FORT PIERCE FOLKS
The MYSTERY WRITER
When Kathy Kale gets angry,
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she does what she knows
best. She writes.
“The pen really is mightier
than the sword,” says Kale. “When
something makes me mad, I write
about it.”
In her birthplace of Toronto, Ont.,
Canada, in Kenya for 11 years and
in Fort Pierce for 13 more, Kale has
always written. The author of three
novels, working on her fourth, Kale
is a member of the Mystery Writers of
America. Her first novel, Black Death in
a New Age, won a Royal Palm Literary
Award in 2004.
The suspense novel asks: “Could a
plague pandemic strike again?”
While Kale and her family were
living in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, two
unusual things happened just days
apart. Terrorists bombed the American
Embassy in Nairobi and a plague broke
out in India. The combination of politics
and science sparked a fire in Kale.
Prior to moving to Kenya in 1991,
she and her husband, Bill Overholt,
lived in Washington, D.C., where he
was a State Department employee.
When a Dutch company offered him
a research job in Kenya, the couple
moved with their sons, 2-year-old
Will and 5-month-old Luc. Though
her husband wasn’t working in the
embassy, Kale felt a kinship with
those people.
Antibiotics have shut down pandemics
like the Black Death, a plague that
killed 25 million worldwide during
the 1300s. But plagues still occur.
Because plague bacteria are constantly
mutating, some forms are resistant to
antibiotics, making them ideal secret
weapons. What if terrorists used
plague bacteria instead of bombs to kill
their enemies? Kale wondered.
Angered by the 224 embassy deaths
that included 12 Americans, Kale
began writing a work of fiction based
on scientific fact. Surely no writer was
better equipped for the job. Holder of
a doctorate in toxicology and having
done postdoctoral research in infectious
immunology, Kale knew the science.
Plus, she’d heard of other countries that
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ED DRONDOSKI
Author Kathy Kale of White City calls her rural neighborhood “the perfect peaceful environment
for writing.”
BY L. L. ANGELL