It is very strange, actually more than strange, how sometimes what you are writing about actually happens in “real life.” Life has been a bit eerie and frightening on this front for the past month or so.

For some reason I have hesitated to talk too much about my new novel here. I can’t figure out why that is, unless it’s some old superstition left over from my distant peasant past. But I’ve moved two generations beyond that now and I need to talk about something that is happening in today’s world, and that also means talking about my new novel. The working title is “An Everywhere of Innocents,” and it is set in the year 2007 in an orphanage in Phnom Penh, Cambodia which is run by a 60-year-old American woman. One day a young American backpacker shows up saying she wants to stay and help. The mystery of the book surrounds the questions who is this young woman, who is the older one, why are these Westerners there in the first place and what are they running away from? Those are the questions. But the big theme is murder — who takes responsibility for it, who doesn’t. Perhaps that theme seems obvious in the context of Cambodian history and the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge regime. But it spills over onto recent, and now current history in America, specifically the tragedy of campus shootings.

We all know about the terrible tragedies that have occurred over the past years on US high school and college campuses. For me, they always seemed far away in some part of the country I never went to, never knew much about. But over the past few weeks, killings have occurred on two college campuses that are very important to me — one is my alma mater, the other is my husband’s and the place where I am about to send Number 2 Son. And while this was happening, I was in the midst of writing about the long term effects being involved in such a shooting can have. The overlap is terrifying.

I often say that one reason why I write novels is so that I can work out the emotional impact of events that I hopefully then never have to really experience. As an American adult who has chosen to spend her life outside of America, and who is now about to send her flesh and blood back into that melting pot which often seems more like a cauldron, I look at the United States with a very critical eye. Yes, it is true that murders occur everywhere. I have spent my life living in cities. I know that danger lurks around every corner. I also know, from recent visits, that security on American campuses is very high, very well-considered. Campus administrations act responsibly and are generally doing everything they can. But I still feel as if there is blame to be passed on, and I place that blame squarely on the shoulders of a citizenry that believes it is more important to have the right to misinterpret a declaration written hundreds of years before than to ensure the safety of its children. Guns are too easily available in America. There is no excuse for the fact that just about anybody at anytime can go into any store and purchase such a weapon, a weapon which can then be turned on innocent children.

I am angry with my native country, and so far no amount of written words has quelled that anger. There aren’t enough words in my pen to wash away the blood.