New direction for established author
Sometimes, taking an unexpected path in life leads to success. That's true for Diana Abu-Jaber, PhD '86. Already an accomplished novelist, she decided to take a risk and write her first mystery, Origin, published recently by W.W. Norton.
"I didn't expect to write a murder mystery," Abu-Jaber said by phone from Portland, Ore., where she teaches writing at Portland State University. "That was a real surprise to me. I woke up one morning and a woman's voice was in my head. The voice was vivid and she was talking about herself. There was some mystery about her background. She didn't know where she came from. She was into forensics and fingerprinting."
The woman in Abu-Jaber's head was Origin's protagonist, Lena Dawson, a fingerprint analyst investigating a series of suspected baby killings in Syracuse, N.Y. Abu-Jaber is a Syracuse native and sets her novels in upstate New York as a way to revisit what she calls her "platonic ideal of home". She said she needed to do a tremendous amount of research before writing Origin, work that turned a figurative visit home into a real one.
"I had to basically amass a small library of books about forensics and fingerprinting," Abu-Jaber said. "I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I even got a little fingerprinting kit, one of those junior investigator kits, and fingerprinted my friends and my husband. I really got into it. What helped the most was doing in-person field research. I went up to a crime lab in Syracuse. That was wonderful. One of the head honchos there at the crime lab was someone who had read my work, so she said 'let them in'."
Last summer, Abu-Jaber went on a book tour with stops in the Northeast, Florida and the West Coast. Her work has received high praise from critics such as USA Today's Olivia Barker, who said "Abu-Jaber certainly has her finger on the pulse of what makes a memorable thriller: smart, spare writing, strong character development and nail-nibbling suspense."
Her next project is Silver World, a young adult novel about a girl who goes into the mirror and meets her reflection. Like Origin, this work will be a new, exciting direction for the author. She has two more projects lined up: a more traditional novel and a sequel to Origin.
"When I wrote Origin, I thought it would be a standalone work," Abu-Jaber said. "I approached it the way I approached other novels. Then, I discovered that murder mystery fans like to see series. People would start to ask me what's going in the next book. It's had such a great response that I decided to write another one."
|
