The Iranian Revolution

Recently on PBS ln American Experience there has aired a two-part series on the taking of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and what became the American Hostage Crisis that lasted 444 days. Pretty much the course of American policy in Iran since then has been stuck.

Very little has changed diplomatically.

That period of time was the background for my novel Cloud of Witnesses about a boy growing up in rural poverty in southern Ohio. What, you may ask, has the Iranian Revolution got to do with Athens, Ohio. Well, I was a student then at Ohio University and there were many internationals on campus and from there I spun out a story about an unlikely friendship between 2 boys coming to terms with their own feelings of being an outsider. One was an exile within his own family and the other was truly learning that he wouldn’t be able to go back, that home was out of reach.

I tend to start first with an idea and then flesh it out with story. Sort of like a philosophical challenge or what if scenario. Maybe this is how story evolves, I don’t know. I only know that, for some reason or another, the book never took off. Maybe because the idea of the Iranian Revolution affecting someone in southeastern Ohio seemed far-fetched. But international events can touch people in the furthest corners of the globe. We know that now from supply-chain issues. We are all connected.

Anyway, I encourage all readers of this blog to order the book, either from Amazon (the beast) or from Golden Alley Press, my publisher. 

I would love for you to read it and see how I have brought together seemingly disparate ideas to show how friendship across culture can and DOES work. That at the bottom of everything we are all just people.