Historical Fiction
Date Published: 04-24-2026
Publisher: Salty Books Publishing
She is assigned to Tunis where she falls in love with U.S. diplomat James Whitcomb. At the conclusion of their tours of duty, they marry. Within weeks of the wedding, he is taken captive in the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-81.
James, held hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, endures the same demons that afflicted the real life hostages during the actual crisis 45 years ago.
Angie, biting her nails at home, endures her own demons. How can she support him? Should she join efforts to force the president into negotiating a release? Or even a rescue?
When the ordeal finally ends fourteen months later, the couple faces a new set of demons. Rebuilding their life together as they each recuperate from their own PTSDs.
Interview with JJ Harrigan, author of GOODBYE DEMONS
What is the hardest part of writing your books?
Refusing to let them take over my life.
What are your most played songs?
This will be my most long-winded response.
Since I’m an amateur piano player, there are two parts to this question. What songs show up in my book? And what songs do I play?
GOODBYE DEMONS opens with Angie Fernandez Parnell competing for a spot on the Olympic ice skating team. The background music she’s chosen to skate to is the Beatles’ “Let it Be.” She suffers a career ending injury during the routine, and the last thing she hears before being carted off the ice is Paul McCartney singing the song’s final refrain. The main portion of this novel is set in 1980, and when she hears of John Lennon’s murder, she plays over and over his song “Imagine.” The “1812 Overture” is very powerful while her husband James is held captive in Teheran and again near the end of the novel when it provokes a crisis between them. When the hostages return from captivity, the song “Yellow Ribbon” is highlighted.
In the prequel GOODBYE BOBBY, Angie plays another Beatles song after her mother’s funeral, “Yesterday.” She is only nine and her stepfather Charlie tries to keep her from playing a song he thinks promote drugs, “With a Little Help from my Friends.” The final focus of this novel is the death of Bobby Kennedy, and Andy Williams sings “The Battlehymn of the Republic” at the funeral (this was true). And conductor Leonard Bernstein conducted a piece from Mahler.
In the prequel to that, GOODBYE CUBA, her stepdad Charlie meets her mother. Featured songs are “Guantanamera” “Kevin Berry.”
The backstory of her stepdad Charlie is told in the coming of age novel, THE JEEPTOWN SOCK HOP. Teen-agers Charlie and his friend Clarice form a dance band they hope will unite the Black and White kids of the neighborhoods. They play a medley of standards that would have been popular at the time. “The Sunny Side of the Street” and “Accentuate the Positive” were among them.
For my part, as an amateur piano player, the only ones of these songs that I can play with any competence at all are “Let It Be,” “Sunny Side of the Street,” and “Yesterday.”
Do you have critique partners or beta readers?
I’m a long term member of The Twin Cities Fiction Writers critique group, and they have ripped apart every chapter of GOODBYE DEMONS, sometimes more than once. But if it is a good novel today, a lot of that is due to the critiques I’ve received from the group. I addition, I always use at least one beta reader. You need the input of someone who sees the whole novel at one time, and critique group members never have that experience. They respond to one chapter or scene at at time.
What book are you reading now?
The best book I’ve read recently is Erik Larsen’s The Splendid and the Vile, which traces Winston Churchill’s first year as prime minister during WWII. A close second is Jane Healy’s marvelous The Women of Arlington Hall which tells the critical role of women code breakers at the end of WWII and the start of the Cold War.
How did you start your writing career?
Having served my early adulthood as a soldier and then as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, I spent the next stage as a university professor and wrote two successful textbooks that each went through multiple editions. At some point I got sick of spending each summer in the basement of the library looking for some little nugget of research gold that would make my next edition shine. By then I had become a reader of historical fiction, and decided that I should write it. That was a wise decision. Writing stories that bring the past to life for people is not a bad way to spend the autumn of your life.
Tell us about your next release
In the last year of WWII, P-38 fighter pilot Sonny Marino gets shot down and injured over Nazi controlled Romania. He is rescued by a Resistance team. One of the team member is a German woman, Lili Engler, who is tasked with escorting him to a hidden landing site where he can be flown back to his base in Italy. The two fall in love. He wants her to join him on the plane back to Italy, but she refuses because she is dedicated to her work in the Resistance. They pledge to meet up with each other in Berlin when the war ends.
Could you tell us about any research trips you took for this story? Which places did you visit, and what made them essential to your writing?
I don’t travel much anymore, but I have an anecdote you might like. My character Angie grew up in Greenwich Village with her Cuban mother and her American father. They ate at NY’s oldest pizza parlor, Lombardi’s, she went to school at Our Lady of Pompei, and she got married at that church. These are real places.
So, naturally, the next time my wife and I went to NY, we had to see them. Lombardi’s was a longer walk than I had promised her, and it was drizzlingly cold, so she wasn’t a happy camper by the time we got there. Our marriage survived, but she was fed up with long walks in the rain, so I had to visit Our Lady of Pompei by myself. Built for an Italian population early in the twentieth century, it was now heavily Hispanic. The priest, in fact, gave his sermon in Spanish, which might as well have been Greek for me, because I understood none of it. Then, the mass ended, a new speaker appeared, and suddenly everything was clear as a bell. I don’t know Spanish, but I do know Portuguese, because I had lived in Brazil for three years. Someone draped a Brazilian flag over the pulpit and the speaker went on to describe events for the local Brazilian community.
What was going on was something that back in my teaching days we called ethnic succession. The church was started by Italians. It got taken over by Hispanics. And now the Brazilians are closing in. I felt sad later when I learned that the school was closing. Afterall this was Angie’s school. WAIT! Angie’s not a real person. See what happens to you when you spend so much time making up stories.
What's the strangest thing you've ever had to research online for your book?
Probably the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which was the setting for GOODBYE CUBA. I’m not sure anyone realized just how close we were to having a nuclear war by accident. Not because the two principles, the American president and the Russian Premier, wanted it. But because so many things down the chain of command were beyond their control and in some cases beyond their knowledge.
What research (history, mythology, science) goes into your world-building?
Above all, the historical novel has to have characters that readers can love or hate. And, unless it’s an alternative history, the world it’s creating has to be as accurate as you can make it. Both of these things require an enormous amount of digging.
For GOODBYE BOBBY, I needed a bright and precocious nine-year-old who would be buffeted by her stepfather’s taking on a secret mission for one of Bobby Kennedy’s aides. I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird looking for traits in Scout that I could use with Angie. I rented the movie Paper Moon, hoping that Addie Pray would give me some ideas.
It never occurred to me at this point that I could use Angie again in her own novel. But one day I was lying on chaise lounge in the sun when I was struck by the realization that all I had to do was age her by decade, have her fall in love with a diplomat, and I would have two unprecedented points of view for portraying the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-81. That became GOODBYE DEMONS.
The other part of the question, recreating the past honestly, also requires a lot of work. I remember creating a scene for GOODBY CUBA in which Charlie takes the rapid rail Metro from the Virginia suburbs into Washington, D.C. I completed the scene, got it critiqued, and went on to something else, when one day I couldn’t get rid of a nagging question. When Charlie took that Metro into D.C. in 1962, had it actually been built yet? And a little investigation told me, “No, it hadn’t.” It is so easy to commit historical errors, and you have to be continually vigilant.
Have any of the people you've known, past or present, left a lasting impression on your writing journey? If so, we'd love to hear about a memorable experience that stands out to you.
Late in my career as a college professor, I gave my class a term paper project in which they read a piece of historical fiction. The papers they turned in were so-so, but one young woman, read a novel set in Boston about 1950. It wasn’t even a particularly good novel, but I will never forget her coming up to me to tell me about it. I remember her name. I remember her face. I remember her enthusiasm. And I remember what she said. “Professor, I wish I could have lived in those times?”
Those words made me understand something. Historical fiction can touch people viscerally in a way that social science scholarship and standard history cannot. And down deep inside I knew that this is want I wanted to do.
Do you write in the same genre all the time?
Mostly, I write historical fiction. Some of it tends to be thriller oriented, and it all involves suspense. It’s what I like doing.
If so, have you ever consider writing in another one?
I’d like to do more short stories. But it’s so different from writing a novel, it’s almost like a separate craft.
Which character, supernatural or human, do you enjoy writing the most and why?
Two. First is Angie. When she appeared in GOODBYE BOBBY, the story came to life for the members of my critique group. Because people respond to her, it makes it easier to have her playing off of other people, almost like actors do. Her father, her teacher, her Peace Corps partner in GOODBYE DEMONS, and of course the diplomat James whom she marries.
The second is a real life gangster, Meyer Lansky, who appeared in both GOODBYE CUBA and GOODBYE BOBBY. Again, my critique group members came to life every time Meyer Lansky showed up. To get a feel for him, go to the audio book on the Barnes and Noble website. You can click on it and listen to a sample of him interacting with Charlie the day before St. Patrick’s day. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/goodbye-bobby-jj-harrigan/1146405295
About the Author
Purchase Links
https://mybook.to/GoodbyeDemons
