Pam Jenoff and the Cambridge Story She Couldn’t Shake

I’m away at a sales conference this week, and though most of the books I’ve brought with me to read in whatever free moments I might be able to find are published by my employers, I did bring one other novel to read on my flights to and fro: Almost Home, a romantic thriller by Pam Jenoff. Pam was kind enough to share her thoughts about how she’s had the idea for this novel for a long time, and was finally able to set it down after pursuing a slightly different direction in her first two books.

Almost Home is the culmination of a vision I’ve had for more than a decade. The idea arose when I was still living in Europe in the mid-1990s. I was traveling through Spain with two friends, one Polish and one American. One night as we were lying awake in our pension talking, I began mapping out a story of a young woman whose boyfriend had died mysteriously years earlier when they were students at Cambridge. Many former Cambridge students, myself included, seemed to have complex relationships with the alma mater where they had enjoyed such deeply passionate experiences, and the death I envisioned was on some level a metaphor for those relationships. I didn’t know then that the young woman’s name was Jordan, or that she would turn out to be a diplomat, like myself at the time.

A few years later, when I returned to the States and started seriously writing novels, I was working on two ideas: one for Almost Home, which was modern, and one for The Kommandant’s Girl, which was historical. I took samples of both to my writing class and my peers liked both, but were slightly more enthusiastic about The Kommandant’s Girl, so I pursued that project and ultimately published it and the sequel, The Diplomat’s Wife

Meanwhile, the idea for Almost Home was never far from my thoughts, and I was so glad to have the chance to finally return to it and learn the many secrets and surprises the story would ultimately reveal.

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24 February 2010 | guest authors |

Fred Marchant, “Pinckney Street”

A view from the crest of Boston to the river—
a walk and my friend stopping to say that
for three weeks each year
and beginning tomorrow
this will be the most
beautiful place in the city—
our respite in the brick-faced buildings
blushing in sunlight,
in star magnolias swelling,
about to burst into bright badges,
medallions of tangible life and light
the shook foil that Hopkins wrote about—
th minutes we have of grandeur, hope, gratitude.

The Looking House is the fourth collection of poems by Fred Marchant, and it actually came out late last spring, but since h’s going to be reading at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City next Sunday, February 28, at 2 p.m., as part of a series sponsored by Four Way Books, I thought it’d be good to mention it now.

Other poems from The Looking House include “Ard na Mara” (published in Poetry Daily) and “Note Held” (Poetry).

23 February 2010 | poetry |