It’s 26 degrees below zero outside while Diane Hammond talks on the phone from chilly Minneapolis where she and her husband, Nolan, relocated in 2011.
Hammond lived in the Northwest for 25 years.
“I’m still a North-westerner,” she said. “You can take the writer out of the Pacific Northwest, but you can’t take the Pacific Northwest out of the writer.”
Her background is in public relations and print communications, which led to a PR job with the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Ore. Remember the film “Free Willy?” The movie was based on Keiko, a killer whale that had been in captivity in an aquarium in Mexico City for about 15 years. Keiko was brought to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which was the only place available with enough land to build a facility big enough for him. Hammond said they built it in a hurry.
“I dumb-lucked into doing all of the media relations for Keiko,” she said. “I watched this animal come to life, standing by a pool.”
She said when Keiko arrived he had Papilloma lesions all over him because his immune system was suppressed. He was 21-years-old when he arrived in Newport. Dedicated caretakers were with him 18 hours a day until he was well enough to be released near Iceland two years later. She said he immediately took off for a fjord in Norway, where he may have originated from because he stayed there and eventually died of pneumonia.
Hammond’s fifth novel, “Friday’s Harbor,” is fiction, although the whale in the story, Friday, was given many of Keiko’s attributes. Hammond chose not to write about Keiko because it was “such a tumultuous experience.” Keiko was the focus of the international press and a media sensation.
“There was incredibly high burnout,” she said. “Plus, I’m a better fiction writer.”
“Friday’s Harbor” involves a whale that was kept in captivity at an aquarium in Columbia, South America. Friday is brought to a fictional zoo, the tiny Max L. Biedelman Zoo in fictional Bladenham, Wash. Hammond said the similarities end there.
Her last book, “Hannah’s Dream,” was about an elephant in captivity. Hammond said her agent talked her into writing another animal story. Hannah is based on fact, too, about an elephant in a small zoo who is released into a sanctuary.
“The whole issue of animals in captivity is a very thorny one,” Hammond said.
Whether or not she will write more animal stories is anyone’s guess, even hers. But she said there seems to be an infinite amount of love for these animals.
“As with ‘Hannah’s Dream’ it is my hope that while ‘Friday’s Harbor’ poses difficult questions about holding animals in captivity, readers will recognize that the book is, at its core, a love story,” Hammond said.
Hammond will be touring with her book in Wash. this month, and will appear at the Issaquah Library, 10 West Sunset Way, Tuesday, Feb. 4 at 7 p.m.
