Fresh off the success of her most recent novel, The Lost Daughter, Trinity’s Writer-in-Residence, Lucy Ferriss, earlier this year spent a month in Peshawar, Pakistan, conducting research for her next book, tentatively titled Honor.

Her experience in the Pakistani city of 2 million was the subject of a Common Hour Talk on Thursday, September 27, one in which she said some of her assumptions about that country’s culture – its rituals, taboos, and customs – were affirmed and some of which were debunked, but all of which will shape the writing of her book.

Her talk gave her audience insights into how a successful novelist goes about researching and writing a book, testing theories and hypotheses to see which ones have merit and which should be jettisoned. And her lecture also provided an insider’s look at a society that is largely enigmatic to most Americans.

Squash is what led Ferriss to Pakistan. “Trinity’s had that effect on me. I wanted, first, to write a story about a female jock, a coach, who possesses the particular confidence of coaches,” said Ferriss. “I wanted to challenge her in an unexpected way and see what would happen. Because I teach at Trinity, squash became my coach’s sport. And because squash can draw, as we all know, a veritable U.N. of players to a small college, the challenge lay somewhere in a clash of cultures.”

Read more about Ferriss’s Common Hour talk and new book  here.