The novelist talks family bonds,

outlines, and balancing work and kids.

Q & A WITH THE AUTHOR

By Holly Smith 

Q: Your new novel, A Blood Thing, starts with the governor of Vermont being blackmailed into pardoning a felon. Unfortunately, the pardon backfires and makes the governor’s situation worse. Might there be a lesson in there somewhere for our current president, or is that wishful thinking?  

James:  Well, I’m not sure what the odds are that the president will be reading my book, but it certainly wasn’t meant to be a lesson for him! I originally conceived of the story more than two years ago, so if there’s any reflection at all on current political issues, it is purely coincidental. The seed of the story for me was the question of the extent to which an ethical person — someone whose integrity meant a great deal to him — would compromise his ethics to protect a loved one.

To make the ethical line more difficult for him to cross, I decided to make him a politician who had built his entire career on a reputation for honesty and integrity. So if he falls, he’ll fall hard and very publicly. And though I certainly didn’t plan for any parallels between my story and current events, I have to admit that as I worked on this book, I was a bit more attuned to the world of politics than I might otherwise have been.

 

Family ties — especially between brothers — are at the heart of A Blood Thing. What is it that makes the testing of these bonds so compelling to write about?

James: Family ties play a strong role in nearly all of my books to date, whether it be someone searching for a long-lost brother, a man pushing himself to his limits to protect his ex-wife and son from a killer, or even a small-time criminal seeking redemption for having walked out on his family years before. Family members are very often the people closest to us, the ones for whom we’re willing to make sacrifices we might not make for others. So I feel that family is a theme to which many of us can relate.

Personally, I have five siblings — three brothers and two sisters — as well as a wife and two sons. I have to wonder how far I would go for any of them if circumstances required me to test those limits. What lines would I cross? In A Blood Thing, two brothers and a sister go to great lengths — making personal and professional sacrifices — to protect their falsely accused youngest brother, who is 29 but suffered a debilitating traumatic brain injury when he was 7, and are also called upon to protect each other.

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