Ask the Author: Humphrey Hawksley
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Humphrey Hawksley
Back in 2014, when Russia was enmeshing Ukraine in a new civil war, I opened an old Times Atlas that I keep in my study to find an interesting place to go, one that could tell the story of rising U.S.-Russian tension, but not where everyone else was traveling.
My eyes drifted over dog-eared pages of the atlas until they settled far away on the Bering Strait where Russia and America actually shared a border, where former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was mocked when she said Americans could see Russia from Alaska.
In the middle of the Bering Strait are two islands, barely two miles apart. One, Big Diomede, hosts a Russian military base. The other, Little Diomede, is a settlement of less than hundred Eskimo villagers, living in one of the most remote and hostile environments of the world. Without doubt, this had to be my destination.
From the air, as the helicopter descended through fog, these rival islands appeared like sentinels keeping vigil over a vast, empty expanse. On the ground, stilted buildings clung to a steep hillside washed with a blue-gray hue contrasted by the helipad’s orange windsock, stretched horizontal in a fierce wind. I worked with a talented Indian video photographer www.poulomibasu.com and because of bad weather we stayed more than a week, every morning getting up and, just like Sarah Palin had described, seeing Russia from Alaska.
Astonishingly, this frontier between two superpowers was unmarked, no border posts, no buoys in the water, no national flags on either island; on Little Diomede, no state troopers, no police, no government presence and, when the helicopter flew off, no way of leaving.
Across the water on the ridges of Big Diomede we could see Russian military watch towers. This was far too special to leave to a single BBC report. It begged for a thriller because the only one I knew that touched on this border was Lionel Davidson’s brilliant Kolymsky Heights published in 1994.
What would happen, I asked myself, if the Russians crossed over and put up their flag. From that I created Rake Ozenna of the Alaska National Guard, a tough native of Little Diomede and his kick-ass fiancé, trauma surgeon Dr Carrie Walker, raising another question as to whether things would ever quiet down enough, both around and between them, to make the relationship work.
The book is Man on Ice was released in paperback in October and its sequel with many of the sam characters is due out in the UK November 29th and North America March 1st 2020.
My eyes drifted over dog-eared pages of the atlas until they settled far away on the Bering Strait where Russia and America actually shared a border, where former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was mocked when she said Americans could see Russia from Alaska.
In the middle of the Bering Strait are two islands, barely two miles apart. One, Big Diomede, hosts a Russian military base. The other, Little Diomede, is a settlement of less than hundred Eskimo villagers, living in one of the most remote and hostile environments of the world. Without doubt, this had to be my destination.
From the air, as the helicopter descended through fog, these rival islands appeared like sentinels keeping vigil over a vast, empty expanse. On the ground, stilted buildings clung to a steep hillside washed with a blue-gray hue contrasted by the helipad’s orange windsock, stretched horizontal in a fierce wind. I worked with a talented Indian video photographer www.poulomibasu.com and because of bad weather we stayed more than a week, every morning getting up and, just like Sarah Palin had described, seeing Russia from Alaska.
Astonishingly, this frontier between two superpowers was unmarked, no border posts, no buoys in the water, no national flags on either island; on Little Diomede, no state troopers, no police, no government presence and, when the helicopter flew off, no way of leaving.
Across the water on the ridges of Big Diomede we could see Russian military watch towers. This was far too special to leave to a single BBC report. It begged for a thriller because the only one I knew that touched on this border was Lionel Davidson’s brilliant Kolymsky Heights published in 1994.
What would happen, I asked myself, if the Russians crossed over and put up their flag. From that I created Rake Ozenna of the Alaska National Guard, a tough native of Little Diomede and his kick-ass fiancé, trauma surgeon Dr Carrie Walker, raising another question as to whether things would ever quiet down enough, both around and between them, to make the relationship work.
The book is Man on Ice was released in paperback in October and its sequel with many of the sam characters is due out in the UK November 29th and North America March 1st 2020.
Humphrey Hawksley
I am structuring the third in the Rake Ozenna series www.manonice.co.uk and working on the promotion of the paperback of MAN ON ICE and the forthcoming hardback of MAN ON EDGE. Developments in Asia also keep me busy with a articles about China, Taiwan and Hong Kong www.humphreyhawksley.com/journalism
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