Pete Palamountain
I grew up in Covina, CA, a compact little town 22 miles east of L.A. At least it was little when I was a boy. The last time I was there it seemed to be bursting at the seams. But my memories of Covina are all pleasant, and its motto is still "a mile square and all there."
Started in California, to Houston, to Austin, to Kansas City, to the San Antonio area.
Which is best? Depends.
California: crowded but exhilarating
Houston: humid but never boring
Austin: too hip but lots to do
KC: provincial but close knit
SA area: hot (really hot) but ordinary folks
I set EGYPT AND THE TURNCOAT SENATOR in Covina, California. It was a perfect location--a hometown atmosphere with a monster city (Los Angeles) looming just over the horizon.
The book was super fun to write. All of you who write novels know the shock of creating a character who takes on a life of her own, who touches you, amuses you, and causes you to wonder, "Where did she come from?" To me that's Egypt Rosen.
Egypt was born on the first day of the Sadat/Begin talks at Camp David, Maryland. Her optimistic Jewish father had high hopes for better Arab/Israeli relations, so he did his part by naming his middle daughter for a Muslim nation.
This is where I started and the book followed--or led, I'm not quite certain which.
SHOW ME YOUR FACE is a change of pace. I wrote the book because I have a child with autism in my family. When he was diagnosed we immediately began Intensive Behavioral Intervention (also known as Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). The treatment was wonderfully effective, and he is now a near straight-A student in high school. Of course, not all affected children respond so well, but ours did; and today it would take a trained professional to detect even residual autistic tendencies.
But I wondered what would have happened had he been born forty years earlier in an era when quack psychiatrists and psychologists dominated early childhood development, blaming parents--especially ice-cold mothers--for the disorder. Would we have bought into that myth and institutionalized our child, since that was the order of the day? God only knows.
In SHOW ME YOUR FACE (set in Washington D.C. in the late 1960's and early 1970's) a strong-willed mother refuses to believe the accepted garbage regarding "refrigerator mothers" and determines to one day hear her little boy's voice and see his true face.
RUNAWAY TWINS could be labeled a novel for young people, but I decided against such a label because upon reflection it seemed to be a story for all ages.
I'd been reading about those jackasses in polygamous cults in Montana and elsewhere who use religion as an excuse to ravish young girls; and I thought, what if I wrote about beautiful pre-teen twins who refused to be ravished. It might be a compelling tale. I think it turned out that way. I hope you agree.
