Diane Hammond's "Friday's Harbor"

{[['']]}

Diane Hammond is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Seeing Stars, Hannah's Dream, Going to Bend, and Homesick Creek. She served as a spokesperson for the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and the Oregon Coast Aquarium and currently lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her husband and their corgis.

Here Hammond dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Friday's Harbor:

I love playing this game! Truman Levy, the business manager-turned-director of the Max L. Biedelman Zoo, was Jason Bateman from the time moment he appeared in my imagination. The actor has that sweet, boyish, clear-eyed face that, for me, characterizes Truman—not a showy look, but one you could look at fondly for a lifetime. My agents are sick of hearing about what a great Truman he’d make. They put it down to a crush. So be it.

Ivy Levy would definitely be played Kathy Bates—a woman with a strong presence. Not a pleaser; a person of very strong opinions, who doesn’t mind sharing them with the people around her, even those who don’t necessarily want to hear them.

I find it odd that I don’t have an actor in mind to play Libertine or Gabriel, though both are key characters in Friday’s Harbor. It’s not that I can’t see both characters very clearly; it’s just that I haven’t met the actors who might embody them. I find this especially odd, since Gabriel is partly based on my husband; yet, he doesn’t look anything like my husband. He reminds me of a Chilean friend with whom I shared a house decades ago. Libertine is mousey-headed, as I described her in Friday’s Harbor, pale and grey-haired and pink-nosed and self deprecating.

And then there’s Friday himself, the killer whale at the heart of Friday’s Harbor. In almost every way, he is Keiko, the star of the movie Free Willy.

As for other characters: Sam Brown is and always has been Morgan Freeman; Neva used to be a younger Julianne Moore but now she’s Amy Adams; Winslow is a younger Angus T. Jones.

See? Fun!

Learn more about the book and author at Diane Hammond's website and follow her on Facebook.

The Page 69 Test:  Hannah’s Dream.

The Page 69 Test: Seeing Stars.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Diane Hammond & Petey and Haagen.

The Page 69 Test: Friday's Harbor.

--Marshal Zeringue