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Christine M. Whitehead


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Topics of conversation:

  • In-depth dialogue about endearing main characters Archer and Connor.
  • How Christine's 25 year history practicing divorce law informs the story and its themes of healing, second chances, and choices.
  • Tips and personal experiences with publishing a first novel.
  • Christine's passion for horses and dogs, talks about the incredible healing capacity of these animals and how they enrich the lives of humans.
  • Hemmingway, future projects, writing, upcoming book conferences, and more!

Christine M. Whitehead has always been interested in how people cope with heartbreak.  Her own pain started early.  When she was seven, her parents died five months apart of unrelated causes.  A bitter custody battle pitted Christine's maternal grandparents against my paternal aunts.  Within the space of six weeks, she and her sister were carted off with her aunts to a strange land called Connecticut. While her aunts and uncle were loving people, filled with the best intentions, her uncle had a long-standing drinking problem which created family secrets and dark corners. 

From anorexia, to obsessive achievement at Smith College, to maintaining maximum defenses against close encounters of any variety, Christine careened gently through her twenties and thirties, ultimately finding her own serenity in her divorce law practice, in her writing and in her animals. Christine presently lives on a farm outside Hartford, CT in a 1765 colonial home with her two dogs, my two horses, and her significant other.

Tell Me When It Hurts

Christine M. Whitehead
Hadley Press (2009)
ISBN 9780982294604


Synopsis: ARCHER LOH has the world on a string.  At twenty-one, she is a magna cum laude graduate of Smith College, has a super boyfriend, and is a world-class equestrienne. Accepted at Columbia Law School, she defers attendance for a year to work for the Justice Department in Washington D.C. where her boss, Peter Bennett, soon recruits her for a secret group of assassins.  Despite moral reservations, Archer excels in the training, becoming her unit’s crack shooter.  After a year, however, she rejects a career in clandestine operations, unwilling to carry out the orders of faceless bureaucrats, and opts instead for marriage to Adam MacKenzie and a traditional legal career, keeping her secret to herself. 

Life seems ideal until her twelve-year-old daughter Annie is raped and murdered while on a school trip. Struggling for control, she throws herself into the prosecution effort only to be told the case is hopeless.  The eyewitness has disappeared and the DNA samples are tossed out due to a defective search warrant. Adam and Archer’s marriage collapses along with Archer’s emotional well-being.

Disillusioned, Archer stumbles on another way to get justice—private justice.  She hooks up with an international vigilante group, becoming its top marksman and carrying out retributions. Retreating to a cabin in the Berkshires, Archer turns from everything that used to matter to her: family, career, and horses.