The Taking, a New Novel by Dona Masi, Explores What it’s Like to Confront the Unknown

By Dona Masi 

Human history is filled with stories about encounters with strange beings from other planets. In these stories, human beings are confronted by the unknown in their experiences with out-of-the-world creatures, and it changes their lives forever. At least this is true according to the legends of unidentified flying objects and alien abductions, stories which influenced my debut novel, The Taking. 

On one level, The Taking is about extraterrestrials that visit the earth. On another level, it’s about love, courage, and learning difficult truths. The heart of the story are the relationships between friends and family members who are swept up in the strange events that happen in a small town.

I can hardly remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated with UFO stories. I live and grew up in New Hampshire, and I used it as the setting for The Taking. New Hampshire is a hotspot for UFO activity. This includes one of the most famous and credible reports of an alien abduction – the Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction that allegedly happened in September 1961, while the Hills were driving from Canada through the White Mountains of New Hampshire to their home in Portsmouth. 

The Betty and Barney Hill abduction case is legendary, especially in New Hampshire. When I was growing up, my mother and I would talk about the Hill’s story and other stories about UFOs and aliens. My mom was very openminded about the existence of other intelligent life forms in the universe and extraterrestrials coming to our planet. She and I would even imagine chasing a UFO in our car for the adventure of it.

New Hampshire has many lonely wooded roads to search for UFOs. In The Taking, I wanted to show off the beauty of the rural landscape of New Hampshire. I made it an important part of the story. The deep woods outside the fictional town of Pangea are peaceful, but other times, they seem to be hiding something.

I found pleasure in writing about the natural environment and tying it to the ideas in the novel. The characters in The Taking are inspired by nature, but sometimes nature seems lonely and frightening to them. The natural world, the woods for example, elicits their deepest emotions. 

Some people might wonder if I’ve had an encounter with aliens or a UFO. The Taking isn’t based on my life experience or specific reports from other people. However, I do have a memory from my childhood of seeing a shiny object in the sky that was shaped like a cigar. I’m not sure that what I saw was a real alien spacecraft, but it made a lasting impression on me, and maybe that was when my deep curiosity about UFOs and aliens began.  

Years before I wrote The Taking, I wrote a research paper on UFO folklore for an anthropology course. I interviewed people who were associated with the UFO mystery, including experiencers, ufologists, and investigators. I heard incredible stories that sparked my imagination, and at that point, I think that I subconsciously began to think about writing The Taking.  

Then, I read Abductions: Human Encounters with Aliens by the Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, which gave me new ideas. Dr. Mack treated over ninety people in the 1980s and ‘90s who had symptoms of trauma and fear that seemed to be related to UFOs and abductions. All of their stories had similar eerie details. After several years of treating his patients, Mack went from being an openminded skeptic about UFOs and alien abductions to an outspoken believer in them. 

The book I read by Dr. Mack influenced me when I wrote The Taking. Some of the central ideas in the novel were inspired by what he wrote about the impact on the people who are abducted.    

How would being an abductee affect a person emotionally and psychologically? How would having someone close to you be abducted affect you? I explore those questions in The Taking.

I always wanted to depict the mystery of UFOs and aliens and not explain it. No one can explain it, and it hasn’t been proven that it’s real, at least not officially. But many people think there is overwhelming evidence that proves alien beings from other worlds or other dimensions have visited the earth.   

People sometimes ask me if they will be scared reading The Taking, and they might be when they read some parts of the book. The idea of being abducted by aliens probably frightens a lot of people, even if they don’t believe that aliens are real.

I have mixed emotions about knowing the truth. It would be incredible to have definitive proof that the phenomenon is real, but it would be petrifying also. Petrified is how I felt in my memory of the object that I saw one time.

My mom was braver than I am, and I think she would’ve wanted to learn the truth in her lifetime, And if the aliens were friendly, I think she would’ve liked to go up in their spaceship with them and fly away to the stars.  

The Taking, A Novel by Dona Masi, available in print and e-book at Amazon, Kindle, Barnes & Noble and many retailers where books are sold. Donamasi.com 

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Dona Masi is a writer and editor whose short fiction and articles are used in reading and writing assessments throughout the United States.

Her articles about the arts, the environment, and current affairs have appeared in Foster’s Daily Democrat, Seacoast Newspapers, and Portsmouth Press. She is also a playwright, and two of her plays were performed at the Provincetown Theater Company.

In her fiction, as in her playwriting, she loves bringing relatable characters to life and depicting them in all their heroic and flawed humanity. Her debut novel, The Taking, was inspired by her interest in UFO folklore and reports of alien encounters. With a B.A. in Liberal Studies from Vermont College, she earned her M.A. in Liberal Studies from the University of New Hampshire. She lives with her husband in Dover, New Hampshire.

THE TAKING

An unnatural silence and a feeling that you are all alone in the world. . .  John and his daughter, Vera, grieve the loss of Vera’s mother, who mysteriously disappeared when Vera was a baby. As John struggles to raise his troubled daughter, he dismisses connections between his wife’s disappearance and Vera’s bizarre dreams of otherworldly creatures.   But when he finds Vera unconscious, lying in a ring of scorched trees, he begins to believe that a mysterious outside force is controlling her fate and his.     The Taking is a suspenseful story depicting a loving but difficult relationship between a father and daughter, amid the strange events that underlie their everyday life in a small New England town.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing