Operation Black Horse follows a gifted surgeon who uncovers a deadly secret behind humanity’s salvation, forcing her into a dangerous struggle for survival amid global famine, political conflict, and forbidden love. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

To understand the evolution of this novel, you have to know that the first draft was written in 2015. At the time, I’d been an English and Political Science undergrad at Villanova University, and had just finished reading Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal a few months earlier. I was absolutely floored by the haunting imagery in his writing—inspired by his unique perspective as a surgeon dealing with death on a daily basis. It made me want to explore the idea of a novel based on a doctor dealing with her own insecurities about life and death. I decided to peel back the layers of a surgeon working during a global crisis. I wanted readers to experience for themselves the immense pressure placed on medical staff to perform miracles in dire situations. Dr. Caitlyn Svendsen was born during this time frame. Being a doctor in a dystopian future raised the stakes for this novel, allowing me to push Caitlyn’s ethics to its limits. People are programmed to think that doctors are infallible beings, trained to do the impossible. I wanted Caitlyn to be the kind of character that reminds all of us that doctors are mere mortals, plagued with the same moral dilemmas and character weaknesses as their patients. 

It wasn’t until much later that I decided Caitlyn’s perfect counterpart was a soldier—perhaps the only other profession on the planet that deals with the trauma of life and death to the same extent that doctors do. Spetsnaz Commander Kaleb Volkov is the most morally gray, dynamic character I have ever created. Learning about the training and mindset of Russian special operators took months of painstaking research. Even now, I’m still learning about Russia’s military technology and command structure as warfare in general continues to evolve at a breakneck pace. 

Big Agriculture and its impact on the environment was on my mind when I came up with the idea for Operation Black Horse. I had just finished an archaeology dig in Ecuador a summer earlier, where the cash crop is roses. Fun fact—nearly one quarter of all roses sold in America are grown in Ecuador. Although I was in the Andes to work on an Incan site, battling altitude sickness and digging through layers of ancient earth at an agonizingly slow pace, I could not help but notice that rose plantations were everywhere. After a few weeks of talking to researchers and locals, I was absolutely floored by the environmental and health impact of growing roses. Who knew that something so beautiful could be so deadly? Poison, it seemed, was everywhere—in the water, in the soil, and seeping into the very blood and bones of the locals who worked inside the greenhouses. So many of them were sick without knowing why—lung and skin cancer were especially rampant, for obvious reasons. Many of the workers were fumigated right alongside the roses with no protective gear whatsoever. Pesticides have a nasty habit of creating stunning flowers while destroying everything else they touch. Unsurprisingly, I never bought another rose again.

What was the most challenging part of creating a future in which famine has reshaped nearly every aspect of society?

THE RESEARCH. I wanted this novel to be as realistic as possible, and to have this chilling, dystopian near-future grow naturally out of the past and present that we are already familiar with. That meant being as historically accurate as possible, while also imagining the kind of political dynamics that we might see in the future based on current international relations. I had to try to imagine how famine would change nations on a mirco and macro level. That meant this book could have become nearly overwhelming in its scope. Caitlyn and Kaleb helped to center this future, allowing me to really dig in on a micro-level, shedding light on how America and Russia might navigate a global famine based on how they have reacted to challenges in the past. The military research was definitely the most daunting. Unsurprisingly, Russia does not broadcast its military projects and weapons research. It took a lot of digging to be as accurate as possible.

Caitlyn and Kaleb begin from opposite sides of a conflict, and trust is almost impossible between them. What did you want their relationship to say about trust in a world shaped by war?

Caitlyn and Kaleb’s relationship is supposed to show us that war between nations does not mean that the civilians of those nations are incapable of thinking for themselves or breaking from their governments’ political interests in order to do the right thing. I wanted to highlight that trust can be built by standing strong in one’s personal moral compass, even if that means defying orders. Kaleb is able to gain Caitlyn’s trust not because he saves her life, but because he proves to her that he sees her as a person, not as a pawn for his government to use. Kaleb watches the way Caitlyn is willing to sacrifice pieces of herself to save other people. His trust is born of respect, not just for her intelligence and determination to expose the truth, but her empathy as well.

If you could ask readers to think about one real-world issue after finishing the novel, what would you want it to be? 

Pesticides are a HUGE topic across the nation right now, especially in the Midwest, where commercial farming is widespread. We now know how insidious they are: impacting our water, food, animals and ecosystem. It’s not just the Midwest dealing with the fallout. My hometown in California is investigating a cancer cluster. Those of us who grew up there know that it is tied to pesticides that are excessively sprayed on our golf courses and residential areas. We have been complaining for years about the overuse of pesticides without community approval. And now we are seeing dire consequences of not fighting harder. We have to ask the question: is it worth it? Is it worth the health of our children, who are developing rare cancers at an alarming rate? Is it worth the health of our pets who are dying young and younger, also from aggressive cancers? It’s a very controversial topic, but we can no longer ignore the poison that is literally on our front doorstep, contaminating our food supply and our backyards. Operation Black Horse mirrors this issue we watch Caitlyn struggle to expose the truth as corporate and government interests attempt to silence her. I want people to think about what they would be willing to sacrifice to fight for the truth and save the ones they love.

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