While many of are following the news in Middle East unfold our TV and computer screens, LeAnne Howe, author of Shell Shaker and Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story, is witnessing the events unfold around her. As a 2010-2012 Fulbright Scholar, LeAnne has been teaching at the University of Jordan in Amman since September 2010.
She is also working on a new novel set in the Middle East and in Oklahoma, tying together the 1917 Arab revolt with 21st-century American Indians in the Middle East. LeAnne gives us a glimpse of her work in progress:
In 1913, A Choctaw man named Benjamin from Allen, Oklahoma became a Presbyterian missionary and traveled to Beirut. After traveling down to the city of Salt that same year, he became involved in the Arab revolt with other Bedouin tribes and T.E. Lawrence. In the present, his relative comes to Jordan to find out what happened to Benjamin, who never returned home to Oklahoma. I’m revising the present sections of the novel because of the current revolutions all over the Middle East.
You can read more about LeAnne’s reflections on teaching and writing in Jordan at her blog.