Join us in welcoming Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, author of Burning Distance
An award-winning writer, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a novelist and journalist and an activist for human rights. Her work has taken her all over the world, including numerous times to Lebanon and to Iraq. During the first Gulf War, she seized on the idea of writing a novel capturing this rich and tense historic period, with attention to its impact on families, both in the West and the Middle East. The voice of a ten-year-old American girl who’d just lost her beloved father in the Persian Gulf started taking shape in her head.
That girl evolved into the heroine of Leedom-Ackerman’s gripping political thriller, family drama, and love story, Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, March 7, 2023). Spanning the years from 1981 to 1996, the novel centers on the relationship between Elizabeth “Lizzy” West, a Christian/Jewish girl born in America, and Adil Hasan, a Muslim boy of Palestinian heritage with roots in Iraq and Lebanon. By the time they meet as teenagers in London, both have suffered the shattering loss of a parent—Lizzy’s father died in a suspicious plane crash in the Persian Gulf when she was ten; Adil’s mother was murdered. And both of their fathers have murky ties to the smuggling of deadly weapons in the Middle East.
About the author:
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a novelist, short story writer, journalist, and activist for literature and human rights. Her fiction includes The Dark Path to the River, a regional bestseller, and No Marble Angels. A former reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, she served for three years as the International Secretary of PEN International and has also worked with and served on the boards of the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch, Save the Children, and Refugees International. A native of Dallas, she has lived in New York City, Los Angeles, and London, while balancing her career with raising two sons. She now makes her home in Washington, DC.
Author Joanne Leedom-Ackerman will be signing books purchased at the Palm Beach Book Store.
RSVPs are encouraged but not required.