Roger Herst stops by In Reference to Murder today for some Author R&R. He's an ordained Reform Rabbi with a doctorate in Middle Eastern History who developed a passion for stories while delivering sermons from the pulpit. He's now written nine novels, including the latest, Nunavut: An Arctic Thriller, a David and Goliath story of the Inuit people’s fight to protect their native land and waterways from a Russian conspiracy to steal its resources and wealth for themselves.
Herst talks more about his approach to researching and writing the novel:
As a rabbi I have always been swimming in stories. Jewish tradition is largely about telling and retelling stories, first of our ancestors, then of our brethren and finally about ourselves. My first blush with writing stories was an attempt to flush out the narratives of Genesis, much like Thomas Mann and Leon Feutwanger. I thought I knew these mythological characters, but the Bible only provided skeletons. Yes, it was pure temerity (chutzpah) to tamper with the sacred text. But I was young and bold. When I started delivering these stories in place of normal sermons, the attention of my congregants grew. Some of these stories stuck to their bones for years! They let me know that people learn about themselves through stories about other people.
But I never wanted to be a Jewish novelist, so my first book published by Doubleday was about the crew of a nuclear submarine buried under the polar icepack. Since I had never been on a submarine I needed to rely upon my imagination, which during the creation of this work I learned to respect. Most of the data for the story was then classified by the Navy, thus I had imagine what might be true rather than what I knew to be so. Naval friends read the manuscript and kept me on track. Miraculously, it worked.
Yet my Jewish roots tugged upon me. It is often admonished to write about what you know. But I felt I knew too much about the Jewish community and didn’t want to wash dirty laundry in public. I avoided the subject until my scruples dissipated and I wrote “Rabbi Gabrielle’s Scandal,” about a young, vibrant, ambitious professional who defends a rapist in court and alienates her female friends and imperils her profession. I never started to write a series about Rabbi Gabrielle, but she grew into another story about the illicit gun trade in Washington DC. And that followed by another about an arson and then a robbery, a confrontation with the Vatican over a Dead Sea fragment and finally about launching a peace plan between the Palestinians and Israelis. Having her engaged in romances was tricky because I knew I never really wanted her to get married off, in a situation where the readers would know who she was sleeping with. Nor did I want her to be a goody-goody professional, always on the right side of every issue and always sacrificing her own interests for other. No, Gabrielle had to be a real full-blooded womanin the trenches, giving blows as well as receiving them.
After six such novels, it was time to return to non-Jewish books. “Destiny’s Children” told a tale of an immigrant Chinese laborer who arrives in California to build track for the intercontinental railroad. Far from his home and speaking no English he must make a new life in California and succeeds in a generational saga of two utterly different families who bond during the difficult years of the 1860s.
My soon to be published novel, “Nunavut, an Arctic Thriller,” reflects on the Inuit people who in 1999 were granted by the Canadian government the largest parcel of land and water ever bestowed upon an indigenous population. At the time, who understood the implications of Global Warming on the prospects of extracting Nunavut’s vast mineral resources? The heroine is a female veterinarian who follows the mythic path of Sedna the Inuit goddess of the sea and ministers to sick creatures of the ocean. And in so doing she becomes involved in an international intrigue to challenge this young and inexperienced nation’s survival.
One tale seems to engender another. A new character begs for more space, so my journey continues bringing this author much joy.
Read more about Roger Herst and his books on his website: http://rogerherst.com/. Nunvaut: An Artic Thriller is available now on Amazon.com.
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