Gwen Florio's "Silent Hearts"

Gwen Florio grew up in a 250-year-old brick farmhouse on a wildlife refuge in Delaware and now lives in Montana. Currently the city editor for the Missoulian, Florio has reported on the Columbine High School shooting and from conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. In 2013, Montana, her first novel in the Lola Wicks detective series, won the High Plains Book Award and the Pinckley Prize for debut crime fiction.

Here Florio dreamcasts an adaptation of her latest novel, Silent Hearts:

Such fun to think about this. One of the things I’d wish most for Silent Hearts: The Movie is that a film about Muslim characters will actually feature Muslim actors – Ayesha Omar or Nazanin Boniadi for Farida, say, or Azita Ghanizada as Khurshid. Fawad Khan would make an appropriately handsome Gul (it’s possible I watched several YouTube clips just to be sure).

As for my Americans, some of Leonardo DiCaprio’s roles feature the hard, controlling persona I imagine Martin to have. And, where I wrote the character of Liv as a blond Scandinavian from Minnesota, Maggie Gyllenhaal manages to look both wounded, as Liv starts off, and tough, as she becomes.

I also hope that whomever makes the film would convey empathy for Afghanistan and its people. Too often, it’s the scary backdrop for bad things happening to Americans there without acknowledging the decades of terrifying things happening to the Afghan people. And I hope they leave in a scene featuring Afghanistan’s wonderful food. Oh, and a couple of shots of what I thought of as the “big-butt sheep.” No matter how bad a day I had there, the sight of one of those sheep trotting past, fat pads wobbling wildly, would make me laugh.

Visit Gwen Florio's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Gwen Florio & Nell.

--Marshal Zeringue