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DARK CORRIDORS NEW AUTHORS SERIES No. 1 |
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By RON MILLER
for TheColumnists.com
In the opening chapter of Lisa Kleinholz's 1999 mystery "Exiles
on Main Street," small town newspaper reporter Zoe Szabo
approaches someone she sees in a snow-covered car parked in a
remote corner of a shopping center parking lot.
"A woman stared out at me through the frost," she tells
us. "A trickle of blood had frozen at the corner of her
mouth."
The dead woman turns out to be a Cambodian immigrant, savagely
stabbed over and over by a killer who may have been venting an
explosive, long pent-up hatred of her -- or perhaps her kind.
It's a startling vision, one of many in Kleinholz's impressive
first novel, which is as rich in cultural detail and sociological
implications as it is in suspense and mystery.
"Exiles on Main Street" is set in the picturesque college
town of Greymont, a stand-in for Amherst, Mass., the real college
town where Kleinholz lives. It uses the mystery format to give
us insight into the complex problems the Asian "boat people"
face as they try to blend into what is for them a radically alien
culture: contemporary New England.
The brutal killing poses many mysteries for the local police.
Was the woman known as Chram Touch killed by the American man
who recently quarreled with her and broke off their engagement
to be married? Or could she have been the victim of a hate crime
in a community where anti-immigrant feelings have recently become
a rabid political cause? Was she murdered by one of her hostile
relatives for breaking so sharply with the old Cambodian ways?
Or was she killed by a Khmer Rouge assassin who slipped into
the U.S. on a mission of vengeance?
Trying to stay ahead of the police, Zoe uses her many contacts
in the Cambodian community to pursue what she instinctively knows
is the story of a lifetime -- an opportunity not likely to come
again for her at the small Greymont Evening Eagle.
In the meantime, though, Zoe has plenty to worry about just trying
to hold her own frayed life together. She's the major breadwinner
for her family and somehow has to find time for her two children
and her husband Billy, a rock musician who's struggling to stay
clean after a life-threatening battle with drug abuse. That nearly
destroyed their marriage before they left the big city for a
new life in Greymont -- and Zoe fears Billy may slip back to
the old ways while he works to revive his career in the rock
scene.
Author Kleinholz's first book puts her
among the many young writers now turning out socially relevant
mystery novels. Though she says she didn't set out to deliver
any messages, Kleinholz believes a realistic context is necessary
for her as a writer, even in the mystery genre where many readers
are principally seeking escape from reality. Like Zoe, she also
has written a series of newspaper articles about the problems
of Cambodian refugees, so it was only natural for her to incorporate
her knowledge of and affection for those people into her story.
"In a way, the book came out of my interest in the Cambodians
and not the other way around," Kleinholz explained by phone
from Amherst. "I had done extensive interviews with Cambodians
for my own newspaper series."
In the course of writing that series as a freelancer for the Amherst Bulletin, Kleinholz became quite friendly with one young Cambodian woman, who invited the author to her wedding, done in traditional Cambodian style, and to other activities in the immigrant community.
"I used a lot of the flavor of the way she spoke," says Kleinholz.
As Zoe slowly develops the leads that ultimately bring her face to face with the murderer in the harrowing climax, Kleinholz also shows us the world of the immigrants through Zoe's eyes. In some cases, the characters we meet are trying to blend into the new culture while others grow increasingly adamant about resisting change, sometimes violently insisting that the young Cambodians stay with traditions that seriously clash with their new American value systems.
"When I started writing the mystery, I was so focused on the Cambodian issues that I didn't give a huge amount of thought to the character of Zoe," Kleinholz explains. "When I realized the book actually might be published, I gave a lot more thought to her."
The result is a very modern kind of "detective" hero -- a woman the largely female mystery-reading public ought to be able to identify with quite easily.
"I really wanted to show what it was like being a working mother," says Kleinholz, who is one herself. "I wanted to see if I could write somebody who has kids, but who also solves mysteries in a serious way. I didn't see that reflected in the mysteries I was reading."
At first glance, one might easily assume Zoe Szabo is just Lisa Kleinholz with a funkier wardrobe. Lisa wrote articles about Cambodians like Zoe, lives in a college town that's hauntingly similar to Greymont, has two children and a husband who's a musician.
"There are some parallels to my life," Kleinholz admits, "but they've been exaggerated quite a bit."
Zoe's children are a very young boy and girl while Lisa's are both teenage girls. Her real-life husband, Paul Kaplan, is a folk musician, not a former rock star. Zoe is the daughter of a major figure in the Broadway theater while Lisa's father is painter Frank Kleinholz. Lisa also has one area of connection to the immigrants that Zoe doesn't have: She spent her early childhood in France and was more fluent in French than English when her family returned to the U.S.
Kleinholz also chuckles over the way Zoe dresses, which is slightly rock diva in style and not always especially suited to academic Greymont. Lisa says she definitely doesn't wear the makeup, the sky-high heels or funky outfits Zoe puts on, "although maybe at one time in my life I wanted to."
But Kleinholz does share one clear parallel with Zoe: They both experienced "cultural shock" moving from big cities to a small town and Kleinholz wanted to add that touch of reality from her own experience adjusting to Amherst after many years in New York City.
The author decided against setting her mystery in the real Amherst for a couple of reasons. One is obvious: She didn't want the "uncomfortable" feeling she might have if she wrote some negative things about local government and other institutions.
"I'm very interested in small town political controversies," she says, like the one over immigration policy in the book, and knew she'd be crossing a minefield if she openly set such debates in her real hometown.
"It also appeals to me to create an imaginary world," she adds. "They built a new police department in Amherst about the time I arrived here in 1990, but I liked the old one better, so I kept it in my imaginary town."
Though "Exiles on Main Street" is a much more polished work than one expects to find in a first novel, Kleinholz says it didn't come easily. She tried very hard to write mainstream fiction, without success, before switching over to the mystery genre. For years she expressed herself artistically by running her own professional ceramics studio, but still longed to succeed as a novelist. She finally completed "Exiles on Main Street" with the help of two fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Still, it took more than two years for her to sell the book, which was published last September by Harper books as a paperback original.
Though paperback originals aren't reviewed as widely as hard cover mysteries, Kleinholz has a small, but proud collection of very positive reviews. She received no negative reviews and the book has sold well enough to produce a follow-up, "Dancing with Mr. D," in which Zoe gets involved in an environmental controversy. Avon will publish it Dec. 2. Kleinholz is already well into a third novel, which will feature a new character, a young female marine biologist.
"I want to do a mystery that's set in the New York art world," says Kleinholz. "I have a lot of opinions about it, so that will be a very juicy subject for me."
© 2000 by Ron Miller
Autographed copies of "Exiles on Main Street" can be ordered via the Internet from The Space Crime Continuum in Northampton, MA at www.spacecrime.com
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