Illegal received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author John Dennehy.
Illegal: a true story of love, revolution and crossing borders. Published August 2017
What’s the book’s first line?
Two policemen grab me by the shoulders and pull me away from the immigration counter at Quito International Airport.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Illegal: a true story of love, revolution and crossing borders has drug smugglers, burning road blockades and violent heartbreak but it’s also about identity, nationalism and the limits of idealism. It’s a raw account of a young American abroad grasping for meaning when his native country heads away from his own ideals, with eerie echoes to the United States in 2017.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
While crossing borders I met a lot of other people enduring on similar journeys, but these were regular people: the woman next to me on the bus, the janitor in the airport; the man sitting quietly at the bus station. It was a world hidden in plain sight and I wanted to make that world a little more visible.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
What I want is for the reader to see a new perspective on borders, but it’s not an academic book. It’s a story that reads like fiction with a lot of drama and action that happens to also have a message.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
Work for United Nations/freelance journalism.
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
George Orwell.