LIFE'S journeys, their mysticism, fragility - and often unpredictable endings – are again delicately explored in Co Down author Laura McVeigh's new novel, Lenny, which travels nimbly between Louisiana and Libya in search of healing, hope and 'home'.
Along the route is a plane crash, a desert and a sinkhole threatening to swallow up 10-year-old Lenny and a community he holds dear.
Set in 2011/2012, McVeigh tells the story in converging timelines, starting with a mysterious pilot who falls from the sky into the Ubari Sand Sea during the Libyan civil war and is saved by Azil, a young Bedouin boy.
The focus then switches to Louisiana, a year later, where another young boy is rushing against time to complete a rescue of his own...
It is, says the Rostrevor-born author, a story of humanity, optimism and the restorative power of the imagination - all pitted against the realities of war, a broken family, environmental disaster, economic crisis and a community teetering on the edge.
"At its heart is a very human search for 'home' and that sense of security and safety when people rally together to help," says McVeigh who, beyond the human, political and environmental contexts, also explores some imaginative 'time bending' and various perceptions of reality.
"I wanted to ask as many questions of that as possible," she says, "so, within the novel I look at what one version of reality could be compared to another.
"Different possibilities intrigue me - the novel starts with one kind of path and hopefully ends with the possibility that things can be different."
A desire to explore different paths off the page has helped feed the writer's curiosity, with her stories invariably inspired by travel - her 2017 debut novel, Under the Almond Tree, took root after she sat in a cramped railway carriage on a train rocking its way across Central Asia.
She had been thinking about the unpredictable nature of life's journeys in general - and the journeys that some people never wish to take - when she began to plot out her story of one refugee family fleeing Afghanistan and the catastrophic effects of war and displacement.
It is a subject about which the Cambridge graduate - she studied Modern and Medieval Languages and Literature and also holds an MSc in Global Politics - feels deeply, having worked with the Global Girls Fund and as a director with PEN International.
"I write full-time now, but I still have various charities that I'm involved with and care about," she says.
"My interests in education projects continues and I've been doing a project setting up a school in Bangladesh - it's a kind of passion project.
"Through my work at PEN, I had the privilege of working with many brave and resilient people from around the world - people in need of refuge and protection and who were often facing imprisonment or fleeing torture.
"Over the years I also met many young people affected by conflict and not able to attend school. Education is key to future life chances."
While listening to many heartbreaking stories of families forced to leave their homes and lives behind, what amazed her most, she says, was the "resilience of the human spirit" and an instinctive determination to carry on.
She writes from two homes - one in London and another in Mallorca where her 11-year-old daughter attends school - so employs an empathetic imagination when writing about issues such as her young hero's homelessness and abandonment.
Exotic settings, on the other hand, tend to be inspired by real-life travel experiences.
"Libya is one of those places that you can't visit at the moment, so that's the challenge when you're writing about it, but I have been to north Africa and travelled in the desert," says the multilingual McVeigh, an alumna of the Royal Court Theatre Young Writers' Programme.
"I have camped out under the stars and travelled with the Bedouin, so I suppose that connection was already there.
"Then, I was looking at what could be the most opposite setting for the other narrative strand and my curiosity was sparked when I read that the land mass in southern Louisiana disappears more quickly than in any other place on Earth because of rising waters.
"When I started to really look into it all, I discovered so many things that had a kind of synergy with the story of Lenny. It really is a fascinating part of the world - 'Roseville' in the book is an imagined place, of course, but there are sinkholes in Louisiana and people living along the strip nicknamed 'Cancer Alley' who are really affected by serious environmental challenges."
Yet, far from the problems faced by the modern world in the 21st century, the story was modelled on an old one - The Little Prince - penned by McVeigh's own favourite childhood author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
"I used to live off the coast of north Africa, close to where the French author would have flown planes - he was an aviator as well as a writer - and one of the things that happened in his life was crashing one of his planes in the Libyan desert," she says.
"He survived alone for a couple of days and then was saved by a Bedouin on a camel - and that, for me, became the route into the novel.
"All Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's books are thoughtful, quite philosophical meditations on life, humanity and our connection to the planet, so I had a certain sympathy for that kind of feeling and wanted to explore it in a different way through Lenny, who is a sort of mirror child of the Little Prince."
Apart from striving - "as is the point of all literature" - to encourage us to "think about the world, how it works and how we connect to each other" she leaves us to make what we will of a deliberately ambiguous ending.
"Everything is open to interpretation and each person will bring their own interpretation," she teases.
"And that is the power of the reader, as well as the writer's, imagination."
Lenny by Laura McVeigh, published by New Island, is out now. The Belfast book launch takes place at No Alibis bookshop, Botanic Avenue, on April 23 at 2pm.
