Values and Writing: What's Your Stand?

Around 2003, when I began writing THE DARKNESS UNDER THE WATER, I was well aware that outrage was one of the emotions driving me. I love Vermont so much that it's sometimes an ache inside me -- and reading (and copyediting) the nonfiction book Breeding Better Vermonters shocked me: People were verbally tormented, physically operated on (with the same motives as Hitler's), and made to suffer for generations, right here in my home state. Somebody needed to tell the story. And my way of "getting into" a story has often been through fiction. So, I decided to write a book from the point of view of a Vermont teen in 1930, coming to realize both the risk and the value of her Abenaki heritage.

With THE SECRET ROOM, I wrestled with some other areas where I thought things could be made more fair: in the way the history of the Underground Railroad is reported in northern New England, and in the important area of girls and math, an area dear to me because I've always been "good" in math and science, and in fact took a college degree in chemistry (there were two of us "girls" among the eight chemistry majors in our senior year at Michigan State University in 1969).

Now it's almost time for COLD MIDNIGHT to be published (the eBook is already available; the printed book comes out November 3). And again, I've pinned to a part of history (underneath the murder-mystery plot) that involves two issues that matter to me: the injustice of America's first federal legislation that discriminated against an ethnic group -- the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 -- and the class structure that can make things rough for kids from working-class families.

My own family, when I was growing up, lived in a house about three-fourths down the slope of the mountain that defined social status in Montclair, New Jersey. My dad moved into management during those years, but for a manufacturing firm where he still dealt with blueprints and machines. Neither of my parents knew much about four-year colleges, and I was the first in the family to complete a bachelor's degree. Saturdays were for yard work and housecleaning, not for "cultural enrichment," although sometimes Saturday afternoons could include a visit with our family friends the Buffingtons, where the dad was a teacher and the mom, like mine, mostly stayed at home until the kids were in high school.

In the past few years, I've come to understand something else about my family that probably helped create the way that I approach writing a novel: My grandfather Ernest, born a Jew in Germany in 1898, told me when I was about 12 years old that the most important value in the world is "Tolerance." He spoke from his observation of World War II, the concentration camps, survival of families, and much more. And on my mom's side of the family, the Quaker stance of my mother's mother's family was my mom's great source of pride, because she knew it involved taking a stand for justice when injustice flourished. Here are scans from a letter that my grandfather sent home to his two small sons, as he traveled in Egypt in the 1930s, probably on business:

What are your values? How do they affect what you write, what you read, who you share books with? Share a few sentences here; I'm interested.

COLD MIDNIGHT: Early Bird Access to the eBook

Amazon and my fabulous publisher, Raphel Publishing, just made it possible for readers in a rush to download the eBook of COLD MIDNIGHT, a month before the printed book will release (Nov. 3). Got your Kindle, iPad, or other reading device warmed up and ready? Let me know what you think of the book! Here's the link for COLD MIDNIGHT in e-form. Have fun!

PS -- for a look at some wonderful old St Johnsbury, Vermont, postcards, and other images that relate to the mystery, check the Pinterest site.

Setting a New Novel: Getting to Know Montpelier, Vermont (Better)

"The Sleuth of Montpelier, Vermont"

A Writer's Research Adventure

In a little “study” under the stairs, my father labored with ruler and Number 4 pencil on a single sheet of blued paper on which he could make scaled drawings. Nearby, curled in an armchair, the 10-year-old “me” read her Nancy Drew books, and understood that the secret panels and hidden rooms within the mysteries began their lives with someone else’s version of Dad’s blue pages.

There were trap doors, like the one in the floor of the wardrobe in “The Secret of the Wooden Lady,” which also included two cleverly crafted panels that Nancy discovered with her careful fingers; in “The Sign of the Twisted Candles,” the girl sleuth examines a camouflaged back stairway, then with her boyfriend Ned begins a hunt for the dead homeowner’s treasures: “Every panel in the ceilings, walls, and floorboards was carefully examined. … Ned cried out, ‘Nancy! Come here! I think I’ve found something!” She ran to his side in the rear hall. ‘Look! The grasss cloth on this wall is a little different from the rest and a twisted candle has been worked into the design.’” There’s a safe hidden behind the significant design element.

Now that I’m writing a “Vermont Nancy Drew” series set in Montpelier, I’ve tuned in to the wide range of design trends that resulted in the many-aged downtown architecture of Vermont’s capital. If I want my sleuth, Felicity “Lucky” Franklin, to discover a hidden room or secret panel, what structure will she explore? In this case, it has to be (for plot reasons) both the State House and the Blanchard Opera Block, now home to the bookstore that belongs to Lucky’s mom (the real store owner is collaborating) and once host to grand performances in the early 1900s, including the arrival of young elephants with the touring circus!

A behind-the-scenes exploration of the State House with ardent conservation curator David Schütz convinced me that the structure’s major idiosyncrasies lie in its dome, which sits atop the legislative “box” but is a unit unto itself. “My” sleuth will find clues there, among the oddly positioned timbers and scrawled graffiti. In the Blanchard Opera House, though, she’ll discover an actual hiding place.

Could Montpelier architect and sometime mayor George Guernsey, who designed the Blanchard Opera House, actually have ensured a concealed area in the building? Norwich University student Megan Morse and Putney preservation pro Lyssa Papazian tracked Guernsey’s work and life (1839-1900) in detail. The era fits that of Lambert Packard, St. Johnsbury’s major architect (1832-1906), and at least one of Packard’s buildings has a hidden panel next to a fireplace. Guernsey himself favored intricacy and Italianate detail. Although none of his documented structures in Montpelier show false walls, hidden doors, or secret panels, the grace of fiction allows me to insert one with a relative amount of believability.

But that’s not quite enough for the kind of fiction I’m writing, which always hinges on some aspect of Vermont history, as well as a puzzle rooted in the life stages of teenagers. So I have two more components of Guernsey’s real life to weave in: his local nickname of “King George,” and his death of tuberculosis.

In the process of crafting these mysteries (the first of is “All That Glitters”), I hope to also bring attention to George Guernsey himself and to his structures, which probably number in the hundreds, whether churches, houses, commercial blocks, or public buildings like libraries and schools. A little extra knowledge may yet make the difference in a decision to maintain a George Guernsey building at a valued town or city location – whether there is a secret panel in it, or not.

[Photos of details of a George Guernsey building, the Edward Dewey house, courtesy of Don Shall.]