Dietrich is an award-winning newspaper journalist whose news reporting, feature writings and column writing in the Daily Press has earned her a reputation for truthfulness and integrity. In her stories she often “deep-mines” the human mind, searching for answers to “What Makes Sammy Run?”

Having chronicled the human condition for decades in newspaper articles, Dietrich has also become a fiction writer. Her just released book of fiction, “The Hummingbird’s Cage,” is a tour de force of exploring why people do terrible things or kind things.

What makes us help or hurt each other? What is the soul? What is divine intervention?

“I’ve wanted to write novels since I was a little girl,” Dietrich said in a recent interview with the Lake Placid News and the Virginia Gazette. “In fact, I started to write my first book back in the sixth grade. But as I grew up I realized it’s hard to make a living writing fiction. I have also discovered there is a great deal of creativity in journalism, too.”

Nevertheless, her desire to be a novelist remained strong. “I did start a few novels over the years but never finished them for one reason or another. I started writing ‘The Hummingbird’s Cage’ about four years ago while I had a week off at Christmas. It just began to flow out of me and within five days I had 70 pages. I decided I was going to finish this one, and within a year I had.”

Dietrich explained that the book is an exploration of the human soul on many levels.

“I’ve always been drawn to story ideas that are based in reality but have a surreal edge to them or take a detour to magical realism,” she said.

Her method of writing includes taking elements of people she has known, mix or massage those elements to create characters as unique as possible.

“Like the character Jim, in my book, the abusive husband,” she noted. “As a journalist, I’ve interviewed many abused women over the years, and Jim is an amalgam of some of their abusers. Even down to the machete. And Joanna has traits of some of the abused women.”

She pointed out that to make a character real, a writer has to use every tool in the toolbox, her own experience or those of others, but imagination has a great deal to do with it, too. “When I start work on a book, I try to flesh out the main characters beforehand, giving them, childhoods, back stories, likes and dislikes, personalities and character traits, experiences, ways of speaking,” she said. “Much of it never even makes it to the final page. …You know you’ve done a good job when at some point your own character take over and start telling your story for you, saying or doing things that seems to come out of nowhere and surprises even you.”

I asked Dietrich what was her goal, by writing this book.

“I had several goals in writing ‘The Hummingbird’s Cage,'” she said. “The first was simply to prove to myself that I could, indeed, write a book. But it was also an exploration of spirituality and the dynamics of an abusive relationship. I wanted to write a book in which a woman finally gains the strength to fight her way through and emerge on the other side, battle scarred but free.”

Apparently, Dietrich achieved her goal. Laura Lane McNeal, author of Dollbaby, reviewing Dietrich’s book, wrote, “A beautiful story of one woman’s reinvetion, with a little touch of magic that will warm your heart.”

Menna Van Praag, author of “The House at the End of Hope Street,” concurs. “Brilliant and beautifully written,” she wrote. “Unflinching. Honest. Heartbreaking.”

Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg, Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from the Virginia Gazette. He is the author of “Report from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his selected columns.