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Saturday,
March 01, 2003
Inspiration fueled by
history
By DEAN SHALHOUP
shalhoupd@telegraph-nh.com
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Staff photo by Dan Williamson
Nashuan
Faye Wallace is an author who writes fiction based on
ancient Persian history. Two of her books have been
published. |
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| Faye Wallace wasn’t much for
Reiki.
In fact, as an admitted skeptic,
she simply rolled her eyes when her husband, Keith, wanted
them to be subjects for friends who were learning the ancient
art of healing the body through the concentration of natural
energy.
She went anyway. But watching a
budding Reiki master at work, she still wasn’t convinced.
“Is this a joke?” she remembers
wondering aloud.
She tried it. Not
surprisingly, nothing happened.
A good
sport, she gave it another shot later. This time would be much
different.
“I can’t explain it . . . I
have no idea what happened to me. But something did,” Wallace
said, remembering how she “dreamed” of being in a crude,
ancient house looking out over the Mediterranean Sea during
her Reiki session. “It was somewhere I’d never been . . . I
couldn’t understand it.”
What she does
remember, though, is the unusual level of energy she felt
afterward, more than she had ever experienced – and also the
desire to sit down at a keyboard and begin
writing.
So she did. Now, just two years
later, Wallace is a published author of two books, with two
more on the way, featuring tales set hundreds of years ago and
based upon the rich history of her native
land.
Wallace is a seven-year Nashua
resident who was born in Iran under the rule of Muhammad Reza
Shah Pahlevi. Spending much of her free time
researching and reading, she adopted a
style of taking historical facts, mostly from 16th- and
17th-century Persia (Iran) and Europe, and putting faces to
them through the creation of her own characters.
Her first book, “Lords of An Angel,”
was released in October. It follows lovers Scottish Lord
Patrick Campbell and Muslim Princess Fur’eshte (“Angel” in
English) as they battle the forces of loyalty, duty and
cultural differences that eventually wedge them apart.
Set during the Ottoman Empire in the
16th century, the story brings history alive, giving the
reader an opportunity to experience the fictitious couple’s
day-to-day lives, ones surrounded by temptation, scandals,
sufferings and politics.
Only two months
later, Wallace’s second book – a similar, 692-page essay
called “An Angel’s Pursuit” – was out. It picks up the story
of Fur’eshte and Lord Campbell as they start to build a new
life on the outskirts of Plymouth, England, after she had fled
Egypt.
Both books were released by
publish-on-demand house Publish America Inc. and its
companion, America House.
Finding no
letup in her desire to write, Wallace has two more manuscripts
– “Silent Sound of Courage” and “Eve of an Empire” – nearly
ready to be published. Still more drafts for future books
cover her work space.
“I want readers to
get to know me as a person, not just a writer,” Wallace said,
sipping cranberry tea in her comfortable North End home. “I
try to tell the story of history through people in different
cultures who stood their ground, even when everything was
against them. Even today, we can learn from
them.”
Ironically, Wallace admits to
disliking both literature and history in school. But a glimpse
at her own life shows that if life experience is truly the
best teacher, Wallace is a top
scholar.
Born Fahimahe Maragheh into a
well-to-do, influential Muslim family in East Azerbaijan
Province, Wallace is the eldest daughter of a prominent,
international textile-trading merchant whose children wanted
for nothing.
When she was in high
school, Iran was in turmoil. An Islamic revolutionary
government had overthrown the shah, leading to a steady
deterioration of Iran-U.S. relations. When President Carter
allowed the shah into the country for medical treatment in
September 1979, Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran and took 66 hostages, 53 of whom remained captive for
more than a year.
Fearing for their
safety, Wallace’s father moved the family to Dubai in the
United Arab Emirates and began the process of getting visas to
the United States.
Soon, the girl who
grew up a veritable princess – jetting off to Paris, London
and Rome for shopping sprees – was in for serious culture
shock.
When they arrived in America,
Wallace and her family lived in a hotel near Boston’s Logan
Airport, then rented a suburban apartment. But when the
landlord found out they were Iranian, she said, his misguided
patriotism led him to tear up the lease and, yelling and
swearing, chase the newcomers away.
It
got worse. Carter applied economic pressure by halting oil
imports from Iran and freezing Iranian assets in the United
States. That included just about all of Wallace’s father’s
fortune, she said, leaving the once-wealthy family struggling
in a new land.
“It was such an
awakening,” she said. “Not long before, I was living in a
17-bedroom house that was nearly a block long and full of
servants. I found I had to learn how to do everything
myself.”
That included simple tasks like
laundry.
“I just stood and stared at
the machine in the apartment building – I had no idea how to
use it,” she said with a laugh. “Two elderly ladies thought it
was because I was foreign, and they showed me how. I was
embarrassed, so I just thanked
them.”
Soon, she crossed paths with
Englishman Keith Wallace, who was in the Boston area on
business. It happened to be in a nightclub, although both
insist they rarely visited such
establishments.
Keith Wallace serves as
his wife’s consultant, editor and Web site manager.
“I started reading her first drafts,
and I couldn’t put them down,” he said. “She reads many, many
books to research these stories. She does a great job with
them – they put you right in the place and
time.”
Not long after coming to America,
Faye Wallace got a college degree and became a U.S. citizen.
Today, she works full time – something she never thought she
would do – as an executive assistant and training coordinator
at Moore’s Business Forms in Manchester.
She and Keith are raising three sons
and gradually remodeling their home. Around all of that, she
embraces her research and writing, still somewhat confounded
by, but gratefully accepting, the origin of her sudden
inspiration.
Does she miss her
once-privileged lifestyle?
Seemingly
not.
“There was a life out there that I
was missing,” she said. “Now I’ve found it – and I’m glad I
did.”
Dean Shalhoup can be reached at
594-6523. |
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