Where
are you from? Like
Katherine Hepburn, I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, but my family
moved to Gladwyn, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. Hepburn
went to college at Bryn Mawr while I attended Swarthmore, a campus
fourteen miles to the east. People tell me I sound like her, but I
don’t hear it myself.
Tell
us a bit about Hunting
the Devil. My
long-time live-in lover, Tom Powell, was unfaithful just before we
were to get married. Devastated, I volunteered for a medical mission
in Rwanda. Unfortunately, I am biracial, and my Tutsi-like features
plunged me into the worst of Rwandan Genocide. I became trapped in
the enmity between Hutus and Tutsis. Dr. Cyprien Gatera, my superior,
took an instant dislike to me. I never knew if it was because I was
female or because I looked Tutsi. A Hutu radical, he eventually
commandeered my clinic, slaughtered my patients and murdered my two
adopted sons, then forced me to treat his wounded.
I
escaped his clutches and survived three weeks in hiding before
finding refuge at Benaco refugee camp in Tanzania. There, I fed on
dreams of revenge. With the help of Michel Fournier, a French
lawyer-turned-war-correspondent, and Dr. Tom Powell, my long-time
ex-lover, I searched for that bastard, Gatera. When an unknown
informant passed information to me about my nemesis, I returned to
Rwanda—against my better judgment and despite warnings from the
Belgian Secret Service that Gatera planned to assassinate me. In our
final showdown, I had to decide if revenge was best served cold—or
not at all.
What
did you think the first time you saw Michel Fournier? He
had a long, hooked nose and looked like he could be a Saracen riding
across the desert.
Excellent
description. What was your second thought? I
was too vulnerable from
being betrayed by Tom, that I didn’t want to get involved.
So
it wasn't love at first sight?
Not at all.
What
do you like most about him? He
seemed to care about me in a kind way. I knew he was a reporter, but
he never seemed to be reporting on me. I was attracted to him, not in
a sexual sense, but as a comrade-in-arms. Though later, we had sex,
not so much because we were attracted to each other, but we survived
such horrible things in the genocide that we need to feel something
that wasn’t war-related, something
intimate. After that I wasn’t sure if I was in love with him or
not, but it didn’t matter—he was married and had a baby on the
way.
How
would you describe him?
Michel Fournier was an international war correspondent. Silver
strands ran through his temples and the scruff on his face. He was
tall, at least six-three, with a looseness of limb that was somehow
elegant. Perhaps being French gave him the sartorial grace to pull
off the slouch hat and lumpy safari-type vest filled with camera
lenses and filters. His long narrow nose appeared to have been
broken. He had such an exotic look, I immediately envisioned him in a
burnoose, waving a scimitar, and riding a horse across the desert.
How
would he describe you?
We first met when I was working at the Benaco Refugee Camp. First,
he’d have seen a petite woman examining a pregnant patient’s
abdomen. He’d think I appeared competent and reassuring as I
handled the mother-to-be. He’d also say I wasn’t just thin, but
maigre,
that under-nourished kind of skinny, with hollows beneath my
cheekbones, no flesh to soften my collarbones, wrists of pure bone,
all covered with too-big clothing topped wild uncontrollable curls
and the most phenomenal eyes he’d ever seen, eyes the blue-green of
the Mediterranean Sea in Cannes, his childhood home.
What
made you choose medicine as a career?
I read Albert Schweitzer’s Out
of My Life and Thought when
I was a teenager. I decided I wanted to be him when I grew up and be
a doctor in service of humanity.
What
is your biggest fear?
Failing to fight injustice.
How
do you relax? What’s
relaxation? I’m a doctor with a horrible schedule, no time off. I’m
also more than a bit obsessive-compulsive, so relaxation is rare.
When I do have down-time I read medical journals and nonfiction on
almost any subject. I also run.
Who
is your favorite fictional character?
Dr. Zhivago. I loved the book and loved the movie even more. Omar
Sharif is yummy.
What
is the best piece of advice you ever received? To
not go back to Rwanda. But I didn’t listen—and paid the price.
Jessica,
thank you for spending time with us. We wish you all the best for the
future. Now, we'd like to chat with Suanne.
What
movies or books have had an impact on your career as a writer?
Camelot.
I read T.H. White’s book The
Once and Future King
about a million times and have seen the movie at least fifteen times.
I love the scope of pictures in the 1960s like David Lean’s Dr.
Zhivago and Lawrence
of Arabia. Romeo and Juliet by
Franco Zeffirelli. And, of course, Star
Wars and the Jurassic
Park series!
What
event in your private life were you able to bring to this story and
how do you feel it impacted the novel? The
mother of a Black son, I have a vested interested in racism and its
long-term effects on people. I fulfilled a bucket list item by going
on a three-week safari in Tanzania and took along my fifteen-year-old
biracial son. He had some vague notion of connecting with his African
roots. After the trip, he seemed to wrestle more with his dual
identity. A self-confessed Oreo who’d never been in a place where
Blacks were a majority, he struggled internally with his racial
identity. I wrote about his discomfort in a personal essay that was
published by Brain
Child Magazine. Soon,
I realized there was a book waiting to be written. I took his
discomfort and amplified it. Thus the seed of Hunting the Devil was
planted.
What
book[s] currently rest on your TBR pile? I
am so far behind on my ARCS and TBRs that I finally sat down and made
a list of them by publication date. I’m trying to make a point to
read a current one, a middle-aged one, and an ancient one every week.
This week’s list: Master
Class by Dalcher, The
Crescent Stone by Mikalatos, The Half-Drowned King
by Hartsuyker.
Lastly,
what's up next and when can we expect to see it on the shelves? I’ve
just gotten the rights back to A
Different Kind of Fire,
my first novel, so I’m reading it with an eye to revising and
putting out a second edition. I’m also revising Thunder,
Rain and Ashes, my
third novel, and will hopefully release it this fall. I’m also
writing book #4, a southern Gothic novel about a teenager confined to
an insane asylum in the 1890s.
To learn
more about Suanne Schafer and the stories she creates go to:
https://suanneschaferauthor.com
https://www.instagram.com/suanneschafer/
We
have an excerpt from Hunting
the Devil:
Kirehe,
Rwanda, April 11, 1994
Powered
by a potent mixture of hatred and fear, Jess raced up one hill, down
the next in the pitch-black night. She couldn’t stop. Branches
sliced her arms and legs. Stones bruised her soles. With every gasp,
a side stitch lanced through her right ribs.
Jess
glanced back. With that distraction, her feet tangled. She stumbled
down an embankment. Her feet fought for purchase on the water-slicked
slope. Rocks rolled beneath her, their rumble audible above the rain.
While sliding down the gully on her belly, she grabbed a tree trunk
to break her fall. She pulled herself semi-up-right and clutched her
aching sides. As she caught her breath, she glanced around. The thick
brush surrounding her provided good cover. She could rest a moment.
After
making so much racket, she held her breath and listened. No sounds of
pursuit. She wasn’t sure when she’d last heard the baying of the
dogs tracking her. May- be her pursuers had given up and returned to
her clinic. For the moment, she was safe.
She
let her racing heart slow. Only then did she realize her right hand
was empty. She’d lost the photograph of her children during her
plunge. Darkness masked the surrounding landscape. She’d never find
it now. Her search would have to wait ’til first light. She closed
her hand, now as empty as her heart.
Two
years ago, when Dr. Jessica Hemings had volunteered for a medical
mission, she never dreamed she’d be fleeing for her life among the
mille collines,
the thousand hills of Rwanda. Now, to survive, she had to get as far
as possible from her clinic in Kirehe. The Interahamwe,
the Rwandan paramilitary group, lay behind her. To the east, the
Rusumo Falls Bridge that spanned the Kagera River led to Tanzania—and
safety.
To
purchase Suanne's books, go to:
Hunting
the Devil video
trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF1rjKomAJU
A
Different Kind of Fire video
trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpuI1yCGpe0
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