TRAVELERS ALONG THE WAY by Aminah Mae Safi

I love Aminah Mae Safi’s contemporary novels, which I featured here, here and here. TRAVELERS ALONG THE WAY: A ROBIN HOOD REMIX is her first fantasy adventure story. Have a look:

Jerusalem, 1192. The Third Crusade rages on. Rahma al-Hud loyally followed her elder sister Zeena into the war over the Holy Land, but now that the Faranji invaders have gotten reinforcements from Richard the Lionheart, all she wants to do is get herself and her sister home alive.

But Zeena, a soldier of honor at heart, refuses to give up the fight while Jerusalem remains in danger of falling back into the hands of the false Queen Isabella. And so, Rahma has no choice but to take on one final mission with her sister.

On their journey to Jerusalem, Rahma and Zeena come across a motley collection of fellow travelers—including a kind-hearted Mongolian warrior, an eccentric Andalusian scientist, a frustratingly handsome spy with a connection to Rahma’s childhood, and an unfortunate English chaplain abandoned behind enemy lines. The teens all find solace, purpose and camaraderie—as well as a healthy bit of mischief—in each other’s company.

But their travels soon bring them into the orbit of Queen Isabella herself, whose plans to re-seize power in Jerusalem would only guarantee further war and strife in the Holy Land for years to come. And so it falls to the merry band of misfits to use every scrap of cunning and wit (and not a small amount of thievery) to foil the usurper queen and perhaps finally restore peace to the land.

In our last interview, you said you’d been “hankering recently for a good adventure story.” Did you find one? And if so, can you share it with us?

Is it over the top if I say I forgot I’d said this but then went out and wrote one? Because that was the core of writing TRAVELERS ALONG THE WAY— writing a story that was at it’s heart just a fun, swashbuckling adventure story.

And sometimes, if you want to read the story you want, you write it yourself instead! TRAVELERS ALONG THE WAY also offers heists, found family, and gender re-imaginings. How did you know this was a story you needed to write?

I actually always credit my editor, Emily Settle over at Feiwel and Friends for the concept. She was putting together this entire Classics Remixed series and she asked if I wanted to write a remix of Robin Hood but from the other side of the Third Crusade. My brain lit up light galaxy brain as soon as I read that email. I didn’t know I needed to write the story until she asked if I’d be interested. And then I knew that it had to be me and that I did have to tell that story. So that was Emily’s great gift to me. The delight of finding a story so deep in my core, I hadn’t even noticed that it had been lying in wait until someone woke the tale up. Great editors can do that for you and it’s never not a joy and never not a gift.

Indeed! What is something you’re looking most forward to in the coming year?

Seeing family as travel starts to become more possible. How funny to write a tale of longing for home and adventure and travel when those were all the things I longed to do and all the people I longed to see.

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