Wed. Jan. 27  

Sadie Jones set her second novel “Small Wars” amidst the conflict in Cyprus, 1956, when the British, attempting to hold onto bits of its crumbling empire, battled the rebels called EOKA. If you, like me, thought: “What? Huh? Did I ever learn about this? Did I forget” … don’t feel embarrassed if the answer is “No I didn’t know a thing about this one.”
   That, says Jones, was her point of view before she embarked upon the two-a-half years research-writing process for her book. [Jones reads at Brookline Booksmith Wed. Jan. 27 at 7.]

  “I knew nothing,” she says on the phone from England. “I knew Cyprus was there and it was Greek and people go on holiday there. I didn’t know anything else. I was doing research, preoccupied with the military and soldier’s experience. I couldn’t let the protagonist of the last book [‘The Outcast’] go. In looking that up, I stumbled upon Cyprus and I forgot about character in last book. I looked on Google Earth and the way you fly in. The landscape was so reminiscent of Afghanistan, this arid place with people battling over it in this dessert.”
   “Most people of my generation haven’t heard of it all it,” she adds, of the Cyprus conflict. The island is where her protagonists Hal and his wife Clara and their two children are stationed. “I thought I could use it to tell the story about all wars, the modern wars we are fighting now. I used it quite ruthlessly for my own end. Of course, I had to research it quite thoroughly.”
   That meant getting details like bullets, weapons and uniforms down.
   “I plunge into my research,” Jones says, “but I try not to put to much research on the page. It’s kind of like method acting; you have to know everything but show as little as possible. I had a retired solider I was e-mailing a lot and check the details with him.”
    And she talked to others had who fought in wars. “I was rather liberal, left-wing,” she says. “I was concerned I was hiding behind the uniform of these characters. I was relieved speaking to soldiers, to find they have this beautiful, moral standards. They want to be fighting good wars. They wanted to  give completely of themselves. They were a lot more honorable than I’d given them credit for.”
    By setting this conflict in Cyprus 44 years ago, it also meant that, in sharp contrast to modern deployments, a family moved together to the war zone. The husband would go do his job; the wife tended the family, nursed the sick kids. Tension, of all kinds, arose. The “Small Wars” referred to in the title means the one Britain fought with the rebels and the one Hal and Clara themselves fight as their marriage falters.
    “It’s a crucible of intimacy,” says Jones. “Having the families there allowed that intensity. Its a microcosm to me, of all men and women, and the impossibility of intimacy when people are traumatized that way when you’re doing those things, I was interested in examining that.”
    Something happens … and Hal eventually goes AWOL.
    Of his decision, his mixed emotions, which he can’t quite explain to the military brass, Jones says, “It comes down to loyalty. Soldiers have to have that trust in people above and responsibility for people below. When those things are taken away, that’s when they find it mentally the hardest.”
    So, when Hal deserts … “In a way, he’s falling n his sword. He doesn’t allow himself the luxury of a defense. He’s ashamed of his conscience. It’s his greatest tragedy.He doesn’t want to betray the army. I found that sad and enraging. I wanted to let him off the hook, have him take some stand, but it would have been sentimental and dishonest.”
   Jones knew the ending of the book before she began, but “getting there was often muddled. I work on the structure rigorously and I worked ont the turning points. Then, when I start writing and get to know the characters better, [sometimes I find] those decisions are phony and I have to unravel them. I find a lot of falling apart, a lot of discarded stuff where I took it different ways.
    "Small Wars” is, of course, a look at government vs. terrorists, right vs. wrong. But how unclear can that be? You know, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, recently kicked up again, being a persistent example of our era.”
     “Being able to set it in the past freed me,” Jones says. “It gives a fresh picture. It was their island. We don’t have the prejudices we’re familiar with. It was an enjoyable thing to manipulate. Everybody thinks they’re on the side of right and god’s on their side. It wears us down.”
     There’s a key passage, fairly early in the book, where Jones steps back to write this: “History doesn’t end. Places that are fought over are always fought over, and will always be fought over, and there will never be an end to it, and each conflict is just adding to the heap of conflicts that no one can remember starting and non on will ever, ever finish.”
    That sums up the eternal conflict of war as well as anything I’ve read.
    “I’m glad you liked it,” Jones says. “That was a very emotional, vulnerable bit of writing. It hurts so much that that’s true. It’s sort of a naïve truth. I wanted to look at the big picture and do that omniscient thing. You feel dangerous doing it, but I felt the story deserved a broad spectrum [to include] the machinations of much larger geopolitical pictures.”

The readings are free.

279 Harvard St., Brookline, 617-566-6660 www.brooklinebooksmith.com