‘Blown by the Same Wind’: Mysticism meets mayhem in Straley’s latest novel from Cold Storage, Alaska – KCAW

Sitka writer John Straley has printed a brand new novel. The story weaves a little-known strand of Nineteen Sixties popular culture into the material of life in a distant, Southeast Alaska fishing city.

KCAW’s Robert Woolsey just lately spoke with Straley in regards to the guide, and what’s subsequent for one in every of Alaska’s most prolific fiction writers.

Word: Writer John Straley will learn from Blown by the Similar Wind at 6 p.m. Thursday, December 8, at Outdated Harbor Books in Sitka.

The novel is known as Blown by the Similar Wind, and like all of  John Straley’s books, there’s extra to the title than meets the attention.

Writing mysteries and detective fiction is simply Straley’s day job. By night time, Alaska’s former Author Laureate is a poet, and a scholar of literature and historical past. Throughout his many years working as an investigator for the Alaska Public Defender Company, Straley says he saved a quote from the monk Thomas Merton on the duvet of all his notebooks.

“I wrote this quote down and it was, ‘I’m blown by the identical wind that strikes all of those individuals down the road like lifeless leaves and bits of paper in all instructions.’” Straley recited, from reminiscence. 

Realizing that he carried Thomas Merton with him as he explored the felony underbelly of Southeast Alaska, it’s a bit of shocking that it’s solely in Straley’s twelfth and newest novel that Merton makes an look. I requested Straley to inform me the story of the story, which begins shortly after Merton, a Cistercian monk dwelling at a monastery in Kentucky, had printed a best-selling guide referred to as The Seven Storey Mountain, making him one thing of a famous person on this planet of spirituality.

“Dozens and dozens of vacationers would come to wish to sit on the toes of Thomas Merton,” stated Straley. “The abbot recommended that he go someplace extra distant, to hope and meditate and serve a small group. They usually talked about coming to Alaska. In 1968. Merton truly did come to Alaska, and he wrote some letters indicating that after his journey was over, he was going to return again and reside in Alaska –  in southeastern Alaska. (Though he was nervous about bears.) Anyway, after he was in Alaska, went to California after which to Asia, the place he traveled and met with the Dalai Lama. He was additionally of curiosity to the FBI and the CIA as a result of he was not in help of the battle in Vietnam. And he died in Bangkok. His brothers discovered him underneath an electrical lamp, which they thought will need to have killed him.”

That Merton truly got here to Alaska – and will have moved right here had he not died suspiciously – was all Straley wanted to weave him into the fictional world of Blown by the Similar Wind.

“It’s an fascinating story stuffed with conspiratorial overtones,” stated Straley. “And so I assumed, that’s simply good for me. So I assumed up each conspiratorial mind set that I might from 1968, researched all of the totally different sorts of issues and have Thomas Merton come to my little fictional city of Chilly Storage and get entangled in an enormous, messy crime.”

Blown by the Similar Wind is Straley’s fourth novel set within the fictional Southeast Alaskan city of Chilly Storage. He’s written eight different novels in a unique collection that includes his ne’er-do-well detective, Cecil Youthful. His plan is to write down a novel for every collection in alternate years. 

Twelve novels up to now, some poetry collections, an anthology, and a biography make John Straley one in every of Alaska’s most prolific writers, however there’s a small downside – he doesn’t reside in Alaska anymore. Earlier this fall, Straley and his spouse, the famous humpback whale biologist Jan Straley, moved to Carmel, California.

Straley is attempting to make the adjustment.

“I really like the local weather there,” stated Straley. “It’s good for my well being. It’s good for my spouse’s well being. I really like the meals down there, the recent greens, however I miss the individuals right here.”

Straley has been knocking round among the roughest corners of Alaska for about 4 many years. He’s in Steinbeck nation now, and he’s already observed that  most residents seem “skinny, wealthy, and wholesome.” However, there are many skinny and wholesome individuals in Alaska. However Straley is having to recalibrate his concepts in regards to the wealthy.

Straley – “Brad Pitt has a $42 million residence in Carmel, California now, with like 62 fireplaces. He employed a man simply to work on his fireplaces.”

KCAW – “Wow.” 

Straley – “That’s the place I’m rolling now. That’s the sort of crowd I’m in.” 

KCAW – “Does Brad Pitt have a library?” 

Straley – “He ought to. I haven’t pushed as much as the gates with the guard canine and the boys in black fits and sniper rifles to attempt to drop a guide off, however you by no means know!”

Straley feels obligated to write down one other novel about detective Cecil Youthful, for the reason that final title within the collection, So Far and Good, noticed our hero locked up within the Lemon Creek Correctional Middle. “I’ve simply acquired to get poor Cecil out of jail,” Straley says. Subsequent comes a biography of his spouse Jan, and solely then may he flip his consideration and his pen to Northern California. There may be actually no place John Straley can’t work.

“Everyone has failings and tries to cowl them up and will get in hassle,” Straley noticed. “Everyone will get in hassle. And I’ve to say there’s some stunning nation round Huge Sur and a few loopy individuals down round there and close to the place I reside. So each place is worthy of writing about.”