New Books In Literature

Today I’m speaking with author Christina Adams, and Adams has something of a surprising muse: camels. That’s right, camels. One hump, two humps, crossing the Egyptian desert or the Siberian tundra. Adams’ muse is surprising, because she lives, like many of us, in North America—Orange County, California, to be exact. That’s not the place where you’d expect someone to develop a deep fascination and a deep respect for camels. And yet this improbability makes Adams’ new book Camel Crazy (New World Library, 2019) all the more intriguing, as she becomes, by turns, a smuggler, an activist, a scientist, a world traveler, and, in the end, an advocate, not just for camels, but for our public health, our environment, and for her son. He’s a child on the autistic spectrum, and Adam’s love for him becomes a beautiful and passionate engine that ultimately leads her to start a movement that may just transform how we see camels and how we see and treat autism. Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University.