In The Survivor, Nate Overbay — a divorced former solider suffering from PTSD and slowly dying from ALS — goes to an eleventh-floor bank, climbs out of the bathroom window onto the ledge, and gets ready to end it all.
From Hurwitz's Q & A with Marc Igler at Publishers Weekly:
Why did you create a main character with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?Visit Gregg Hurwitz's website and blog.
I thought there was terrific thriller potential in showing a man forced to step up, willing to do anything to protect those he loves, even as his body begins to betray him.
Do you have any personal connection with the disease?
When I was in college, one of my roommate’s aunts had ALS. And even though I wasn’t close to her, I remember the stories hitting me really hard. That age represented for me the height of invincibility—dumb and immortal—and this bit of reality shattered that notion of bulletproofness.
Your books are always laid with a foundation of research. Where do we see that in The Survivor?
The most fun piece of research I did was...[read on]
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--Marshal Zeringue