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This is Fresh Air.
I'm Terry Gross.
Our guest today is the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, Lindsay Adario, who has risked her life and come close to losing it, working in war zones, including Ukraine.
But before we say more about her, I want to introduce our guest interviewer today, Sam Fragoso.
You may know him as the host of the interview podcast Talk Easy.
I think he's a terrific interviewer, and I say that as a listener to the podcast and as one of his recent interviewees.
Now that I've introduced Sam, here's Sam to introduce Lindsay Adario.
In 2015, Lindsay Adario published an essay in the New York Times Magazine titled What Can a Pregnant Photojournalist Cover?
Everything.
Everything.
Adaria, now a mother of two, has since continued her work in the male-dominated world of conflict photography.
But the gendered question around the perceived limits of working mothers is at the heart of a new documentary called Love and War.
It paints a comprehensive picture of Adario's life both in the field and back at home.
Since September 11 2001, Adario has covered nearly every major conflict and humanitarian crisis of her generation, including the Ukraine war, where she's been on assignment from the New York Times since 2022.
In the process of creating what she calls a historical record.
She's been kidnapped twice, thrown out of a car on a highway in Pakistan and been ambushed on two different occasions by the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents.
People have a tendency to move on, she says in Love and War.
It's my job to get people to continue paying attention.
Lindsay Adario, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much.
I want to begin where the film does.
On March 6th of 2022 in Irpin Ukraine, where you're on assignment for The New York Times.
And I believe it's there that you're photographing Ukrainian refugees children, peaceful civilians attempting to flee the violence that had begun just days earlier.
In the distance, we see a family with backpacks, a blue roller suitcase.
And they make it safely across the Irpin River and into Kiev, where they then enter your frame.
Can you tell us what you saw next?
Yeah.
So on the morning of March 6th it was a Sunday morning and we understood that hundreds of people were fleeing the area of Bucha and Erpim, which were the suburbs around Kyiv.
And it seemed... very tense that morning.
And we approached and immediately took cover behind this sort of cement wall.
And I was photographing civilians kind of streaming across my viewfinder, getting really angry actually, kind of upset that I was watching like children being dragged by their parents and the elderly on people's backs, and that civilians were once again paying the price of war.
And so as I was photographing, a mortar round came in.
And it came in and it landed a little bit off in the distance like I don't know, a few hundred meters.
And then a second round came in.
And my security advisor said, do you want to leave?
And I said, no.
The Russians know this is a civilian evacuation route.
Putin said that he was not deliberately targeting civilians, so I think we're OK.
Suddenly another round came in and landed literally about 20.
And I dove down behind the cement wall.
So immediately I looked at Andrei, my Ukrainian colleague Andrei Dubchuk, and we checked each other out to make sure we weren't bleeding.
And then it was very dusty because of, of course, the cement, the aftermath of this mortar landing very close to us.
And I immediately assumed that it was soldiers who had been hit.
I don't know why, because obviously there were civilians in that position.
But in my head I sort of like I thought it was soldiers and I ran across the street and I started trying to process what I was seeing.
And I was looking at these four bodies.
First, I didn't know if they were alive or had been killed.
And I was looking at their feet and I saw these little moon boots of a child.
And I thought, how can it be?
That's a child.
There shouldn't be a child killed.
And I...
I'm a mother, and my son Alfred was about three at that time.
My instinct was to run.
But then I said to myself, like, no, you know, you need to take photographs.
Like I knew I had just witnessed like the deliberate targeting of civilian evacuation routes.
So I started taking photos and very quickly moving my way around the scene and eventually made it back to the hotel and filed the pictures of this family.
It was a mother, her two children and a church volunteer who was ushering them to safety that morning.
And then there was a lot of debate as to, you know, whether it was appropriate to run a picture of four dead civilians.
The New York Times doesn't usually publish pictures of dead civilians, and nor would they publish faces.
And so eventually they decided to run with the picture.
And I really pushed for it because I was in the attack and I witnessed the run up and I knew it was deliberate.
It wasn't just sort of a...
A random attack.
And it turned out that the father and husband of the woman and children killed found out about his family's death from my photograph.
And so on the front page of The New York Times.
Well, he saw it first on Twitter.
And then eventually, you know, on the New York Times, but it was for him his first – he first learned about his family's death on Twitter and on social media and he recognized the luggage and the jackets and everything.
And we met with him a few days later, with Andrew Kramer, the New York Times bureau chief at the time.
Speaking of the documentary, one of the reasons you agreed to participate in the film is because you had seen several other films about war correspondents, and they were always about men and quote.
No one ever really got it right.
What did you want to correct in making this movie?
Well, I mean, look, no one ever got it right.
Maybe that's not fair to say, because obviously a documentary on a man like Jim Noctoway, the war photographer, was brilliant.
And Jim is brilliant.
I mean, he's an extraordinary war photographer.
But we're very different people.
And I think...
The image that most people have in their heads of war photographers is like Jim, stoic, strong.
He puts everything into his work and doesn't really share his personal life.
And I think that that is a majority.
I think Jim represents a majority of people who do the work that I do.
But I guess when I said no one ever gets it right, it's more like We're not all like that, you know, and I rarely see the picture of a woman depicted in that role as a war photographer.
And so I really wanted to show a different version.
There's a moment in the film where we see you in.
Somalia, Panama and the Darien Gap, where you're working to tell these urgent stories, to show us in vivid photographic detail the cost of conflict, while also fielding a typical call from your family back home.
I want to play a clip from that moment.
In it, your husband Paul speaks first.
It's the length of assignments.
That's always been the challenge in our relationship.
If it's one week, two weeks, it's not really a big deal.
But when it gets longer, over three weeks is always... things tend to unravel at home.
In my heart, all I want to be doing is shooting.
It's frustrating.
I'm constantly tortured, like I'm not in the right place.
But I come back.
I'm supposed to be really happy and I feel like I should be there and I feel like a bad journalist because I'm not.
My head is always where I'm not.
Hi, Lucas.
Why are you coming back?
Oh, like 10 days.
I know, my love.
It's the compromise, right?
She wants to do all of the things and be at home as well, and it's just not possible.
Everything has gotten delayed.
I may not get home till Saturday.
I suck as a parent.
I suck as a journalist.
I'm always compromising.
I can't do it.
I'll switch with someone.
That's rough.
Hearing that clip now...
How did it play to you?
Well, I mean it plays absolutely like our lives.
I mean.
The thing is, this is a constant negotiation and a constant give and take in our lives, and Paul and I have those conversations routinely because, What you know, I try to line up these stories.
What happens in most of the places I cover is that they are extremely hard to access.
So it's not like you can just fly into the heart of a war and, and you know, shoot for 10 days and leave like often it takes me days, if not a week, to actually get to a story.
And then I have to work, and so you know, a lot of that is I'll sign up to be the mystery reader at school and I go and read to Alfred's class and then I have to cancel because I get stuck in the Darien Gap.
Or everyone always says do you FaceTime with your kids when you're gone?
And actually I find it almost harder on them, because then they're just reminded of the fact that I'm not there.
And so you know.
It's just so.
There's so much packed into that clip that you played, because it's stuff I've been grappling with since I became a parent.
And It kills me that my kids don't have just a normal mother who can be present all the time, and that's why I really didn't think I would ever have children, because I just didn't think this profession would allow me the ability to sort of be able to stop and have kids.
And it wasn't until I met Paul And Paul said you know, I will be the full-time parent and you can continue doing your work.
So it was sort of like our prenup, you know, it's like, I don't want money.
I want my freedom and I want my time to be able to work.
That's all I wanted out of, you know, my life.
Did he sign the photojournalist prenup?
Yeah.
Well, he did and that he married me.
And I think he knew that when he met me, I was exactly the same.
So, you know, people don't change that much.
And so I think he he got that.
You say in the film that.
Raising kids is harder than war, which is a great one line joke.
But is any of that bit true for you?
Yeah, it is true for me, actually.
I think people are so stunned that I actually said that out loud, but I mean it.
You know, having kids is one of, of course, the greatest gifts in life, but it's also one of the hardest things I've ever done, you know, because I have these two sons who rely on me.
You can't just sort of turn them off when you need some time.
You need...
It's a lot of work and it's a lot of emotion.
I have to be dedicated when I'm home to whatever they need.
And that's what parenting is.
But I think for you know, for any working parent, we have so much time and so much on our minds that we bring home.
And so it's very hard.
When I'm in a war zone –
And that's all I'm doing.
It's like I know how to navigate my work.
I go in.
I make calculations about the danger.
I photograph.
I go back to the hotel.
I file.
I try not to get hit in a missile strike.
I go to the shelter when I have to.
It's very kind of, you know, I know the drill.
But with kids, it's like.
I can't control when their emotions arise or when their needs arise.
And it's a full-time thing.
And it's very hard to do – to have a full-time job as a parent when I'm juggling.
Another job essentially, or another life.
In your memoir.
It's What I Do.
You write when I return home and rationally consider the risks, the choices are difficult.
But when I'm doing my work, I'm alive.
So when you're back home, how do you grapple with that?
You're right.
I mean, you're absolutely right.
I think when I'm anywhere but behind the viewfinder of my camera. actually taking photographs.
I have a million things in my mind.
I have a million things I want to be doing.
I have a million things I am doing.
And I'm very kind of scattered and stressed and whatever.
And the place where it all comes together and I just focus and I am totally 100 percent present is when I'm working.
I don't know how to describe that when I'm home.
I'm happy to be home.
I'm happy to be with my family, but I have one eye on the television.
What is the story I should be covering next?
I'm spread very thin, but it is true that When I start to actually go out to take photos and I'm in a situation where I'm interviewing someone, capturing their story, making pictures, I feel overwhelmed. most like myself, like where I need to be.
And That's a hard thing to say out loud because most people will be like well, that makes you a horrible mother and that makes you like a.
You know, you should never say that out loud.
But that's just me.
And, you know, that is a reality.
Lindsay, I want to talk about how you arrived at doing all this work in the first place, which I believe began back in 1996 working at the Buenos Aires Herald, where you were paid 10 a picture.
Yes.
At that point, did you know what photographer you wanted to be?
No, I absolutely did not know what kind of photographer I wanted to be.
I had been photographing since I was about 12 or 13.
My dad gave me a camera that a client of his had given to him.
And I started kind of teaching myself how to photograph.
I read all these books with Ansel Adams photos on the cover of how to photograph and aperture and f-stop and speed.
And so I was kind of teaching myself how to photograph.
But by the time I got to Argentina –
I had graduated from University of Wisconsin at Madison.
I had studied international relations and Italian, and I wanted to learn Spanish.
And so I went to Argentina.
And it was in Buenos Aires that I started becoming aware of photographs in the one could sort of marry photography and international relations.
And it was this revelation to me.
And it seems crazy, but actually I wasn't really aware that photojournalism as a profession existed.
And so I went into the English language newspaper and there were two men in kind of their 40s who would just chain smoke in the photo department and pull pictures off the AP wire.
And I went in and I just said like, can I have a job?
And they looked at me and they were like, first of all, go learn Spanish and come back.
And so I was like, okay.
And I already spoke Italian.
So I learned Spanish very, very quickly.
And I went back like, I don't know, a month or two later.
And I said, OK, like I learned Spanish.
Can I have a job?
And they were like, no.
And I just basically was relentless.
I just kept going in.
And finally they said, OK.
Well, hold on.
Hold on.
Why do you think you were so relentless?
Why did you keep badgering them?
Because I think I was in all that time.
I was like started looking at newspapers and magazines and exhibitions.
I went to a Salgado exhibit that kind of blew my mind.
And I think I realized like.
I could take photographs and tell stories with photographs.
And it was something that I didn't realize before.
To me, photography was like fine art or it was, you know –
Henri Cartier-Bresson, and it was, like you know, capture the decisive moment, or it was, you know, but it never was about telling stories and specifically about political issues, international relations.
And so it just seemed like OK, this is it.
This is this is for me.
But is the dog in this because you're the youngest of four growing up in Connecticut?
Like, where does that I mean, I wish I knew where the dogness came from.
I mean, I do not give up.
And it's like, yeah, it's probably because I'm the youngest of four sisters.
But it's a trait in me that has cursed me and it's blessed me because I just don't give up.
But anyway.
So I kept going into this photo department and the guys were just so sick of me that they were like look, Madonna is filming Evita at the Casa Rosada.
And if you can sneak on set and get a picture of Madonna, we'll give you a job.
So that was my big break.
I went to the set.
It was like early evening.
There were all these New York bouncers.
There was a perimeter around the set.
And, of course, I talked my way on.
I was like, if you let me in, I'm going to be famous one day.
I'm going to be a famous photographer.
The guys were like, okay, you're so pathetic.
We're just going to let you inside and good luck.
And so I went on to the press riser.
And I raised my little camera to my eye, and I only had a 50-millimeter lens.
And, of course, Madonna was like miles away.
And so I must have looked so exasperated because this guy, one of the journalists, one of the photographers on the press riser, had like a 600-millimeter lens.
It was on a tripod.
It looked like a Hubble telescope essentially.
And he looked at me and he goes hey kid, put your camera back on my lens and you could take a photo.
And I was so green.
I knew so little about photography that I didn't even realize I can put my Nikon camera back on the back of his giant lens.
And so he helped me.
And I did it.
And I took a photo and it was like of the balcony.
It wasn't even like Madonna, you know, it was the balcony.
And I ran.
I was so ignorant that I didn't even stay all night to get the picture.
And I ran back to the newsroom and I ended up getting the picture on the front page.
And it was a horrible picture, but I got a job.
And so I stayed like nine months.
And that's where I did my first like published works.
We're listening to Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Lindsay Adario speaking with our guest interviewer, Sam Fragoso.
Adario is the subject of the new documentary on Disney Plus called Love and War.
Sam is the host of the weekly interview podcast Talk Easy.
We'll hear more of the interview after a break.
I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.
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Come 2000 in your late 20s, you're working in Pakistan and Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So this is while US forces were backing Kurdish Peshmerga to fight against al-Ansar in northern Iraq.
And so I was working with a group of journalists international media based in northern Iraq, so Erbil and Sulaymaniyah.
And things were getting very, very tense.
It was like kind of moving up to when the invasion of Iraq was going to happen.
The U.S. forces were with Kurdish Peshmerga fighting Al-Ansar.
Fighting was kind of really picking up.
And it was near this area of Halabja in northern Iraq was working with a group of journalists and we heard that a lot of civilians started fleeing from the mountains where Al-Ansar had their stronghold.
So we went out there and We were all kind of parked along this road.
It was like a T-junction.
And people were fleeing from the mountains coming back.
And at one point it started getting pretty tense and a lot of the civilians were saying get out of here, get out of here.
It's not safe.
And, of course, the one lesson I've learned in all my many years covering war is you always have to listen to the locals.
And so I was standing with this other journalist and I suddenly got this like feeling in the pit of my stomach
And I ran back to the car and shut the door and a huge mortar came out. like very close to us.
And our entire car was thrust forward and our driver just took off and sped like very, very fast.
And we drove for about 10 minutes to a safer area.
And we got out and we stopped at a hospital.
And they were offloading the injured and there were people being treated and it was chaos.
And I had never had such a near-death experience.
And I was kind of in shock.
I'm just standing there.
And all I can think of is I just – I don't know if I can do this.
Like that was really scary.
And suddenly a taxi pulled up.
And this taxi driver said, is there a journalist around?
And I said, yeah.
And he said –
Can anyone help me?
I have the body of a journalist in my trunk.
And I sort of doubled over and I felt like I was going to throw up.
And I started sobbing and said like –
I just want to go home.
I don't want to end up in the back of a trunk one day.
I don't want to die doing this job.
I don't think I have it in me to be that brave.
You know there's a passage about this moment in your book.
It's What I Do at the end of chapter five.
And it has stayed with me since I first read it.
And I thought, if you're open to it, would you mind reading it for us?
Okay.
How did one transfer the body of a friend out of a country we all snuck into illegally, when there were no functioning embassies, no police, no diplomats and the only open border accessible from northern Iraq was Iran?
It seemed so obvious, but I didn't know that war meant death, that journalists might also get killed in the war.
I, you know...
It's so interesting to read that passage now, 20-plus years later, because of course war means death.
And when war – now we're in an era where journalists are routinely targeted and routinely killed.
I've lost friends and colleagues.
Journalism is equated with death now in a way that –
It wasn't when I first started out.
You know when I first started out?
Yeah, we put press and journalists and TV on our flak jackets and helmets and And our cars and on the top of our cars in case there was an airstrike to be had.
And, you know, it's ridiculous.
Now, of course, I read that passage and I was so naive.
Three weeks into the Libyan uprising in March of 2011, you and three other New York Times journalists are kidnapped and held hostage for six days by the Gaddafi army.
And in the book you write about this moment a month later, when you're back in New York, despite all that you had witnessed and endured yourself.
It was actually the passing of your colleagues Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, who were both killed in Libya that kind of open the floodgates, so to speak, like was it the loss of them, that tore down what you described in the book as your ever present guard.
Is that what did it?
Well, it was a combination of things.
I think what happens in these situations is like We survived.
Our driver, Mohammed, did not.
The New York Times sent a team back to Libya to see if they could help find him in one of the prisons, if he was still alive.
And essentially, he was never found alive.
And so we survived. assume he was executed or killed in crossfire in that moment.
And so there's like a survivor's guilt that happens or that I felt.
And so when Tim and Chris – were killed, basically I had been emailing with Tim and Chris.
I spent the New Year's Eve with them that year.
Both of them and a bunch of other photographers and Tim and I were emailing in the lead up to his arrival in Libya.
He was asking me all sorts of questions about what to bring and etc.
When we survived that horrific experience in Libya, where we should have been killed – I mean, we could have been killed I don't know how many different – on how many different occasions.
To be back in New York and to be sitting in a conference room with surrounded by a bunch of editors and to see on my BlackBerry at the time, to look over and see that they had been killed in Libya, as like the headline of an email.
I couldn't.
I couldn't hold myself together.
Everything sort of came crashing down on me.
And I think it was because in those moments, I asked myself those questions of like, Why?
Why did we survive and they didn't?
You know, why – who decides these things in life?
And there are no answers, of course, but it just felt like the proximity – my own proximity to death – became so clear in that moment.
Maybe I just tucked it aside and just thought okay, you know, like I tell myself every time I'm in a near-death experience, maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought it was.
I'm curious about the risks journalists face at this moment, because since you began 25 years ago, there's been a rise in kidnapping.
There's a rise in targeted killing of journalists, with few being held accountable for those killings.
The Committee to Protect Journalists 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists.
And this year, 121 journalists and media workers have already been killed.
And those are just the ones we know about.
Exactly.
Do you think the lack of culpability is the result of people believing less and less in the value of our largest media institutions?
I don't know.
I think they play off one another.
I think a few things are happening.
I think, yes, journalists are routinely killed and targeted with impunity.
I think that no one, very few people, are ever held accountable for killing journalists, although you been, obviously people like the Committee to Protect Journalists.
There are organizations that very you know, they take incredible, extraordinary measures to document every single death of a journalist and make people aware of the fact that this is a profession that is increasingly dangerous and I think, But I also think that the rhetoric of like fake news and, you know, the rhetoric against the truth and journalism itself also doesn't help the situation, you know.
So I think it's.
It comes from both sides.
I think that people take for granted the fact that they have news at their disposal, that there is a free press, that we are allowed to express ourselves.
And I think that's problematic right now because you know So.
You know, when you see journalists get targeted, the obvious casualty of that is truth.
That's photojournalist Lindsay Adario speaking with our guest contributor Sam Fragoso, who hosts his own podcast called Talk Easy.
Adario is the subject of a new documentary called Love and War.
We'll hear more of the interview after a break.
This is Fresh Air.
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We've spoken extensively about the risks involved with the job.
But I'm thinking about the consequences of continuing to do this work, as I know you will.
Because you say in the film, I've set it up so if something does happen to me, they have Paul.
And that really, I have to say, it kind of broke my heart because...
The way you've set it up.
In the film it plays as if you've created conditions, almost like a rehearsal for him and the kids of what life could be like, should you not be able to make it back.
Well, I mean how could I not?
I mean look at what I do for a living.
I mean, I'm constantly photographing people who are killed in war or people whose lives have been torn apart by war, and so –
Part of being a war correspondent is that we're always making contingency plans, and that is relevant to our own lives.
And I think I go into these assignments knowing how dangerous they are.
Obviously, some are less dangerous than others, but just driving a car in war zones is dangerous.
It's one of the most dangerous things we do.
And in fact, ironically, the only time I've been injured to date was in a car accident.
And so I think, yes, that line, you know, when I say that, I mean it.
And I'm not – it's painful for me to say and it's painful, I'm sure.
I think when I was watching the movie with Lucas, it was that line that was so hard –
Yeah.
I want to be here for my children and for my family.
But life is full of surprises and anything can happen, not only in war but anywhere.
And I think we have to always, you know –
Have contingency plans in life and think of our children, what happens if.
And that's important.
Have you seen the documentary Salt of the Earth?
No, the Salgado?
Yeah, no, not yet.
I have it on my... Okay.
Yeah.
There's a part I want to just quote for you.
Like well, around the same time that you walked into that exhibit that you mentioned earlier, in the mid-90s, Sebastiao Salgado said after years of photographing famine, war and genocide in Africa and Europe, quote I did not believe in anything.
I did not believe in the salvation of the human race.
Our history is a history of war.
It is an endless story.
We should see these images to see how terrible our species is.
Now, he passed away earlier this year and I know he's been a major influence on your work and your career.
And the photos you're trying to produce, work that affects policy, that captures the repercussions of those policies, the fallout.
But when you hear that, like, but by the time he was at the tail end of his career...
He was weighed down to the point where he didn't see the point of what he was doing.
He did not have any hope left.
How does that quote sit with you in 2025?
You know, I...
I still have hope.
I really do.
I still think images can move people, can educate people, can enlighten people, can –
Flip misconceptions can bridge people.
I still believe in photojournalism and I still – even though I've seen so many horrific – things and I've seen evil, and I've seen things that I just never thought a human being would be capable of, and I've heard testimonies and I still see extraordinary beauty and generosity, and resilience, and love and hope.
And I think so long as the people I'm photographing have that spirit, I will have that spirit.
And so I'm not at that point.
I hope I don't get to that point.
No one ever knows.
I mean I can't predict how I'll feel in a year, in five years, in ten years.
I have no idea.
But I still have hope and belief in photojournalism.
At the moment, you're with your family back home in London, right?
Yes.
Do you know where you're headed next?
I'm looking at Sudan.
And then I'm also looking at some stories in the United States.
And have you had that conversation with your family yet about the next assignment?
No, I have not, because I've been on the sort of – I've been out promoting the documentary and doing interviews for a few months and I think Alfred – my younger, my six year old, he's gotten used to having me around, and so has Lucas.
And I think it's harder when I've been kind of in and out and home than when I'm just gone for a long time at once.
So I haven't had that conversation yet, primarily because I just came home from a three-week trip and I'm just hesitant to say I'm gonna leave again And I'm going to Sudan.
So I'm waiting for the right time.
It never feels like the right time.
But there are hard conversations when I have to say I'm leaving.
How do you do it?
Oh, I wait for what feels like the right moment and I just try and be strong and say I'll be back really soon and it's a quick trip and you know everything will be fine and you're with daddy and you know yeah.
When you tell your mother, what do you think she'll say and how do you think she'll say it?
My mother?
She'll say, when are you going to stop?
Why do you have to go?
She's going to say, do you really have to go?
Can't you just stop already?
And then she'll giggle and then she'll say, you know, I understand.
She says it, like, you know.
Yeah.
Lindsay Adario, thank you for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
That was photojournalist Lindsay Adario speaking with our guest interviewer, Sam Fragoso.
Adario is the subject of a new documentary called Love and War.
It's streaming on Disney+.
Sam is the creator and host of the weekly interview podcast, Talk Easy.
New episodes drop on Sundays.
Coming up.
Maureen Corrigan reviews Ann Packer's new novel about a marriage in which the husband becomes the wife's caregiver.
That's after a short break.
This is Fresh Air.
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Our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, has a review of a new novel that she says should spark all sorts of lively conversations about end-of-life care and what the living owe the dying.
It's by Ann Packer, and it's called Some Bright Nowhere.
Is there anything you wouldn't do for a loved one if they were dying?
That's a morbid question for sure, but the dilemma at the center of Some Bright Nowhere Ann Packer's new novel makes a reader wonder about such things.
Packer's main characters, Claire and Elliot, are a couple in their 60s who've been married for almost four decades.
For the past eight years, Claire has been battling cancer and Elliot has been a diligent caretaker.
Caretaking, he reflects, is a daily amalgam of helping, soothing driving phoning cooking listening tending waiting learning remembering deciding, foregoing a lot of foregoing.
When the novel opens, Claire and Elliot have just walked out of their final appointment with Claire's oncologist.
Final because there's nothing more to be done.
The couple's two adult children visit, as do Claire's longtime close friends, Michelle and Holly, who shower her with self-care presents, flannel PJs, fancy lotions and manicures, causing Claire to joke about the death spa she's comfortably ensconced in.
Then one day when the couple is alone, Claire makes a request to her husband.
Here are snippets from that fateful conversation.
I'd like them to be here with me, Claire says.
Them?
Holly and Michelle.
What I mean is, I'd like them to take care of me.
Okay, Elliot hesitated.
The more the merrier.
Elliot. instead of you.
Numb dismayed, Elliot agrees to pack up because he loves his wife and, it turns out, her deepest wish is that he leave the house.
We're seeing a lot of literary fiction these days about the long goodbyes of aging and terminal illness.
I'm thinking of recent novels by Richard Ford, Stuart O'Nan, Elizabeth Strout, and now Ann Packer.
Part of the reason surely, for this uptick in end-of-days dramas is that many of our novelists and their longtime readers are growing old in tandem.
Packer's best-known novel, The Dive from Clausen's Pier, was published in 2002.
It told the story of a young woman who'd been thinking of breaking up with her fiancé, but then feels obligated to stay after he's paralyzed in a diving accident.
Hacker invested that contrived situation with emotional authenticity.
She pulls off the same magic trick in Some Bright Nowhere.
As a writer, she's deeply alert to the currents of thoughts and feelings that run through even a seconds-long conversation.
Take this moment right after Claire has made her peculiar request and shortly before Elliot agrees to grant it.
Claire says to Elliot, Can I ask you a question?
How mad are you?
Elliot said he wasn't mad, which was true.
He was sad, confused, a little embarrassed, but not mad.
I should have already asked this, Elliot said, but would I be able to come visit?
And Claire burst into tears, unable in that moment to bear the rip.
She clearly felt she'd torn in his self-confidence.
Perhaps one reason Claire wants Elliot to vacate the house is that he needs to be needed, as we all do.
And as she lay dying, Claire doesn't want to take care of him emotionally.
Her friends are easier to be with.
They'll survive her death.
She isn't their whole world.
Another possible explanation for Claire's strange wish is her memory of being part of a crew of women who tended to a friend in her last days.
That friend's house, she tells Elliot, was filled with female energy, chatter, tears, laughter.
Listening to Claire describe her gynocentric model for a good death, Elliot is bewildered.
He thinks to himself that it was as if Claire were speaking a foreign language, as if she'd lived a secret life.
He was only now discovering secret and preferred
But he couldn't say that.
Some Bright Nowhere is about the things we can't say and don't know about each other, as well as the collateral damage that a terminal disease can inflict on even the best of relationships.
It's an odd, beautiful, and absorbing little novel about one of the biggest subjects of them all.
Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University.
She reviewed Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer.
Tomorrow, on Fresh Air, we'll talk about President Trump's strikes on alleged Venezuelan narco terrorists in boats he claims are transporting drugs.
My guest will be Washington Post reporter Alex Horton.
He broke the story of how the first targeted boat had a second strike intended to kill two survivors in the water, in compliance with Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth's order to kill the entire crew.
I hope you'll join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.
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