The 2026-27 season of the Final Thursday Reading Series starts with a return visit by Paul M. Hedeen, author of The Killing (Atmosphere Press), a book that moves from Long Beach to the killing fields of Cambodia to offer a tense, elegiac exploration of truth, guilt, and the intergenerational wounds of war. Hedeen’s other publications include the novel The Butterfly and the poetry collections Under a Night Sky and When I Think about Rain.
The FTRS creative writing open mic starts at 7:00. Come a few minutes early to sign up to read, and bring your best five minutes of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction. Hedeen’s featured reading starts at 7:30. Books by regional authors will be available for purchase at the event. FTRS takes place on the final Thursday of the month at the Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls.
Interview by Jim O’Loughlin.
JIM O’LOUGHLIN: The Killing has a really unusual composition history. Can you say a little about how it came together in its published form?
PAUL M. HEDEEN: I began the novel in the year it depicts militarily: 1979. In its first form (under a different title), it was a military adventure novel and an allegorical critique of American imperialism in SE Asia. While I mention "allegory," the book was a straightforward allegory with the characters taking on fairly obvious symbolic roles--like a cinema treatment. While it attracted the attention of an agent (the only title of mine ever to do so), he was unsuccessful in placing it, though Bantam sat on it for a while. I put it in the proverbial drawer, but not the proverbial bin. Though in a drawer, it still glowed for me like the contents of Tarantino's briefcase in Pulp Fiction (a detail Tarantino stole from a fairly famous film noir, btw). So I went back to it after grad degrees, other books, children, second wives (you name it). By then, the current news of 1979 was way old, and it needed refreshing. Hence the generational family narrative about the effects of war on wives and children (Like Faulkner, I'm drawn to the sins of fathers theme). It just so happened that in 2014 (when I dusted off the early ms) the worm had already turned for Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge leader I focus upon. His trial ended, and then a few years later so did his life. So for people paying attention, it was a semi-current event once again. I added a frame narrative—Juliette, Austin Guthrie, Luke, Marco, Nolan, Col. Charlie Brown, etc. While the military narrative, with changes in POV and main characters, was extensively rewritten, it became the "inner" narrative and Jack Spot, AKA Uncle Jack, its creator.
JO: Within the context of the Vietnam War, the conflict in Cambodia in the 1970s is given less historical and literary attention. What drew you to this subject?
PMH: There was a famous film—thought to be good at the time—that revived the Vietnam narrative, but in Cambodia: The Killing Fields (1984). At the time, it was popular enough to extend the Vietnam war genre, and Cambodia was in the news. What drew me back to the story was the frame narrative. After all, a new generation (Juliette's) had emerged between 1979 and 2014, but it was not a generation of warriors, but victims. Too often, we ignore the people who are on the periphery of war. It seems that wars serially eclipse the victims and survivors. This allows us to forget the lessons. An attraction of the Cambodia war was for me how the imperial war morphed into a regional atrocity, and it was almost completely borne by the civilians. Also, the Cambodia war was fought mostly by irregulars and, therefore, created opportunities for exploitation: the Stephen Psalters, Nathan Depreyes, Mr. Yees, and Johnny Spots, who are meant to be realistic but also allegorical. There is also the attraction of the Cambodian idealists, the murderous Pol Pot and Nuon Chea. They had tremendous will but were wholly evil in their inhumanity. Then again, so were Psalter and Depreye. None of these men believed they were evil. It is interesting that, like Hitler and Stalin, Pot and Chea were not very interested in material wealth.
JO: In The Killing, it initially seems like the character of Juliette just wants very straightforward details about the past and about the fate of her father. But none of that information is easy to come by. How much of this is particular to the “fog of war,” and how much is endemic to any search for information about the past?
PMH: The latter more than the former. I want to show the effect of dishonesty and greed, but to show it in very particular ways. Also, I want to suggest how motives mix and how easily intentions are co-opted by greed and self-interest. Look at Marko. As soon as he thinks he can get a little for himself, he jumps at it. Also, Charlie Brown is there to demonstrate allegorically how killing destroys all nobility. He is actually a character extended from The Butterfly and is meant to show how the novel's issues are intergenerational. That his motives seem muddled is intentional. Wars even destroy their stated reasons for being. One can see this also in Austin Guthrie. His tapes are confessions, an attempt at purging himself of guilt. Julliette understands this, and this accounts for her anger and frustration.
JO: I was struck by a moment in one of the Jack Spot sections, when “the killing” describes an erasure of meaning, “to see people reduced to nothing.” While the aftermath of such events is not quite PTSD in this book, is it fair to say that characters spend the rest of their lives trying to find meaning after experiences that erase meaning?
PMH: Quite fair. As the book says, wars create little "dust devils" across time and space. Ordinary people never recover what they lose. Juliette only thinks she knows enough at the end. Luke is there to remind her of her parents' mistakes. Her father's name on the wall will never bring her solace or honor. Even though she knows almost everything, there is not much there to bring her peace.
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