russians have been the negative men in my textbooks for a extensive time,” he notes.) 

Whilst the Vermont-primarily based creator is prolific, no two textbooks are the identical — they may possibly assortment from a flight attendant waking up subsequent to a useless overall body in a Dubai lodge place (“The Flight Attendant,” the foundation for the well known HBOMax collection) to a Puritan woman accused of witchcraft in 1600s Massachusetts (“Hour of the Witch”) to a younger girl serving to refugees from the 1915 Armenian genocide (“The Sandcastle Girls.”) 

“My guides are powered by dread. I want my readers strolling a tightrope with a single side currently being heartbreak, the other facet getting hope,” claims Bohjalian, who prefers to edit manuscript drafts with a fountain pen. “I’m not afraid to destroy my key people — I do it a ton. My intention is never to publish the identical e book 2 times. But all my publications share individuals very same traits. You really don’t know if you’re heading to finish on heartbreak or hope.”