Kunati Books will publish my latest novel, Heart of Diamonds, in September, 2008. Of special interest to Gather members, perhaps, is the fact that the book was entered in the First Chapters Writing Competition last spring under the title Ask Not The Nikisi. I appreciated all the good feedback from the readers during that event and hope you will add Heart of Diamonds to your list of "must reads" this fall.
Heart of Diamonds is an intense thriller that skates the thin ice between fiction and reality. It explores the struggle to survive deep personal loss against a backdrop of massive human tragedy.
Covering the endless civil war in the Congo seems like the perfect way for television journalist Valerie Grey to escape the tangles of her personal life. But complications arise--most of them red-hot dangerous--when she stumbles onto a diamond smuggling scheme that begins in the Congo and leads to the White House.
In a plot-driving twist, the diamonds come from a mine owned by American televangelist Gary Peterson, who smuggles them inside nkisi, traditional figures like voodoo dolls, in a scheme to cheat his partner in the mine, Congolese President Moshe Messime. Valerie Gray learns that an aide to U.S. President Billy Baker is involved, news that casts an ugly, profit-driven light on an impending U.S. military action in the war-ravaged country. As Valerie closes in on the truth, each of these powerful men--the preacher, the politician, and the dictator--unleash their personal dogs of war to keep her from revealing their bloody secrets.
Valerie relies on her own wits, courage, and grit to survive the savage pursuit through the horrific war-torn landscape of the Congo. Caught between her pursuers and brutal warring factions fighting for control of the diamond-rich region, Valerie canoes down crocodile-infested rivers, dodges attacking helicopters, and races over teeth-rattling roads to bring her story to the outside world.
A love triangle both enriches the adventure and lays the groundwork for tragedy, as Valerie struggles to understand her conflicting feelings for companion David Powell, the über journalist who helped shape her fabulous career, and Dr. Jaime Talon, who selflessly runs a struggling clinic near the mine. The chaos of civil war forms the perfect backdrop for Valerie's despair in the soul-shattering climax.
Heart of Diamonds is a work of fiction, but material gathered during my trips to Africa lend a strong sense of place to the book. The people, the landscape, the flora and fauna, even many of the legends and folktales that found their way into Heart of Diamonds came from those visits to central Africa.
Heart of Diamonds will be available in September, 2008, from Kunati Books.
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