Contemporary Authors

1. The atlas of forgotten places : a novel https://lccn.loc.gov/2017006937 Williams, Jenny D., author. The atlas of forgotten places : a novel / Jenny D. Williams. New York : Thomas Dunne Books, 2017. pages ; cm PS3623.I55679 A95 2017 ISBN: 9781250122933 (hardcover)

• Jenny D. Williams - http://www.jennydwilliams.com/bio.html

  Image credit: Taylor Yoelin Photography

  JENNY D. WILLIAMS has lived and worked in the U.S., Germany, and Uganda. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from UC Berkeley. Her award-winning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and illustrations have been published in The Sun Magazine, Vela, Ethical Traveler, and Michigan Quarterly Review as well as several anthologies. A former Teachers & Writers Collaborative fellow and recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation grant for emerging writers, she currently lives in Seattle, where she is a UX writer for Google. The Atlas of Forgotten Places is her first novel.

• MacMillan Publishers - https://us.macmillan.com/author/jennydwilliams/

  JENNY D. WILLIAMS has lived in the U.S., Uganda, and Germany. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from UC Berkeley. Her award-winning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and illustrations have been published in The Sun Magazine, Vela, and Ethical Traveler, as well as several anthologies. A former Teachers & Writers Collaborative fellow and recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation grant for emerging writers, she currently lives in Seattle with her husband and dog. The Atlas of Forgotten Places is her first novel.

• Authors Guild - https://www.authorsguild.net/services/members/1908

  Jenny D. Williams

  Jenny D. Williams has lived in the U.S., Uganda, and Germany. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and a BA from UC Berkeley. Her award-winning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and illustrations have been published in The Sun Magazine, Vela, and Ethical Traveler as well as several anthologies. She is a former Teachers & Writers Collaborative fellow and recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation grant for emerging writers. The Atlas of Forgotten Places is her first novel.
  Works
  Atlas
  The Atlas of Forgotten Places: A Novel

  Set against the backdrop of the ivory wars and Joseph Kony's rebellion in central Africa, The Atlas of Forgotten Places is a story of two women from different worlds who become inextricably bound in a quest to save their loved ones.

  “A beautiful, heartbreaking story of civil war, family secrets, lost love and found hope. Unforgettable.”--Lian Dolan, Los Angeles Times bestselling author

  “Every page of The Atlas of Forgotten Places resonates with an intimate knowledge of life in ‘Africa’...the impossible beauty of the landscape, the depths of sorrows carried by ordinary citizens, the miraculous melding of violence and personal grace. Jenny D. Williams has written that rare thing: a page-turning adventure story that simultaneously goes deep into the heart of what it is to be human and present.” --Malla Nunn, award-winning screenwriter and author of A Beautiful Place to Die, Silent Valley, and Present Darkness

  Website

  My Website

  Location

  Seattle, WA
  Category

  Fiction & Literature
  agent Contact

  Marly Rusoff

The Atlas of Forgotten Places
Sara Martinez
Booklist.
113.19-20 (June 2017): p48. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Atlas of Forgotten Places. By Jenny D. Williams. July 2017.368p. St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, $26.99 (9781250122933).
Williams' compelling debut novel is primarily set in modern-day Uganda, with side trips to Germany and Colorado and a heart-stopping conclusion in the Congo. The book opens with young Lily in the quiet of Kitgum, in Uganda's predawn, preparing for a mysterious journey. When she does not get off the plane in Denver on Christmas Eve, her stepfather calls on her aunt Sabine for help. Sabine is an old Africa hand who rushes off to Uganda to find Lily, fearing the worst. Meanwhile, in Kitgum, Ocen has been out of touch, and Rose, his fiancee, becomes anxious. Rose, a survivor of the Lord's Resistance Army, joins forces with Sabine. Williams' novel progresses in sections that alternate between Rose and Sabine's points of view. Each of these two strong women strives to save the person she loves while battling regret and struggling with the burden of secrets. Along the way, youthful idealism and love are confronted by the persistent and poisonous legacy of violence that plays out against the vivid backdrop of Africa's brutal civil wars and captivating natural beauty.--Sara Martinez
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Martinez, Sara. "The Atlas of Forgotten Places." Booklist, June 2017, p. 48. PowerSearch,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582673/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=ea03cbfb. Accessed 16 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A498582673
1 of 4 1/16/18, 9:46 PM
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The Atlas of Forgotten Places
Publishers Weekly.
264.22 (May 29, 2017): p42. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Atlas of Forgotten Places
Jenny D. Williams. St. Martin's/Dunne, $26.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-250-12293-3
Gritty and intricately plotted, Williams' debut novel, set in the war-torn Uganda of 2008, gets under the surface of recent political turmoil and the relationship between East Africa and Western aid organizations. Alternating chapters follow Sabine, a former aid worker who has returned to Uganda from Germany to look for her missing niece, Lily, and Rose, an Acholi woman who has a past with Lord's Resistance Army and bears physical and emotional scars from her war experiences. When it turns out that Rose's lover Ocen has disappeared with Lily, she and Sabine form an unlikely rescue group, accompanied by Christoph, a cultural anthropologist studying in Rose's town. Their search will bring them into dangerous territory where a surprise military offensive against the LRA has recently forced the rebels from hiding. In the midst of struggles and atrocities so large and all-encompassing, the narrative sometimes gets away from the more interesting personal stories. But overall Williams's book paints the contours of the real-life conflict admirably, making the thrilling disappearance story relatable with nuanced characterizations and a wealth of strong subplots concerning reclaiming love, protecting family, and guarding hope for a new future when the present seems to be teetering on disaster. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Associates. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Atlas of Forgotten Places." Publishers Weekly, 29 May 2017, p. 42. PowerSearch,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500689/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=bb96bb3d. Accessed 16 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A494500689
2 of 4 1/16/18, 9:46 PM

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Williams, Jenny D.: THE ATLAS OF FORGOTTEN PLACES
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Williams, Jenny D. THE ATLAS OF FORGOTTEN PLACES Thomas Dunne Books (Adult Fiction) $26.99 7, 11 ISBN: 978-1-250-12293-3
A young woman, fresh from half a year as an aid worker in Uganda, steps into the darkness of an early December morning and vanishes.Just 22 years old, Lily Bennett had followed in her Aunt Sabine's footsteps. Sabine, too, had traveled to Africa, working at various NGOs for 18 years. Now home in Germany, working for an animal shelter, Sabine receives a troubling call from Lily's stepfather, who reports that Lily missed her flight home. Lily is lost. Knowing that the local police will be understaffed and undermotivated to investigate the possibly voluntary disappearance of an adult American, Sabine sets off to search for Lily herself. In Uganda, Sabine joins forces with Christoph, a Swiss cultural anthropologist, and his assistant, Rose Akulu, a Ugandan woman whose lover, Ocen, has also disappeared. Their investigation swiftly turns dangerous, however, as Sabine learns that Lily may have tried to intervene in the illegal ivory trade conducted by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, the rebel group at war with Uganda's government and feared for turning the kidnapped into child soldiers and wives. Worse, it seems that Ocen may have accompanied Lily on her quest. Rose knows the dangers they are walking into, because years ago she survived--minus her right arm--being abducted into the LRA. Yet she can't let slip the opportunity to rescue Ocen's twin brother, Opiyo, the one she loved first. Traveling back into Kony's realm, however, will cost far more than anyone anticipated. In this, her debut novel, Williams skillfully sketches the emotionally ravaged remains of Rose's life, a life ruined by not only physical mutilation, but also social rejection; even her brother calls her a "rebel whore," blaming her for her own abduction. Entwining Rose's journey with Sabine's, Williams underscores the international scope of Uganda's plight. Politics exact a devastating personal price in this harrowing journey.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Williams, Jenny D.: THE ATLAS OF FORGOTTEN PLACES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017.
PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002980/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=356d2d7e. Accessed 16 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491002980
3 of 4 1/16/18, 9:46 PM

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Williams, Jenny D. The Atlas of
Forgotten Places
Faye A. Chadwell
Xpress Reviews.
(June 30, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews- first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
Williams, Jenny D. The Atlas of Forgotten Places. Thomas Dunne: St. Martin's. Jul. 2017. 368p. ISBN 9781250122933. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250122940. F [DEBUT] This debut novel tells an intense story amid civil strife in Africa, covering inevitable ground that includes child soldiers, diamonds, rebels, corruption, and the illegal ivory trade. Set specifically in Uganda, the novel commences when young aid worker Lily Bennett disappears. When Lily's stepfather calls her Aunt Sabine, a former aid worker herself, Sabine joins forces with two rather unlikely partners: Rose Akulu, a former child soldier whose memories haunt her, and Christoph, a Swiss anthropologist working in Uganda for an NGO. As the trio trace Lily's movements, they discover she has gone missing with Rose's lover Ocen in a guileless but well-intentioned attempt to rescue Ocen's twin, Opiyo, from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). An Ugandan rebel group, the LRA has fled to the People's Republic of Congo to escape attacks by government forces. As the novel's suspense is heightened, so, too, grows the danger for everyone.
Verdict Though some components of this book may appear to be stock in trade for a novel set in contemporary Africa, Williams has still crafted a complex and suspenseful tale with dozens of subplots, questioning loyalty and exploring forgiveness at the individual and societal levels. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 2/13/17.]--Faye A. Chadwell, Oregon State Univ. Libs., Corvallis
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Chadwell, Faye A. "Williams, Jenny D. The Atlas of Forgotten Places." Xpress Reviews, 30 June
2017. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500135141/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=68491ce8. Accessed 16 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500135141
4 of 4 1/16/18, 9:46 PM

Martinez, Sara. "The Atlas of Forgotten Places." Booklist, June 2017, p. 48. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582673/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=ea03cbfb. Accessed 16 Jan. 2018. "The Atlas of Forgotten Places." Publishers Weekly, 29 May 2017, p. 42. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500689/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=bb96bb3d. Accessed 16 Jan. 2018. "Williams, Jenny D.: THE ATLAS OF FORGOTTEN PLACES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002980/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=356d2d7e. Accessed 16 Jan. 2018. Chadwell, Faye A. "Williams, Jenny D. The Atlas of Forgotten Places." Xpress Reviews, 30 June 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500135141/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=68491ce8. Accessed 16 Jan. 2018.

• San Diego Union Tribune
  http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/books/sd-et-author-williams-20170717-story.html
  Word count: 1401

  Debut author Jenny Williams on 'Forgotten Places' and the pitfalls of tidy endings
  Author Jenny D. Williams
  Jenny Williams (Taylor Yoelin)
  John WilkensJohn WilkensContact Reporter

  Solana Beach native Jenny Williams drew on her experiences as a traveler and aid worker in Africa while she wrote her debut novel, “The Atlas of Forgotten Places.” It tells the story of two women whose paths cross when an American volunteer supposedly on her way home disappears in Uganda.

  Williams went to Torrey Pines High School before getting degrees at UC Berkeley and Brooklyn College. She lives now in Seattle, where she works as a UX (user experience) writer at Google.

  She’ll be at the Del Mar Library Saturday at 1:30 p.m. to discuss the novel.

  Q: Tell me about the title?

  A: The title was the last thing that happened for this book. We were looking for something that captured some of the bigness of the scope but also the intimacy of the storyline. And there are some maps that are in the story itself, so there’s a kind of double meaning there.

  The title also speaks to a part of of the world that is often overlooked — it doesn’t get a lot of international media attention — and also to some of the characters in the novel, who have places in their own memories that are painful or difficult and they have buried them in some way.

  Q: Why did you want to write about Africa?

  A: For a couple of reasons. One is that I lived in Uganda for about half a year. I had spent a lot of time backpacking and traveling through many countries in Africa but I spent most of my time in East Africa, in Uganda particularly, and it was just a place I was really fascinated by. I thought it had a really interesting history, a history that I didn’t know much about. I like to write about things that fascinate me and haunt me.

  There was also a sense that I would love to bring this world to a new audience. There’s so much non-fiction written about Northern Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army and Joseph Kony, but at the time I started writing the novel there was no fiction that had reached the international audience. It felt to me like an opportunity to share some of those stories.

  Q: What do you hope readers will think about?

  A: I hope they think about a lot of things. Certainly the question of what is an individual’s responsibility when we hear about a crisis or a tragedy that happens very far away from us. Building a sense of understanding, compassion, and also asking ourselves, what is the appropriate response? Rather than a sort of instinctual, white savior kind of gallivanting in and saying, “We know the answer,” stepping back a second and questioning that. The balance of compassion and empathy with honoring local communities and the responses they are taking up themselves.

  Q: This book has a number of sacrifices that people make to help others they love. What drew you to that?

  A: I’m not sure I have a good answer for that. I think I’ve always been most moved by those kinds of acts of sacrifice. When I read a news story about someone helping another person in a moment of crisis, someone who didn’t have to be there, who really sacrificed something of themselves, those are the stories that bring me to tears. I guess I felt drawn to explore those moments in this novel.

  Q: There are secrets in this book, too, secrets that are slowly revealed. What do you like about secrets?

  A: John Gardner, who wrote this beautiful book called “On Becoming a Novelist,” said something like a character can have secrets but a story shouldn’t have secrets – that it’s not fair to manipulate the reader in that way by keeping secrets from them as this sort of omniscient narrator.

  But of course the characters can have secrets because all of us have secrets. And I think that’s part of what it means to be a complex human, that there are things about ourselves that we feel perhaps ashamed of or guilty of or we don’t know how to bring those things into the light. So that felt to me an important attribute to give my characters, an honest attribute.

  Q: One of the main characters, Sabine, volunteers in part out of guilt for her family’s past. What motivated you to volunteer in Africa?

  A: Part of the reason is I actually had a fairly cynical view of aid work by the time I had gotten to Uganda. I had worked for a small independent publisher in San Francisco and I had worked on the book “The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins, which was one of these books that really skewered the notion that the U.S. was always going in to do good in developing parts of the world. So I was a little disillusioned about what aid could do but I also felt like I needed to see it for myself.

  That was my motivation for being there. And I wanted a reason to stay longer in the country. My boyfriend at the time and I had been backpacking, and when you’re backpacking you see a lot of places and you cover a lot of territory, but I really wanted to know what it was like to stay in one place and get to know it in a more intimate way.

  Q: Did your experience change your view of aid work?

  A: It did and it didn’t. What it taught me is that on a macro level, aid is extremely complex and it is not always a positive thing. But on a micro level, certainly individual people benefit greatly from the things aid provides, especially in crises. The basic things like food and shelter. Those things are necessary for individual people. So I guess I left it with more questions than answers and that’s maybe what drove me to write the novel. Fiction is a really wonderful space to explore questions without answers and bring readers on that journey, too.

  Q: The ending is left open. Why did you write it that way?

  A: I came into the novel with more questions than answers and when I finished writing it, I had yet more questions. I wanted to give readers that space. I think tying something up too neatly at the end gives people permission to kind of close the book and set it aside. That’s not what I want people to do with this novel. I want people to have the ending open up something in a new way and continue to mull these stories and these characters and wonder what is going to happen next.

  That’s more true to real life. It isn’t always neat, particularly in this part of the world. Joseph Kony is still at large. I started writing this novel years and years ago and the U.S. and Uganda have now sort of officially pulled out of the hunt for him so there is no neat ending.

  Q: Is that why you like to write, too? To discover things about yourself and your subject matter as you’re doing it?

  A: Absolutely. I think Steve Almond (an essayist and short-story author) said writers should write about what haunts them or what you can’t get rid of by any other means. I certainly have felt that way about the material that went into the novel. I wrote short stories about it, I wrote poetry, I wrote a little graphic novel about these things and I just kept coming back to the material until I had the space of a novel to really work through some of it.

  “The Atlas of Forgotten Places,” by Jenny D. Williams, St. Martin’s, 368 pages

• 17 Scribes
  http://17scribes.com/2017/06/28/interview-with-jenny-d-williams-author-of-the-atlas-of-forgotten-places/
  Word count: 989

  Interview with Jenny D. Williams, Author of The Atlas of Forgotten Places

  We’re talking today with Jenny Williams, author of the fabulous new book, The Atlas of Forgotten Places.

  Please describe what the story is about.

  Set against the backdrop of Joseph Kony’s rebellion and the ivory wars in central Africa, THE ATLAS OF FORGOTTEN PLACES follows two women who must face their brutal pasts to find their missing loved ones.

  Share a teaser sentence or two from your novel.

  “The day she left Uganda for the last time, two years ago, she’d looked out the oval airplane window as they lifted off the tarmac and rose into the air over Entebbe: the undulating green hills below, the vast blue of Lake Victoria glinting all the way to the horizon. She’d known even then—hadn’t she known?—that after everything, she couldn’t just flee; it wasn’t as simple as packing your bags and unpacking them on another, colder continent.”

  What do you want people to know about your book?

  THE ATLAS OF FORGOTTEN PLACES is inspired by true events, though I’ve taken plenty of creative liberties with the storyline. At its core, ATLAS is about family secrets, love, forgiveness, and redemption.

  What did you learn about yourself while writing this novel?

  Patience and humility.

  What was your timeline from drafting to publication?

  I had the idea for a novel when I was living in Uganda in 2006, but I didn’t start writing what would become ATLAS until January 2012. I rewrote it several times over the course of the next few years, continually recalibrating based on research, reader feedback, and a return trip to Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in spring 2013. The novel sold to Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press in early 2016.

  What is your favorite part of writing (drafting characters, making up scenes, plotting, developing emotional turning points, etc). Why?

  I feel the most joyful when I’m in the initial imaginative stage—when I’m deep in research, shaping and exploring the universe of the novel, when characters and plot threads are still a bit elusive and anything is possible. But I also love the powerful emotional experience when I’m two-thirds of the way through a full draft and I’ve spent so much time being with these characters that the story becomes almost physically manifest in the room around me.

  Briefly, where did the idea for your book come from?

  I’ve wanted to write about northern Uganda ever since I first visited Kitgum in 2006, when I was a long-term volunteer for an aid organization working in Uganda and South Sudan. It took five years before I felt ready to tackle the material in a novel. There are some excellent nonfiction books about northern Uganda and the LRA, but I was excited by the opportunity fiction affords to reach other kinds of readers.

  When do you do your best thinking about your work in progress?

  I like to go to bed early and think about my characters and storylines in that half-awake, half-asleep state, when my mind is a bit drifty. I find that the dream of the novel takes over and carries me to surprising places that I never would have reached with my logical daytime brain.

  Share something people may be surprised to know about you?

  I have a lipsynching cameo in a Bollywood blockbuster.

  What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?

  When I first started working on this novel, I shared some initial plot ideas with my husband, who listened very closely, nodded his head thoughtfully, and finally said, “That all sounds great, but someone has to die.”

  What’s next?

  I’ve been mulling over a few ideas and am waiting to see how they develop.

  atlas

  THE ATLAS OF FORGOTTEN PLACES

  With the empathy of Little Bee and the political intrigue of Blood Diamond, The Atlas of Forgotten Places is a gripping story of two women from different worlds who become inextricably bound in a quest to save their loved ones.

  After a long career as an aid worker, Sabine Hardt has retreated to her native Germany for a quieter life. But when her American niece Lily disappears while volunteering in Uganda, Sabine must return to places and memories she once thought buried in order to find her. In Uganda, Rose Akulu—haunted by a troubled past with the Lord’s Resistance Army—becomes distressed when her lover Ocen vanishes without a trace. Side by side, Sabine and Rose must unravel the tangled threads that tie Lily and Ocen’s lives together—ultimately discovering that the truth of their loved ones’ disappearance is inescapably entwined to the secrets the two women carry.

  Masterfully plotted and vividly rendered by a fresh new voice in fiction, The Atlas of Forgotten Places delves deep into the heart of compassion and redemption through a journey that spans geographies and generations to lay bare the stories that connect us all.

  “A young American woman gone missing in Africa, her German aunt forced to revisit her own past. From these elements, Jenny Williams has produced a riveting alchemy. In the vein of Paul Bowles and Robert Stone, The Atlas of Forgotten Places is part political thriller, part love story, always attuned to matters of the heart. It’s a splendid debut.”
  —Joshua Henkin, author of The World Without You, Matrimony, and Swimming Across the Hudson

  Available July 11, 2017 from St. Martin’s Press.

  Website | Amazon | Goodreads

• Shelf Awareness
  http://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=636#m11104
  Word count: 272

  The Atlas of Forgotten Places
  by Jenny D. Williams

  Jenny D. Williams's first novel, The Atlas of Forgotten Places, is a gripping story of two women whose lives become entwined in war-torn Uganda in 2008.

  Sabine is living a quiet life in Germany when she finds out that her 22-year-old American niece, Lily, went missing in Uganda after completing her volunteer work there. Sabine spent 20 years as an aid worker in Africa, including a stint in Uganda, so she sets off for the region, determined to track down her beloved niece.

  Rose is a native of Uganda in her early 20s who was abducted by rebels at 13 and only recently returned to her family and her home village. She lost her right arm during her years in the bush and now works as an assistant to Christophe, an aid worker from Switzerland. Rose's boyfriend, Ocen, is also missing--she hasn't heard from him in a month.

  The novel alternates between Sabine and Rose, two separate stories at first that gradually intertwine as they search for their loved ones in the lush jungle of East Africa, dodging dangerous rebels, gunfire and smugglers. Christophe accompanies the two women, each with secrets from their pasts, in their tense and treacherous quest. The narrative moves between Sabine and Rose in this suspenseful, compelling story set in a perilous region that many readers may have only heard about on the news. --Suzan L. Jackson, freelance writer and author of Book by Book blog

  Discover: Two women come together to find missing loved ones in war-torn Uganda.

• Pink Pangea
  https://pinkpangea.com/2017/06/a-conversation-with-jenny-d-williams-author-of-the-atlas-of-forgotten-places/
  Word count: 1848

  A Conversation with Jenny D. Williams, Author of ‘The Atlas of Forgotten Places’
  June 28, 2017
  inspiring women travelers, uganda, what's new, Writing

  “With her eyes closed in the blackness, Rose thought of other things. The rhythmic scratching of a thatched broom across a dusty dye-kal; the smell of simmering stew; the pearl of laughter in a schoolyard at break. Memories from before, when life was uncomplicated. Did that life exist for anyone, anywhere?” – Atlas of Forgotten Places

  In Jenny D. Williams’ debut novel, The Atlas of Forgotten Places, the female protagonists demonstrate strength of character through the unwanted circumstances they’re swept into. Taking place in the aftermath of the Civil War in Northern Uganda, Williams’ characters exhibit the complexity of the Western humanitarian aid world, the harsh reintegration of former child soldiers and the lengths loved ones will go to to salvage one anothers’ future.

  Atlas is mesmerizing, its story consuming the reader from the first to the last page. Detailing the tangle of shared experiences between characters from different worlds, Williams tells the story in an eloquent yet relatable language with such visual richness it was if the reader is transported.

  I spoke with Williams about her experiences abroad and how they shaped her writing, what it’s like to write and publish a novel, and about her future plans.
  A Conversation with Jenny D. Williams, Author of 'The Atlas of Forgotten Places'
  Street scene in Uganda. Photo: neiljs/Flickr
  First, I have a few questions about writing the book. As someone who has lived abroad and traveled, you must have many exciting experiences. Did you bring some of those moments into the plot of the book, or was it constructed based on research of true events alone?

  Many scenes, moments, or details stem from my personal experience in Uganda, South Sudan, and the DR Congo, though none are exact replications of anything that happened to me in real life. For general travel anecdotes, I also borrowed from my parents, who spent two years traveling through Central and South America in a Volkswagen bus in the late seventies, and whose stories have become a part of our family lore. And of course many other details and plot points come from my research about the real places and events that inspired the novel.
  I’m very curious about your process of constructing each of the characters. Were they mere creations, or were each of them bits and pieces of people you had come across while you lived in Uganda and Germany?

  In very early drafts, Sabine was closely based on a woman I knew in real life, but as the novel evolved, so did the character, until she became truly separate from her real-life inspiration.

  Rose’s origins are more complicated to trace; she didn’t emerge from a single voice but from many voices, slowly, over time. She was actually a secondary character in the first version of the novel, and then became one of the two primary narrative perspectives in the version that became Atlas.

  Many other characters–Christoph, Ocen, Lily, Rita, and others–are pure inventions. When deciding how to populate the novel, there was always this push and pull between what sort of character was needed to move the story forward, and then letting each character evolve organically, developing in sometimes surprising ways.
  Touching on topics such as child soldiers and violence, some moments in the book are heavy. Was there any point in the research or writing of the book when you had to take some time to step away? How can writers separate their own emotions from the book, or, is it better not to? Were any of the scenes particularly hard to write?

  During my research phase, I went through a period of intense nightmares about what I was reading and watching. It’s hard to imagine becoming immersed in these kinds of stories without it taking root in some way in your subconscious. At the same time, this empathy felt essential. The question of how much a writer should emotionally invest in the material seems to me to be a very personal one: just as there’s no single way to deal with difficult moments in our own lives, there’s no single way writers should cope with difficult subject matter. I do think it’s critical that writers practice self-care; the work must be sustainable, and patience and empathy for one’s self is often a necessary–yet overlooked–part of that process.
  Something I loved about the book was the issues of privilege and the subtly suggested superiority complex (even if not intentionally) of being a Westerner in post-colonial Africa, and of course, the humanitarian sector. What made you grapple with those themes, and why was it important to weave it into the story?

  I’m glad this theme resonated with you; these were certainly questions I struggled with from before I ever traveled to Africa, which were deepened and amplified during my time there. When we hear about human suffering, our instinct is to help, but what form does that help take? How do we know when our actions do more harm than good? How do we grapple with our complicity in the structural injustices and modern repercussions of colonial history and oppression, without becoming paralyzed by it? The novel is in some ways a manifestation of my grappling; but my purpose is explicitly not to answer these questions, but rather to expose them in a way that readers can, I hope, relate to and engage with.
  Atlas of Forgotten Places is so impactful. What are some of the takeaways you hope readers gain?

  I think I have the same hopes as any novelist–that readers have been moved in some way by the journey they’ve taken, that the characters have come to exist beyond the pages of the book for this brief period, or for longer. It feels dangerous to write with a particular moral slant in mind–as if the novel is a fable that wraps up with a neat little lesson at the end. Rather, I hope I’m able to give readers a new set of questions to sit with, or a kernel of curiosity or compassion that they can put in their pocket and carry forward.
  Would you share how the process of writing and publishing the book was for you? Was it what you had expected based on research and advice, or was it completely different? Do you have any advice for women writers about to embark on the same process?

  For me, the writing process–the experience of sitting down with these pages, day after day after day–was about what I expected. That is: it required a steady, committed approach, even while I might be going through periods of creative exhilaration or deep, dark despair. This expectation wasn’t necessarily based on what others had told me it would be like, but rather the growing conviction that there’s no “right way” to write, only the way that serves you and the work–the way the work gets done.

  The publishing process, on the other hand–it’s such a wildcard! I signed with the first agent I queried, but then it took another four years for the book to sell, for a variety of reasons–revisions, the market, competing works…. I’ve thought a lot about a lecture I heard once by a meteorologist, who explained that there’s no such thing as an “average year” in weather: what we call average is simply an average of extremes. The “standard experience” of writing and publishing is kind of like that “average year”: it’s the cumulation of many experiences, each of which follows its own strange and winding path. Your path won’t look like anyone else’s–it’s yours and yours alone. Some people might find that frustrating, because we want to feel prepared and know what to expect. But I think it’s liberating, too. We’re exploring uncharted territory with every new creative project we embark on.
  Let me ask you about writing. Your language is so vivid, so shockingly telling the words practically melt into the reader. Some of my favorite phrases were traffic described as “ungodly snarls of gridlock,” a surprising accent as “a surreal collapse of worlds.” I re-read the sentence: “She drove past quickly with her windows up, as if the menace of her memories might sneak in through the smallest of openings” over and over again, feeling the exact sensation the character must have felt. For aspiring authors and writers trying to add such imagery to their writing, what advice do you have?

  It’s funny, I actually tried hard not to think about language while drafting the novel–what felt most urgent to me was to get inside the story, to feel what the characters were feeling. I wrote a lot of awful sentences! But I think it meant that when I went back to revise, I could be more exacting with my language and imagery since I knew the scene or the moment was firmly grounded in emotional truth.
  Finally, let me ask you about you. What is your favorite part about being a writer?

  I love the initial generative stage of a fiction project, when I give my imagination free rein to take me down any number of forking paths. That’s when I feel closest to the magic of writing. But I also love that moment deep into the actual writing of a novel, maybe three-quarters through when I know the characters as intimately as if they were in the room with me, and I feel that swell of momentum carrying me along like a current.
  And may I ask… might there be a sequel, or another book in the works? I know readers will want to read something of yours again as soon as they can!

  You’re lovely to say so! I do have a few ideas simmering. Finding the time and space to work on them–especially doing the kind of unstructured, immersive work needed in the early stages–is challenging, as I’m trying to balance that with family and my full-time job. But I’m happiest when in the midst of a large creative project–I feel most like myself. So I certainly hope to incorporate it sustainably into my life again soon.

  Top image: Entebbe, Uganda. Rod Waddington/Flickr

  About Allison Yates

  Allison YatesAllison is a lover of quaint cafes, exploring places by foot and funny conversations. Her favorite part about traveling is seeing how entertaining humans (and other creatures) are. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

  View all posts by Allison Yates

• Coast Weekend
  http://www.coastweekend.com/cw/books/20170824/debut-novel-atlas-of-forgotten-places-is-a-must-read
  Word count: 620

  Debut novel, ‘Atlas of Forgotten Places,’ is a must-read

  Published on August 24, 2017 12:01AM

  Last changed on August 25, 2017 10:17AM

  Jennydwilliams.com

  Jenny D. Williams

  Jenny D. Williams

  One of the original motives for founding this weekly column about Northwest books and authors was to trace how writers influenced and inspired one another throughout the region.

  But there’s been a gradual shift. Communications, geopolitics and transportation have diluted the regional focus over time. Authors seem to be writing less about rain and fish, mountains and clams. With the internet and air travel, writers no longer feel hemmed in by gray skies and flooded rivers. They may choose to live here, but now the world’s their oyster.

  Take Jenny D. Williams, for example. A recent arrival from California, who before that lived in New York, Uganda and Germany, Williams now lives in Seattle.

  But her debut novel, “The Atlas of Forgotten Places,” is set in central Africa. It revolves around the actions of three strong-minded women — one American, one German and one Ugandan — in December 2008.

  Lily Bennett is the American. She wants to get a taste of what her Aunt Sabine did as a long-term humanitarian worker in Africa. After graduating from college, Lily signs up for a six-month stint as an aid worker in Uganda. She plans to return home to Colorado for Christmas.

  Sabine Hardt had worked for many years in a succession of countries — Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. But she eventually succumbed to compassion fatigue and returned to her hometown in Germany. She is still trying to get used to the snowy winter when she gets a call from her widowed brother-in-law in the U.S. His daughter, Sabine’s niece, has gone missing in Uganda.

  At Christmastime, the embassies are operating with a skeleton staff and can’t provide much help. So the only thing for Sabine to do is fly back to Africa to make inquiries and pin down Lily’s whereabouts.

  In Uganda, Rose Akulu has been pulling her life back together after escaping the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group engaged in recurring conflict with the government. The LRA had kidnapped Rose and held her for several years. During captivity, she suffered many losses, but now that she has returned, her community and even her family consider her damaged goods.

  Fortunately, she has found work with Christoph, a Swiss academic who is researching local folklore. And until very recently, Rose had a sweetheart, Ocen. But a few weeks back they had a spat, and he hasn’t come around since then.

  When Sabine arrives in search of Lily, she discovers that Christoph and Rose had known her niece. As the three of them start piecing together events, they realize that Lily and Ocen may have left together, and the trail of their missing loved ones appears to lead straight into the heart of a rebellion-wracked region.

  Williams has developed a solid storyline and created characters who feel utterly real. She will familiarize you with a place of profligate beauty, desperate politics and ruthless violence. But she also underscores the capacity of compassion.

  “The Atlas of Forgotten Places” is a must-read — an excellent debut.

  The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com

  The Atlas of Forgotten Places

  By Jenny D. Williams

  Thomas Dunne Books

  368 pp

  $26.99

• Seattle Book Review
  https://seattlebookreview.com/product/the-atlas-of-forgotten-places-a-novel/
  Word count: 295

  The Atlas of Forgotten Places: A Novel
  We rated this book:

  $26.99

  When Sabine’s niece, Lily, goes missing after a stint as an aid worker in Uganda, Lily’s stepfather begs Sabine for help. Sabine spent almost two decades in Africa, and she knows she must fly to Uganda if she has any chance of helping Lily. Official channels prove to be of little help, but Sabine finds the support she needs in Christoph, a Swiss academic, and his assistant, Rose, a local woman who is frantic to find her boyfriend, Ocen. As Sabine and Rose uncover the extent of Lily and Ocen’s involvement, they realize their loved ones are in more danger than they could ever have imagined. Moving deep into lawless territory in Congo, where the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army is a constant threat, Rose must face the worst horrors from her past in order to save the ones she loves most.

  This stunning novel is, first and foremost, a true page-turner–expertly plotted, with riveting storylines for both Rose and Sabine. Williams knows well the world of her story, and reading Atlas is an immersion in both Uganda and the morally fraught culture of aid work. Williams is compassionate but relentless in how she shapes her characters’ fates, and even those who escape with their lives will be scarred forever.
  Print Friendly, PDF & Email
  Reviewed By: Margo Orlando Littell
  Author:
  Jenny D. Williams
  Star Count:
  5/5
  Format:
  Hard
  Page Count:
  368 pages
  Publisher:
  Thomas Dunne Books
  Publish Date:
  2017-Jul-11
  ISBN:
  9781250122933
  Amazon:
  Buy this Book
  Issue:
  October 2017
  Category:
  Modern Literature
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• Washington Independent Review of Books
  http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/index.php/bookreview/the-atlas-of-forgotten-places-a-novel
  Word count: 822

  The Atlas of Forgotten Places: A Novel

  By Jenny D. Williams Thomas Dunne Books 368 pp.

  Reviewed by Julie Christine Johnson
  July 23, 2017

  A moving, fictionalized account of real-life horrors in Africa.

  In late 2008 and early 2009, years before the Western world became caught up in the horror of young schoolgirls kidnapped and enslaved by Boko Haram militants in northern Nigeria, nearly 200 children were abducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  These children were pawns in a cross-border fight between Ugandan rebels, known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and military forces from Uganda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

  Into this real-life volatile conflict walks character Lily Bennett, a young American woman volunteering for an aid agency in Uganda. Her subsequent disappearance in the weeks before these abductions, and an ensuing series of deadly attacks by the LRA known as the Christmas massacres, unites three individuals in a dangerous mission.

  Rippling with political and emotional tension, The Atlas of Forgotten Places takes us along this harrowing journey.

  Lily’s aunt, Sabine Hardt, an aid worker with years of experience throughout the African continent, is burned out and jaded. Despairing of ever making a difference, Sabine abandons her work in Africa and returns to her native Germany, where she works at an animal shelter. But when Lily’s stepfather sends word Lily was not on her scheduled flight home, Sabine doesn’t hesitate to return to the very place where she feared she lost her soul.

  Back in Uganda, Sabine encounters Christoph, a Swiss anthropologist, and his research assistant, Rose Akulu, and enlists their aid in her search for her niece. Rose’s story becomes entwined with Sabine’s, for she, too, is searching for the disappeared — her lover, Ocen.

  Rose’s composed exterior belies the war in her heart: she has a past with the Lord’s Resistance Army she cannot speak of, a past that has all but ostracized her from her community. Her physical scars cause others to look away in horror; her emotional scars may never heal.

  As the three follow the few traces Lily left behind, the possible reasons for her disappearance begin to emerge and none offers the searchers hope. Was she following the illegal ivory trade exploited by the LRA to fund their resistance activities? Had she crossed the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it is unlikely anyone on a rescue mission will be allowed to go? And in Rose’s secret agony — when it becomes clear that Lily and Ocen disappeared together — lives the question: Were Lily and Rose’s lover more than friends?

  The Atlas of Forgotten Places is riveting in plot and profound in portrait. Author Jenny D. Williams has created characters the reader will bond with immediately and a narrative that grips the imagination with a vital quest across the boundaries of countries and of the heart.

  This is an extraordinary debut, written with a masterful sense of plot and pacing and a keen understanding of the thorny world of western intervention in the developing world. Her prose calls to mind the exquisite Francesca Marciano — another contemporary Western writer with personal experience in Africa — with its clarity, precision, and beauty.

  Readers of Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love or White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse will add The Atlas of Forgotten Places to their canon of modern literature about Africa that explores culture beyond artificial political borders and expands our understanding of a continent.

  Eight years after the kidnapping of the children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the International Criminal Court began hearing arguments against one of the LRA’s senior commanders charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to the New York Times, “The United Nations estimates that between 1987 and 2012, the Lord’s Resistance Army killed more than 100,000 people, kidnapped between 60,000 and 100,000 children and forced more than 2.5 million people to flee their homes in Uganda, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.”

  The Atlas of Forgotten Places takes us to a place and into a conflict that few in the comfortable Western world know of or understand, and holds us fast with a stunning combination of intrigue and despair, redemption and love.

  Julie Christine Johnson is the award-winning author of In Another Life (Sourcebooks, February 2016) and the forthcoming The Crows of Beara (Ashland Creek Press, September 2017). She is also the author of numerous short stories and essays. Julie currently resides in Port Townsend, WA, where she leads writing workshops, is a freelance fiction editor, and manages the tasting rooms for one of Washington State’s newest wineries.
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