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Courtesy of Peter Clenott
MEET THE AUTHOR
WHEN: 2 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: Books Etc. Falmouth, 240 Route 1, Falmouth. 781-3784.
HOW MUCH: Free
Peter Clenott is very interested in the conflict between faith and logic. Between believing what you can't see and sometimes needing to see to believe.
Clenott, a Portland native and Bowdoin College graduate, tackles that conflict in his new novel, "Hunting the King" (Kunati Books, $24.95). The book is a thriller about an female archaeologist, who is an observant Catholic, looking for Jesus' tomb in war-torn Iraq.
Clenott, 56, lives in Haverhill, Mass., with his wife and three children, ages 9 to 11. Besides writing, he works two jobs -- one at a social service agency and one at a mental health facility.
He's been writing novels since he graduated from college, but this is the first he's published. He'll be promoting his book Saturday with an appearance at Books Etc. in Falmouth.
Q: How did you come up with this idea?
A: The initial impetus was an article in The Boston Globe in the early 1990s. A cleric of the Catholic church, a high-ranking official from somewhere in the middle west, made a statement in the article about how he felt he could deny people access to God if they belonged to an organization he disapproved of. Basically what he was saying is, 'I'll deny you of the rites and rituals of the church if you're pro-choice.' So I wanted to write an article on faith, what faith ought to be about. I believe in democracy, particularly in matters of faith and religion, where people should have the right to believe whatever they want as long as they don't step on anyone else's toes. Live and let live. Nobody has absolute knowledge of God.
Q: So how did that idea become this novel?
A: I originally wrote a novel (before "Hunting The King") with this particular archaeologist, and the concept was you have the conflict in the main character, someone who is a scientist, who is an intellect, who believes in reason, but who is also an observant Catholic. I had an agent for it, but it didn't go anywhere. I said O.K., if that one has trouble I'm going to try to write something everybody's going to want to read. "The DaVinci Code" had come out at the time, so I decided to take the same character, with the same conflict, and put her into more of a thriller.
Q: In the book, the tomb of Jesus is in Iraq. Is there any reason to believe it's really there?
A: No. I'm sure you're familiar with the controversy surrounding "The DaVinci Code." Dan Brown had read a book, and I had read it ("Holy Blood, Holy Grail"), it was by two Englishmen, and they came up with the concept, the theory that Jesus' children (by Mary Magdalene) escaped to southern France. My theory, and it's pure fiction, is that after the Romans sacked Jerusalem, the Jews had rebelled against the Roman Empire, that the survivors had fled into the Persian Empire. So that's why I had them in Iraq. To get this archaeologist into Iraq, she's discovered these scrolls purportedly written by Jesus' daughter.
Q: What do you tell people who say your book sounds like it's about a female version of Indiana Jones?
A: Nobody's done it yet. Indiana Jones was just pure adventure, you don't even know if he's an archaeologist, all he ever does is hunt for things. He never has to dig in the dirt or anything. She's an archaeologist, and she's also conflicted. There's a depth to this in the issue of reason, logic, versus faith. And there are other elements involved too, there's just a lot more depth to the story.
Q: How do you balance writing with your two jobs and your family?
A: It's very difficult. It's like at lunch break, or when I work the night shift, I go on the computer and write. I'm 190 pages into another novel now. It isn't easy. A lot of the things that I wrote, I wrote before I was married, before I had kids, and it's not as easy to do now.
Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:
rrouthier@pressherald.com
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