Sub-title for this post: Local girl does good! Diane Hammond is a Bend,Oregon resident. This is her third critically acclaimed novel. Visit Diane's site for more info and for book signing and other media events around 'Hannah's Dream'.
“Irresistibly touching, delectably uplifting, Hammond’s understated yet gargantuan tale of devotion and commitment poignantly proves that love does indeed come in all shapes and sizes.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“Sweet . . .[T]he moments of genuine emotion will charm readers in search of a happy ending.”
— Publishers Weekly
by Diane Hammond
For videos and more information related to the topic of this book
www.dianehammond.com
Diane will be doing some local book discussions and signings later in the fall. During September she's on tour promoting Hannah's Dream. Stay tuned to Diane's site and the Virtual Tea House for local info.
*An Indie Next Notable Pick for October*
From critically acclaimed Diane Hammond comes HANNAH’S DREAM (Harper; Trade Paperback Original; On-sale September 2, 2008; $13.95), a charming and captivating story of an aging caretaker and his beloved elephant. In the tradition of Water for Elephants and Modoc, Hammond brings her “clean prose, pitch-perfect dialogue, and keen eye for social detail” (Boston Globe) to the page once again in an honest and emotional new novel.
For forty-one years, Samson Brown has been taking care of Hannah, the lone elephant at the dilapidated Max L. Biedelman Zoo. He has vowed that he will not retire until he has found someone who will care for Hannah with equal devotion. When the zoo hires smart and sharp Neva Wilson to be the new elephant keeper, Sam thinks he’s finally found an appropriate guardian. But Neva, who has worked with elephants for years, quickly understands what Sam already knows: Hannah’s feet are ruined from standing on hard concrete all day and she needs the company of other elephants. Neva forms a plan to send Hannah to an elephant sanctuary – only to discover that the zoo’s angry and unhappy director, Harriet Saul, has a scheme of her own: to launch an aggressive revitalization campaign, using Hannah as the star attraction. Soon, everyone surrounding Hannah – not only Sam, Neva and Harriet Saul, but also mild-mannered business manager Truman Levy, his quiet son Winslow, and ambitious beat reporter Martin Choi – will become inextricably intertwined with Hannah’s future and the fate of the zoo.
Brimming with vivid and quirky characters and beautiful writing, HANNAH’S DREAM will remind readers why The Seattle Times raved that “Hammond’s language is spare and beautiful” and Kirkus Reviews called Hammond’s debut, Going to Bend “exceptional. . . refreshingly unsentimental . . .moving and deftly told.” But HANNAH’S DREAM also sheds light on a very real, very troubling issue: that of our human ability to properly care for our elephant friends – whether it be in zoos, in sanctuaries, or in the wild. Provocative, thoughtful, and skillfully done, HANNAH’S DREAM is a novel that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Caroline Sun
212-207-7301
caroline.sun@harpercollins.com
About the Author
Diane Hammond is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Going to Bend and Homesick Creek. She has worked as both a writer and an editor, and is the recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission literary fellowship. She served as a spokesperson for the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and currently lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband and daughter.
HANNAH’S DREAM
By Diane Hammond
Harper; Trade Paperback Original
On sale date: September 2, 2008
Price: $13.95/336 pages
ISBN-13: 9780061568251
Diane shares Inspiration for the story:
From 1995 to 1998 I was lucky enough to work with an ailing killer whale named Keiko—star of the hit movie Free Willy—and the staff that rehabilitated him. The Keiko project had all the makings of an epic story: heroes and villains, huge sums of money made and spent, complex issues and passionate declarations, organizational politics, and public and private struggles over control and recognition, often played out on the front pages and television sets of major media outlets around the world.
At the center of all of it was Keiko, dying at an amusement park in Mexico City and then, miraculously, brought to a brand-new rehabilitation facility in coastal Oregon. Keiko had a luminous soul that burned more brightly each month as his health was restored, thanks to the handful of men and women who spent hours in an icy pool to swim with him, pet him, challenge him, play with him, teach him, and be taught by him. Many of the staff also joined him for all the major holidays as well as countless evenings spent watching action movies, wrestling and old episodes of Mayberry RFD on a donated wide-screen TV. (You don’t know the meaning of the word surreal until you’ve had a whale avidly watching the movie Independence Day over your shoulder late at night.) From Keiko’s keepers I learned the extraordinary lengths to which good people will go—often without recognition and sometimes in the face of outright hostility—for the sake of the animals in their care. Keiko’s was, in the end, a love story.
When the killer whale was fully recovered and moved to Iceland in fall 1998, my part in the project ended. I thought I would write about the experience, or at least about some of the issues and conflicts it raised, but the story was simply too close. So I let the idea go, and wrote Homesick Creek, instead.
But the idea of writing about what my character Neva calls a “charismatic mega-vertebrate” never really left me. Serendipitously, in 2001, and by pure coincidence, I stumbled on television footage of a man named Solomon James, Jr., unshackling for the last time the Asian elephant he had taken care of for 22 years. Her name was Shirley, and he had just transported her from the Louisiana Purchase Gardens and Zoo to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hoehenwald, Tennessee. He was struggling to maintain his composure as millions of people watched their parting on television. It was clear that theirs had been a long and complex journey. In that moment, and informed by my experience with the Keiko project, I’d found both my heroes and my story. Samson Brown and Hannah were born.
A Discussion with Diane Hammond, author of HANNAH’S DREAM
Q. You chose an Asian elephant as one of the book’s main characters. Have you ever worked with them before?
A. Actually, I feel that Hannah chose me, as did Sam. Thus, my job was to learn all I could about them—and about Asian elephants, about which I knew next to nothing—in order to do them justice. I had spent a lot of time by then with zoo keepers and animal rehabilitators, so developing Samson Brown’s story felt at least somewhat familiar. But I spent quite a bit of time, early-on, hanging around elephant barns at zoos in the Pacific Northwest. And two elephant keepers at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington, were very generous about sharing their day-to-day experiences with me, as well as their thoughts and feelings about the roles and responsibilities of the zoos and sanctuaries that keep these amazing animals.
Q. Many of your characters have alternate identities, some of them playful. Can you talk about that?
A. The most important alter-ego in the book, of course, is Hannah’s: in Sam and Corinna’s eyes, she is not only an elephant in need of their care and protection, but also the reincarnation of their infant daughter and only child, who was stillborn.
Zoo Director Harriet Saul also has an alter-ego: Max Biedelman, the Zoo’s founder. In this acquired persona—which she mangles, repeatedly referring to Max as Maxine, a name the old woman despised—Harriet ultimately finds grace and salvation. Sometimes it is easier to love someone else than to love oneself.
Max Biedelman, by turn, was a ***, but belonged to an age and society which didn’t openly reveal such things, so she had a lifelong, secret identity. Her admission to Sam that her childhood dream was to be a boy was the closest she ever got to acknowledging her true nature.
In lesser instances, zoo business manager Truman’s son Winslow was named after a famous artist because his mother had an unrealized hope that he would become one. And his pot-bellied pig Miles shows a definite preference for Mozart, leading Truman to joke that perhaps Miles is Mozart, or is at least channeling Mozart’s spirit.
Q. Most of your characters have very close relationships with animals, even above and beyond Hannah. Do you believe that “animals are people, too?” Do you write your animal characters the same way you write your human characters?
A. One of the greatest challenges in writing Hannah’s Dream was to avoid anthropomorphizing—endowing my animal characters with human qualities. To be honest, I’m not sure how well I did: Miles, in particular, is an irrepressible character to whom I gave a very strong sense of whimsy and humor. In my gut it felt right, and animals do sometimes laugh, so I think I got away with it. Hannah, too, though clearly an elephant, has a personality that is entirely her own, transcending but hopefully not violating her elephant-ness. And let’s not forget the thuggish Kitty, one of three cats belonging to Johnson Johnson. He is 100% cat—but then, I have cats of my own, so I knew I was on solid ground there!
Q. Many of your readers cry at the book’s ending. Did you find it hard to say goodbye to Hannah, too?
A. It took me weeks to write the last chapter, especially the pages after Sam and Hannah’s arrival at the sanctuary, because it would be my goodbye, too. I broke down as I wrote Sam’s final request—Foot, baby girl—because it was the act that best embodied the complete and unwavering trust that existed between them. And when Hannah follows Sam down the truck ramp, unaware that it would be the last time, I lost it completely—still do, just in picturing it. Goodbyes happen on the razor’s edge that separates the known past from the unknowable future, and they require an enormous leap of faith that whatever comes next will be good. Sam has to know this for both himself and for Hannah.
Q. Every reader chooses a favorite character. Who is yours?
A. That’s a hard one. Max is at the top of my list, because she’s wise and eccentric and strong, and has the ability to reflect on her actions and admit that some of them—like bringing Hannah to Havenside to become the last elephant—were mistakes.
My secret favorite character is Johnson Johnson. He is a sweet man who defies categorization. He represents wonder—embraces it, in fact—when it’s a sense that most of us lose by the time we become adults.
And then, of course, there’s Miles, who embodies delight. Who can resist that?
Q. Do you believe that zoos should no longer keep elephants in their collections?
A. Like Neva, I am neither anti-zoo nor anti-captivity. I believe deeply in the educational mission of zoos and animal parks, and feel that they play a critical role in the preservation of species that are becoming increasingly embattled in the wild. Inevitably, the US facilities that keep elephants vary widely. Some zoos have expansive, state-of-the-art facilities that meet their resident elephants' needs and then some. Others, like my fictional Max L. Biedelman Zoo, are old, inadequate, and lacking the enormous resources necessary to upgrade their elephant exhibits. There is no one right answer to the appropriate care for the nation's elephants.
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