Home of the Free, Land of the Brave
Dear Friends,
Welcome to July’s Substack.
I hope you’ll enjoy this month’s essay Home of the Free, Land of the Brave. The audio version is available by clicking the link in the blog or clicking the link here for all podcasts. https://joanneleedomackerman.substack.com/podcast
Book News shares information, appearances, awards, and interviews on my latest novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert. The Writer at Risk section this month focuses on Amanuel Asrat, Eritrean poet, song writer and editor and one of the longest serving writers in prison who has never received a trial.
The Books to Check Out section features Rye Barcott’s inspiring new book of profiles Courage Can Save Us and National Book Award winner in Translation Seven Empty Houses by Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin and translator Megan McDowell.
In the Scene section you’ll find a photo relating to text from my novel The Far Side of the Desert. Words of the Month share a couple of words you may not use but might like to know.
Thank you to everyone who has come to bookstores, libraries, book clubs and online for my new novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert. Also available are my novel The Dark Path to the River and short story collection No Marble Angels. Word of mouth sells books so thank you for spreading the word!
If you’d like to have me speak at a venue or with a book club, click here. Thank you too for reading and sharing this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road. I hope you’ll stay in touch!
Home of the Free, Land of the Brave
I am sitting at an outside café in Paris about to head to the airport and return to Washington, DC after two weeks in Europe, both for work and vacation with family, first in London where I lived for six years and where I visited longtime colleagues and friends, then family vacation in Italy and the last days in Paris writing and checking facts on a new book, some of which I also checked in London.
I’m returning in time for America’s celebration of its 250th year which is a rather quaint anniversary from the perspective of these centuries-old European nations and even more quaint when considered from Asia or the Middle East with continuous civilizations having governments dating thousands of years. Iran’s and Egypt’s civilizations are logged at more than 5000 years and China’s and India’s over 4000 years of history, though regimes and governing systems changed many times over those centuries.
But in America we consider we are rather special having formed a nation based on ideas, not territory or cultural background. The United States of America is considered the oldest continuous constitutional democracy, though many of the ideals from the land of the free, the home of the brave have been challenged in recent years. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, the iconic lady given to America by France on July 4, 1884. She greets ships and planes coming into New York City. If we fail the ideals on which we were founded—“with liberty and justice for all,” then we are just a new kid on the block of history.
I am posting this essay after our national celebration since my tech-savvy colleague who knows how to post and add links is also on vacation. Meanwhile I hope you are celebrating and have celebrated all that is worth celebrating in your world.
I’m honored that The Far Side of the Desert (Oceanview Publishing) was named a finalist in the Suspense category for the 2025 National Indie Excellence Awards. The novel was also awarded the 2025 Bronze medal in the Suspense/Thriller category by the Independent Publishers Association (IPPY) Book Awards.
Published in 2024, The Far Side of the Desert was released in paperback April, 2025. I hope you’ll order, read and enjoy. If you’ve already read the hardcover, I hope you’ll buy the paperback and give to friends!
“Alliances—familial, situational, political—gird this engrossing thriller from novelist Joanne Leedom-Ackerman. U.S. foreign service officer Monte disappears during a visit to Spain; the search to find her, spearheaded by older sister Samantha, ricochets from Morocco and Egypt to Washington. Monte’s captivity is brutal, but there’s resilience, too, as both sisters slay old demons and chart new paths.”
—The Christian Science Monitor (Best 10 books of March 2024)
Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and paperback in 2024) was honored by the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense and Thriller/Adventure categories.
“I entered the world of Burning Distance, and I didn’t want to leave. The narrative voice unfolds the story both poetically and realistically. The narrative opens for the reader some of the history that has taken us to the current events in the Middle East and Europe and America. But first and foremost the reader will want to read Burning Distance to know the characters.”
—Azar Nafisi, best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Read Dangerously
Thanks to Monica Hadley and Writers Voices for the recent interview about The Far Side of the Desert. You can listen here.
Selected recordings of past events and interviews:
Interview with Monica Hadley, Writers Voices
Strategies for Living Podcast: Finding Resilience Through Story
Interview with Janeane Bernstein on NPR’s KUCI, Get the Funk Out!
Book Launch for Akram Aylisli's People and Trees with Plamen Press
Why Baldwin Matters Series, The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here
Amanuel Asrat (Eritrea)
(Sources include PEN International, PEN Eritrea, PEN America, English PEN, Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International)
Award-winning Eritrean poet, song writer, editor and journalist Amanuel Asrat has been held incommunicado since 2001 making him one of the longest-serving writers in prison in the world.
Co-founder of Eritrea’s leading literary newspaper Zemen, Asrat was arrested along with 13 other journalists in a crackdown on the independent press in 2001. It is believed he may be held at the northeastern Eiraeiro maximum security prison camp in a remote region north of Asmara or at Adi Abeito military prison near Asmara. Details have never been confirmed by the Eritrean government which has not allowed visits from family members or lawyers.
Asrat is credited with revitalizing Eritrean poetry in the early 2000s. Along with two colleagues he established a grassroots literary club with similar clubs developing across the country. He was also an art critic. His newspaper reported on divisions between reformers and conservatives in the ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice and urged implementation of the country’s democratic constitution.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, “Authorities initially detained the journalists at a police station in the capital, Asmara, where they began a hunger strike on March 31, 2002, and smuggled a message out of jail demanding due process. The government responded by transferring them to secret locations without bringing them before a court or publicly registering charges.”
Eritrean officials have accused Asrat and the other journalists of anti-state conspiracies relating to foreign intelligence, skirting military service, and violating press regulations. At other times officials have denied the journalists existed.
In 2016, Asrat was awarded the Oxfam Novib/PEN Award for Freedom of Expression, and in 2020, he was named International Writer of Courage by poet Linton Kwesi Johnson.
His award-winning poem ኣበሳ ኲናት (The Scourge of War)* alludes to the border dispute with Ethiopia.
‘ኣበሳ ኲናት (The Scourge of War)’
Where two brothers pass each other
Where two brothers meet each other
Where two brothers conjoin
In the piazza of life and death
In the gulf of calamity and cultivation
In the valley of fear and peace
Something resounded.
The ugliness of the thing of war
When its spring comes
When its ravaging echoes knock at your door
It is then that the scourge of war brews doom
But…
You serve it willy-nilly
Unwillingly you keep it company
Still, for it to mute how hard you pray!
Translated by Tedros Abraham
Eritrean authorities have not responded to repeated enquiries made by the UN Special Rapporteur on Eritrea on the whereabouts and health of the journalists arrested in September 2001. In response to a joint submission to the United Nations from PEN and the Committee to Protect Journalists, Eritrean authorities have either denied a clampdown took place and claimed that the journalists have been sent to fulfill their national service, or claimed the closures and mass arrests were necessary for the sake of national unity or carried out because the newspapers failure to comply with laws covering media licenses.
Though Asrat’s fate remains unknown, it is believed he is among the few surviving journalists arrested in 2001.
To Take Action for Amanuel Asrat:
Take Action:
Send appeals to the Eritrean government:
Protesting the detention of poet and journalist Amanuel Asrat on politically motivated grounds and without known charges or trial since 2001;
Expressing concern for Asrat’s health as detainees are believed to have suffered ill treatment, probably torture and lack of access to medical care;
Demanding that the Eritrean authorities immediately clarify the fate of all detained journalists and release immediately and unconditionally those still alive
Send Appeals to:
His Excellency Isaias Afewerki
Office of the President
P.O.Box 257
Asmara, Eritrea
Fax:+ 2911 125123
Minister of Information Hon. Yemane Gebremeskel
P.O. Box 242
Asmara, Eritrea
+291 124 847
Twitter: @hawelti
Please copy appeals to the diplomatic representative for Eritrea in your country if possible. Details of some Eritrean embassies can be found here.
Please take a few moments to sign and share the global petition in support of Amanuel and his fellow writers and to send a message of support to Amanuel’s family.
After more than five years in prison, Dr. Hany Babu, an associate professor of language and linguistics at Delhi University, has been granted bail by the Bombay High Court. Arrested in July 2020, he was charged, along with other noted Dalit and Adivasi rights activists, for allegedly inciting caste-based violence through speeches at a rally in December 2017. He languished in prison without a hearing for bail and without a trial for five years. Bail was granted on the grounds of prolonged pre-trial detention with a warning that “justice delayed should not become justice denied.”
(Details of Dr. Hany Babu case can be found in the Writers in Risk profile October 2025 Substack)
After more than five years in prison, Amanda Echanis, Philippine poet, writer, and activist has been cleared of a charge of illegal possession of firearms and explosives. She was arrested at her home where she was caring for her one-month-old child and detained without evidence. The court has found that the prosecution failed to establish its case. Her case has raised questions of evidence planting and violations of due process. The delays kept her in prolonged pre-trial detention, taking away her right of a speedy trial and five years of her freedom.
(Details of Amanda Echanis can be found in the Writers at Risk profile in April 2025 Substack.)
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
The two books featured here connect only because I read both this month. I finished one with a feeling of hope and optimism and the other with a darkening view of sad lives behind closed doors. Rye Barcott’s Courage Can Save Us is a collection of profiles of ten former vets who went into politics to serve and have tried to work across party lines and when called upon were willing to make difficult choices. Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin’s award-winning Seven Empty Houses is a short story collection of quiet despairing lives that endure, mostly.
Rye Barcott’s Courage Can Save Us, published at America’s 250th anniversary, is what the political environment, at least in the U.S., needs right now—ten profiles of courage among veterans who have moved into the arena of politics determined to get work done and to work together across party lines. Though not always agreeing on policy, these vets/politicians are, or have been, willing to tackle difficult issues, to stand up in challenging times and when necessary to take action that even harmed them politically.
A vet himself, Rye Barcott has spent much of his post-military career—and he is still young—building coalitions of vets and others who are committed to service. Though not engaged in the electoral arena himself, he has taken his military and business training to create organizations and his narrative skill to tell these stories of Democrat and Republican representatives in Congress, the Senate and Governor’s mansions—Governor Mikie Sherrill, Senator Todd Young, Senator Mark Kelly, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, Governor Wes Moore, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, Congressman Seth Moulton, Congressman John James, Congressman Don Bacon, and Congressman Jared Golden.
A natural storyteller, Barcott presents the ten profiles as narratives that highlight moments of crisis, forks in the road and introduce the backstory of each person and the ongoing support systems of family and also share the failures and the successes.
Modeled in part after John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, Barcott’s Courage Can Save Us begins with his own personal introduction of the theme by discussing what courage is and how it is demonstrated in a life.
To readers who may feel discouraged about the current U.S. political environment, I recommend Courage Can Save Us.
From Courage Can Save Us:
My father’s scar cut diagonally across his cheek, smooth and hard. He wore a mustache and kept the rest of his face straight-razor clean. That was the Marine in him. The scar marked a moment of courage in service, a lesson he carried each day without speaking it. That’s where courage lives: in service. Semper Fidelis. Always Faithful.
When people asked about his scar, he made up absurd stories about animal encounters: dogs, raccoons, opossums. Then he’d laugh, a deep, booming laugh that ended in a slap on the arm or, if he really liked you, a fist to the shoulder. But when I was around ten, I told him I wanted the truth.
“Follow me,” he said with a sigh.
He led me downstairs to the basement office he’d built himself, lit his pipe, reached between shelves stuffed with books, and pulled out an unused smoke grenade preserved in wax. He had been carrying it with him when his reconnaissance platoon, sent ahead of the main force to scout the enemy, was ambushed in Vietnam.
A bullet tore through his face. Another struck his “rump,” as he called it. A third round headed toward his heart but slammed into the smoke grenade strapped to his flak jacket, rendering it inert. He collapsed. His Marines returned fire. The enemy disappeared into the jungle.
A Navy corpsman pressed gauze to my dad’s cheek. “You’ll live,” the corpsman said, as the white turned red.
Dad handed me the grenade and showed me the holes: an entry no bigger than a pencil eraser and a fist-sized exit blown out the back. I traced its jagged edge. My hands shook. It had saved his life and enabled mine.
Dad laughed and drove his fist into my arm. He said he was lucky because a lot of reconnaissance officers were killed or crippled in Vietnam during that time. He recovered, refused a disability rating that would have put him out of action, and returned to patrolling through the jungle until the end of his thirteen-month tour.
The Marine Corps gave him a Purple Heart for wounds from enemy fire and a Bronze Star with a Combat “V” for valor. Dad wrote over parts of the official citation and stashed it in a manila folder he labeled simply NAM. Next to a description of his gallantry, he scratched not true. Beside a dramatized account of the combat action, he pressed BS so firmly the pen indented the paper. As to the numbers of enemy killed, he wrote possibly true.
Samanta Schweblin’s Seven Empty Houses, translated by Megan McDowell, takes the reader into seven sad and strange stories where the characters have often lost touch with the reality around them or with a clear path ahead for them. Argentine writer Schweblin explores the streets and houses large and small in Buenos Aires.
Winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Translation, Seven Empty Houses shares the intimate journeys of characters struggling to connect, narrators with quiet, desperate voices or rebellious voices at their circumstances, including a mother suffering the onslaught of dementia as she drives about looking at other people’s houses, rearranging things and stealing just a bit for herself, or the elderly woman making lists and packing boxes before she dies only she doesn’t die for many, many pages, or the little girl who has to sacrifice her underpants for her family to use as a flag then embarks on what could, but does not, turn into a dark journey.
A three-time nominee for the International Booker Prize, Schweblin draws the reader in even if the reader would like to escape the houses she’s being taken into. Most stories have a twist with danger just on the other side of the narrative but never fully breaking though.
From Seven Empty Houses:
“We’re lost,” says my mother.
She brakes and leans over the steering wheel. Her fingers, slender and old, grip the plastic tightly. We’re over half an hour from home, in one of the residential neighborhoods we like the most. There are beautiful and spacious mansions here, but the roads are unpaved, and they’re muddy because it rained all last night.
“Did you have to stop right in the mud? How are we going to get out of here now?”
I open my door to see how deep the wheels are stuck. Pretty deep, deep enough. I slam my door.
“Just what is it you’re doing, Mom?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” Her confusion seems genuine.
I know exactly what it is we’re doing, but I’ve only just realized how strange it is. My mother doesn’t seem to understand, but she does respond, so she must know what I’m referring to.
“We’re looking at houses,” she says.
She blinks a couple of times; she has too much mascara on her eyelashes.
“Looking at houses?”
“Looking at houses.” She indicates the houses on either side of us.
They are immense. They gleam atop their hills of freshly mown lawns, shining in the dazzling light of the setting sun. My mother sighs, and without letting go of the wheel she leans back in the seat. She’s not going to say much more. Maybe she doesn’t know what else to say. But that is exactly what we do. Go out to look at houses. We go out to look at other people’s houses. Any attempt to figure out why could turn into the straw that breaks the camel’s back, confirmation of the fact that my mother has been throwing her own daughter’s time into the garbage for as long as I can remember.
Image and passage of text from my novel The Far Side of the Desert:
“Cal! Thank God, you’re safe. When did you get in? What’s happening in the square?”
Their vacation was over before it began. The attack would send the three of them into professional mode. She was already putting events in categories and scenes and questions, reducing the chaos to a three-minute “Breaking News” flash. “I want togo back out, but I need to get this video sent.”
“Slow down.” In jeans and white shirt with a pad and paper in his hand, Cal scanned the room with owl-like eyes behind black-framed glasses. “Where’s Monte?”
“I left her in the bar.”
“I didn’t see her there. We need to get out of here. Troops are rolling in on the main roads. There may be other bombs. The hotel could be a target.”
Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius and from the books I read.
Obsidian
/əb ˈsid ēən/
Part of speech: Noun
a volcanic glass similar in composition to granite, usually dark but transparent in thin pieces, and having a good conchoidal fracture
Example:
“The group of items appears to have been deposited as part of a burial and includes a copper mirror, alabaster vessels that still contain traces of their original contents, and a vessel carved from black obsidian.”
Spoonerism
/ˈspo͞on əˌ riz əm/
Part of speech: Noun
A verbal error in which a speaker accidentally transposes the initial sounds or letters of two or more words, often to humorous effect, as in the sentence "you have hissed the mystery lectures," accidentally spoken instead of the intended sentence "you have missed the history lectures.
Example:
“Three phrases that contain words whose first letters are M and W have those letters flipped to make a spoonerism-like, punny phrase.”
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.
Thank you all for sharing that too Joanne. Please also share the updated information from John Coleman, Tatjana Romig, Нація підприємців, Manuel Garcia, Oliver Larkin, Uaifo Ojo, Paul Craig Roberts, Audrey Hatfield, Tony Martin, Eugene Earnshaw and others.
🐈 https://old.bitchute.com/video/jsHTV8JdIlAt/
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🦖 https://odysee.com/@tidbitsfortruth:2?view=content
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🌈 https://old.bitchute.com/channel/NBu3vOs8kXFY/
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🦎 It's all a science thing.
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🐘 Thank you.
🪐 https://michaelatkinson.substack.com/
🌍 👀