In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills
"I went to Rwanda as a journalist to interview genocide survivors and found something unexpected: the bones of a novel." — Jennifer Haupt
Follow the intertwining stories of three women from different cultures and generations, searching for grace when there can be no forgiveness. Together, they find the courage to love again. This riveting family saga spans from the turmoil of Atlanta during the Civil Rights Movement through the struggle for reconciliation and forgiveness in post-genocide Rwanda. At the heart of this literary novel that crosses racial and cultural boundaries is the search for family on a personal and global level.
Foreword Indies Bronze Award for Historical Fiction (2018)
Southern Independent Booksellers Association must-read spring pick (2018)
One of 19 “don't miss” debut novels for 2018 — Bustle
Top book club picks for spring — PopSugar
Praise for In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills
“…the Rwanda described in the text is beautiful, a place where ‘pink winged geese glide among over-sized purple lilies that bow like ladies in waiting,’ and, like the main narrative, it is alive with people working to come together and heal.” — Publishers Weekly
“…both an evocative page-turner and an eye-opening meditation on the ways we survive profoundly painful memories and negotiate the complexities of love. I was deeply moved by this story.” — Wally Lamb, bestselling author of She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True
“VERDICT: Journalist Haupt spent time in Rwanda researching the nature of grief and forgiveness. In this intensely beautiful debut, she shows that it’s indeed the women who hold up half the sky.” — Library Journal
“Haupt has woven an intricate and moving tale of family and culture, of conflict and love, and of the challenges of healing after unthinkable loss. Told with remarkable compassion and grace, In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills is a story everyone should read.” — Therese Anne Fowler, bestselling author of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald and A Good Neighbor
“…highlights how those unrelated by blood can come together as family, offering love, strength, and understanding… Haupt’s debut novel is a good choice for those seeking tales of hope after adversity and it may prove popular with book clubs.” — Booklist
Why I Wrote This Novel
I grew up in a large Jewish community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although I was never particularly religious, I always felt a strong identity as a Jew. My husband and I went to Europe as newlyweds, thirty years ago, and visited the site of the Dachau concentration camp where some of my relatives died. I remember it as informative but surreal, a museum wiped clean of the horrors. It was as if the atrocities never happened. I wanted to feel anger, grief…something. I felt nothing.
I went to Rwanda in 2006 as a journalist, a decade after the genocide that wiped out over a million people, to explore the connections between forgiveness and grief. I spent a month interviewing genocide survivors at the churches and schools where there were still bloodstains on the walls and the bones of anonymous victims carefully stacked on shelves. It struck me that I was always the only one at these memorials. The guides were survivors, usually women, whose families and friends had been murdered at the site.I felt a deep connection with these women, not just as a Jew whose relatives had also been murdered in genocide, but as a human being whose soul ached for humanity.
It struck me that the common human bond, the thing that ties us all together and transcends our differences, is grief. My quest became more about finding grace — personal peace — than forgiveness. In Rwanda, they have a word for this: Amahoro. It means peace, but so much more. This is the core theme of the novel I worked on for eleven years. Now, more than ever, I believe the world needs Amahoro.