Love and death are boon companions to writers of all stripes. But it is how human beings cope with grief and loss that author Lamar Herrin finds intriguing. Guided by a sublime moral compass, he works that territory with consummate skill in his latest novel, "House of the Deaf."

The Cornell professor of English also offers a lighter treatment of his marriage and what he has come to regard as his adopted country in the upcoming memoir "Romancing Spain."

In "House of the Deaf" (Unbridled Books, November 2005), Herrin contemplates the impact of a death on a family – a daughter who is killed in Madrid by a car bomb planted by Basque nationalists targeting a Spanish Civil Guard headquarters. The girl's father (a divorced Kentuckian named Ben Williamson) travels to Spain essentially to seek revenge for his daughter's death. A second daughter follows her father into a country as haunting as it is beguiling and lethal.

As with all good books, reading "House of the Deaf" is a learning experience.

Herrin handles his study of personal loss, political violence and revenge with nuanced depth of understanding that leaves the reader a little bit wiser. Previously, in "The Lies Boys Tell" (1992), Herrin examined the effects of a father's death on his family; in "The Unwritten Chronicles of Robert E. Lee" (1990), he explored the impact of Stonewall Jackson's ironic death on the Confederate general.

However, "House of the Deaf" is something of a departure. The novel grew, partly, out of Herrin's experience as director of Cornell's Study Abroad Program in Madrid in the early 1990s.

"I did my jogging around the Parque Santander – a number of my students did," Herrin said. "Three or four years later, an American man running around that same park was killed by a car bomb planted by the Basque nationalist organization. I asked myself: What if that had been one of my students? How would I answer to the parents of that student?"

Or, how would a father respond to the death of, say, a daughter killed by a terrorist act in a foreign country? Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Herrin revisited the subject, and the result is "House of the Deaf," which Publisher's Weekly has described as a "subtle, suspenseful treatment of a personal response to terrorism."

Spain is indeed personal for Herrin – he fell in love with his wife there and fell in love with the country, as well. This summer, readers will get to see an entirely different take on Quixote country in Herrin's memoir, "Romancing Spain" (Unbridled Books, June 2006). Herrin describes it as a "love song to his wife and to the country where they met."

"Romancing Spain" was written prior to "House of the Deaf," and Herrin considers them companion pieces.

"I don't want people to think what I expressed in 'House of the Deaf' are my only feelings about Spain, and I was happy when the publisher agreed to follow the novel with the memoir," Herrin said.

"Romancing Spain" moves from the past to present as the couple sets out on a search "for the perfect pueblo" – or small village – in southern Spain. It is a story of young lovers whose unorthodox courtship in the early 1970s is cast against the wiles of Franco's almost medievalist state and the fickle authorities of the Roman Catholic Church and is set in a country as charming as it is brooding and mysterious.

The couple succeeds in their quest for marriage. As for their search to discover the perfect pueblo? Well, you'll just have to find out for yourself.