Coming Soon: Audiobook of THE BITTER AND THE SWEET -- Plus Nov. 20 Presentation

Almost all of my "spare" time for the past two weeks has been spent listening to a very skillful "audiobook" reader create the spoken version of THE BITTER AND THE SWEET, checking that the words move smoothly from the pages. It's taken a huge amount of time and has been fascinating. Kathy, the professional reader, clearly prepares for each chapter ahead of time, so that she's ready with separate voices for the different characters, and moments when someone "drops" their voice to keep quiet in a scene. She even inserts small chuckles of her own when they are laughing!

I am so excited about this, and grateful to All Things That Matter Press for investing in this version of the book. People often ask whether there are audio versions of my novels. Now I can give a resounding YES for this latest title. As soon as the version is available to order, I'll let you know ... it won't be much later, I think. (Locally, Boxcar & Caboose bookstore in St. Johnsbury and Green Mountain Books in Lyndonville are carrying all three books in the Winds of Freedom series, in softcover.)

In another direction, I've learned over the years to develop an engaging public presentation, and loved the way the audience connected with my talks recently, first this summer on the 1800s immigration into Barnet, Vermont, and then in September on "The Poetry of Transitions," as an approach to my poetry book THRESHOLDS that will be published in 2026 (recording here!). 

So when the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum asked me to take part in their November consideration of mysteries, of course I said yes! Here's the planned approach: the various subgenres, how mysteries are changing, the inclusion of more women and minorities as both authors and characters, and I'll provide a list of suggested authors for people to check out. Of course I'll mention THE BITTER AND THE SWEET, with a quick explanation of how I learned this region's role in counterfeiting in the 1800s. But this talk also dips deeply into the 17 years of learning the mysteries and crime fiction field with my late husband Dave Kanell, as we created Kingdom Books and traveled the United States, meeting authors and learning more.

I hope you can join me! November 20, at 7 pm, at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum. I'll let you know if it's also recorded for viewing afterward. 

What If Aging Means Less Juggling? Novels, Poems, Feature Articles, History ...

I have never learned to juggle. I've watched a few people learn it, and it didn't seem terrible -- but as someone who can barely catch a basketball, grabbing smaller items out of the air isn't likely. Actually I don't throw very well, either. (Don't ask about the company baseball team, back in 1973 or so.)

Maybe you have read the "how" of juggling? I leaned on such book-learning for writing "Juggling Parenthood at Seventy," which is in the most recent issue of New Feathers Anthology - you can read it here (it's short). I was thrilled that New Feathers asked for a second poem, too, which again is set in my part of parenting "adult children." (Yes, it's here.)

With the onset of my seventies, I notice changes in how I move, which is no surprise. I'm losing some speed and coordination, but not, thank goodness, determination.

What scares me more than the physical changes are mental ones. I worry each time I can't pull up a word or remember why I was headed into another room. It seems that most of my similar-aged friends have the same worry ... none of us want to become dependent on others for basic life, and that's what those little glitches seem to threaten.

But I can't live under threat as a mood. It's terrible for writing. So I'm trying to be practical, the way I was when I got rid of the last throw rug (I loved it, but throw rugs are a Big Problem in terms of falling, "they" say.)

For writing, that means sometimes narrowing the range of what I'm working on. With the gracious collaboration of editor/publisher Justin Lavely, I'm taking a break from feature articles for The North Star Monthly for a few months at least, and I'm not rushing to write another novel. Instead, I'm making a lot of room for poems. There are scraps and Post-it notes and lists all over this home, with metaphors, bits of lines, ideas for structure. It's working! Maybe I should have tried this sooner.

Meanwhile, though, I'm watching how the novels are reaching readers. If you live in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, you can buy a copy of The Bitter and the Sweet easily in St. Johnsbury or Lyndonville (thank you, Boxcar & Caboose, and Green Mountain Books). But you might not have heard: I was able to regain rights to the first two books in the series, The Long Shadow and This Ardent Flame, and Speaking Volumes has them back in print, with covers that match the ebooks. You can get the lovely softcovers at those same two bookstores -- and of course, order them in any other bookshop, in person or online.

There's some relief in not juggling as much: I don't worry about hard rubber balls landing on my head. But can I stick with just poetry? Umm, no. Watch for news about a huge historical research project in the wings. 

 

How the WINDS OF FREEDOM Series Reached Book 3

Both softcover and ebook available!

Blame it on that heirloom gold locket that my dad gave to me, after my house burned to the ground. The midwinter fire devoured all the jewelry my mother gave me over the years, all her knitting projects, a half-made crocheted bedspread for my youngest brother that I claimed after her sudden death a few years earlier, saying, “I’ll finish it for you.” Raging on a twenty-three-degrees-below December night, the fire took our clothes, my work, the children’s new Christmas toys. None of that compared to the importance of the three of us escaping, with burns on our faces and frostbite on our toes, from sock-footed hike a third of a mile to the nearest neighbor.

Dad drove north to check on us, a day later. He brought some family photos, thoughtfulness that impressed me; he brought my youngest brother the contractor, who’d never receive that bedspread after all, but who brought me boxes of his spare tools; and he brought the locket. Gold, shaped like a tiny box on a short chain, it opened to emptiness. No photo of anyone inside, but I saw an intricate gold grating that flipped outward. “It’s a hair locket,” he explained. “You put a lock of hair of your beloved into it.”

 

During the night of the fire, a mile from where my ex-husband lived, the only “boyfriend” in my life was playing music in New Orleans. He got a busy signal when he tried to phone me, and bitterly assumed I’d taken the phone “off the hook” to silence it during a date with someone else. Days later, he’d finally phone a neighbor and learn that a fire burns through phone and electric lines. I didn’t put a lock of his hair into the locket; he left not much later, for a dancer he’d formed a crush on.

 

When I turned fifty, in accordance with the answer a prayerful friend of mine had received, I met and fell joyously in love with my soulmate. By then, the kids were grown and gone, but on their rare visits home, they agreed I’d finally found the right partner. Next time my darling got his hair trimmed, I collected a curl and popped it into the locket.

 

Historical fiction already meant a lot to me; a lifelong history writer, and a fumbling novelist, I found the combined threads satisfying. And I wanted very much to give readers a vicarious experience of Vermont’s approach to the Abolition movement and to diverse settlers (setting aside for the moment the state’s sometimes cruel treatment of Native Americans; I’d addressed that in my first work of historical fiction, and the book is a classic, The Darkness Under the Water, but also controversial). I figured, if readers followed along with the teens in my new story, they’d discover for themselves that Black people in Vermont in the 1850s were “free and safe,” as one of the state’s great historians puts it.

 

If you haven’t yet written a novel, this might surprise you: Often the characters stubbornly diverge from where you thought they were going. So did the girls in The Secret Room: One morning, halfway through writing, I realized at least one of them would head into a dark collapsing tunnel, in a desperate rescue effort. As dirt fell into her eyes and mouth and she moved resolutely forward, one hand landed on an object that she reflexively tucked into a pocket. Later, in daylight, she discovered it was an antique locket.

 

Yes, there you have it: Dad’s little locket had crept right into my story. So it felt obvious, later, that I’d write another novel, this time set in 1850, when that locket first hung at the throat of a Vermont teen. That turned into The Long Shadow, a book I’d never imagined would be the first of a series.

 

Yet when I turned it in for publication, the cheerful editor said, “I hope we’ll be hearing more from these characters!” Shaken, I asked, “You mean a series? How long?” She replied, “How about until everyone is free?”

 

It doesn’t take a lot of American history to recognize that “when everyone is free” probably means the end of our Civil War: 1865. If I wrote a book for each year from 1850 until then, there’d be 15 books in the series. A nifty idea! However: My teenaged characters from the first book would be in their thirties. That wasn’t an age I wanted to write about – I love the voice of a teen observing her world. How could I solve this?

 

It took another week for the idea to arrive: If the teens had a reason for vanishing from the village at the end of each book, or maybe each second book, and the next book’s protagonist became a girl who’d been younger at the start, and I kept passing it along that way — well, you see how it would work, right? Sort of a relay race, passing along the Vermont fight for human liberty to each new girl, or set of girls. Yes! On the spot, I decided (since I’m far from young) that there would be two-year jumps between the books in the series. That meant seven or eight titles, which seemed workable, as long as I took my vitamins and avoided any repeat of the disastrous housefire.

 

Now we are in book 3 in what the editor and I decided to call the Winds of Freedom series. Almyra Alexander, who showed up in book 2 as a fashionable girl from Boston, longs to be a minister, a difficult if not impossible path for a woman in 1854. The Vermont village, with its changing ideas about people and their roles, may give her a way forward toward her dream.

 

But first she’ll have to puzzle out several newly arrived women at the local tavern, what they are carrying around the county, how to handle an aging criminal who arrives while her uncle the minister is out of town, and whether she can effectively assist the cause of Abolition.

 

If you’re ready to find out whether Almyra is up to those challenges, and what the risks are, and what allies she’s recruiting — get ready to read The Bitter and the Sweet.

Majoring in Art? Counterfeiting in the 1800s Offered You a Good Income

I've always enjoyed historical fiction. It's the classic "spoonful of sugar" for the facts of our past. As a writer of historical novels, I'm responsible for getting the underlying details—skirt fashion, maple sugaring, weather extremes, and famous persons like Harriet Beecher Stowe (real-life author of Uncle Tom's Cabin)—all correct in the stories I spin. My goal is to give readers an enjoyable ramble through Vermont's 1850s in my Winds of Freedom series, while making sure their experience in the lives of the characters is true to life.

The Long Shadow, This Ardent Flame, The Bitter and the Sweet: These are adventures of teens in the village of North Upton (based on our real North Danville), and each one explores the level of risk the teens undertake. There are scary threats around them, and as anyone who's lived in snow country knows, winter can be the most potent threat of all.

But each book also handles the dangers of 1850s life, from bounty hunters to deadly disease to unquenchable fires that take down houses, barns, and life itself.

In The Bitter and the Sweet, one of the scary aspects is counterfeiting. It took decades for the American system of coins, paper money, and banks to develop. Rampant counterfeiting took place in the 1820s and 1830s, and the effects still made problems for anyone dealing in Big Money in 1854, the year of this novel.

Historians divide written evidence of the past into two kinds: primary, written by the people alive then, and secondary, the books that the historians then write, where they line up the details and pull together the themes. For The Bitter and the Sweet, I used a "secondary" source called A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States, by professor Stephen Mihm. (He also kindly answered some correspondence as I narrowed the details I'd be using in my story.)

I already knew about Vermont counterfeiter Christian Meadows, whose history is repeatedly rediscovered for popular articles (here's one). A skilled engraver and silversmith, he strayed from his daily work into counterfeiting, applying his skills to the design and crafting of printing plates. He was captured, convicted, and imprisoned -- but did such elegant design work that Daniel Webster spoke up for him, and Vermont governor Erastus Fairbanks in 1853 pardoned him so he could return to the legitimate side of his engraving.

Devouring the well-written pages of Mihm's comprehensive book A Nation of Counterfeiters, I discovered an even more fascinating fellow: Seneca Paige, who led a major collaborative of "money makers," including multiple artists, just across the Canada border from Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. In his later years he "reformed" and his grave in Bakersfield, Vermont, praises his life, saying, “His Loss will be felt by many; particularly by the poor. He was truly the poor man’s friend.”

I wanted my characters to meet this man (under a new name, of course, for the novel: Foster Pierce). But by 1854, the year of The Bitter and the Sweet, he was already that reformed character that won such acclaim. How could I include him in a way that would be true to the facts, but also potentially terrifying to the teens meeting him in their village?

Yes, I solved it. I won't spoil your fun by saying how! But I loved writing this book, and now that it's in print (softcover and ebook), it's a great joy to share the lives of "my" people with readers.

And I remind the artists I meet: 125 years ago, your precision skills could have been making you an excellent living ... as long as you didn't get caught. 

A (Vermont) Romance of the Revolution: DEAREST BLOOD by Jessie Haas

Ready to detach from the politics of the moment, to celebrate the American Revolution? Although the big national festivities will blossom next year, when we reach 250 years from the Declaration of Independence, this past April marked a quarter century from the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In many ways the push for independence was already "old" by 1775, with initial historical moments coming in 1763 (end of war with the French) and 1765 (protests begin).

Vermont author Jessie Haas, an expert in the history of the Vermont towns of Westminster and Westminster West, provides an exciting, enjoyable, and yes, romantic way to step into the flow of revolution in her newly self-published novel DEAREST BLOOD. (I bet some traditional publishers are hating that they missed out on this!) Cleverly, she positions her 250-page tale on the very edge of the young adult/adult reading line: Fifteen-year-old Fanny Montresor is the daughter -- well, that's complicated, because neither of her parents in Westminster is her birth parent -- but let's keep this simple for now and say that, as the townspeople see her, she is the daughter of a British-loyal civil servant whose wealth is mostly in land, and a lovely and skilled mother who's even more loyal to The Crown. In a town and state on the verge of armed rebellion, that's not a helpful heritage. And it's a shock to Fanny when her mother prescribes marriage to a man of means, locally, as a way to keep Fanny safe in the likely dangerous times ahead.

But there's little time for Fanny to seek other options: "War was normal in America, and left its long trail of debris and grief." Whether battling Abenaquis or the French or pestilence, Fanny's seen enough to believe her mother's insistence that an arranged marriage is suddenly a must.

Armed conflict breaks out far sooner than either expects, and surrounds Fanny's home; she witnesses the death of a young man her own age, and there's ample reason to fear she and her mother could be attacked soon. Her discoveries quickly shatter her worldview, even bringing her toward the rebel cause in her own reasoning.

Haas is a seasoned author, noted for both her often horse-focused children's and adult fiction, and her dedicated historical research that bore fruit in her 2011 book Revolutionary Westminster. Scene by exciting scene, she draws Fanny into deeper understanding of what freedom and liberty might mean, personal and national. Sharp-eyed readers will spot the potential romance that will become a force in the second half of the novel, which jumps to the year 1783, when the Treaty of Paris affirmed America's liberation and (more or less) safety. 

But it is also a time of grief for Fanny, who's endured multiple large losses in the meantime. Returning to Westminster with her mother, she visits the grave of the man she saw killed, and here is the source of the book's title -- on his marker stone, "For Liberty and his Countrys Good / he Lost his Life his Dearest blood." Fanny reflects, "His dearest blood. In my mind's eye I saw that dark smudge on [friend] Isaac's handkerchief. The lump in my throat grew."

How Fanny will resolve her compromises and take agency in her own life becomes a delightful background to a much happier situation than an arranged marriage "for safety." The sweetness and cleverness of the remaining plot -- based on real people and events -- make this novel of the American Revolution into a swift and uplifting read. 

And that, in short, is why historians like Haas sometimes bring their deep knowledge around the corner to a fictional approach. Lucky readers: Those who love American history, Vermont history, historical fiction, and a true-life romance can all savor this book. Do you know a dreamer who's paying attention to friendship and maybe the scary edge of current events, and wish you could draw that person's eye to what this nation has achieved in the past? Here's a great gift, then. Order two copies, because you'll want to hold onto your own. 

DEAREST BLOOD can be ordered by bookstores, or online; read more about the author and her other publications at her website, https://www.jessiehaas.com.

PS: Watch for family names of people who settled much of Vermont; Haas writes that her "work of fiction" is "closely based on historical people and events." Maybe you will spot some relatives or familiar neighbors among the names. I did! 

Every Word Matters: A Touch of the Irish

design by Vermont's Danforth Pewter

Writing historical fiction, like my three volumes (so far!) in the Winds of Freedom series, means paying attention to all the little words. It's not automatic to "speak" in the rhythms and vocabulary of another time, and there are days when I spend more hours checking language than I do pushing the plot forward. What did counterfeiters call each other? How did Canadians talk about the "money artists" living in their Eastern Townships? If you're adapting your best dress to a new style in 1854, what do you call the trimmings that you're stitching, if you're classroom educated or if you're happier helping with your father's horses?

All of those came into play as I wrote The Bitter and the Sweet, where Bible-studying Almyra Alexander needs to reach across class and social lines to admit she needs help from Susannah Hall in order to climb into a saddle. Riding a pony in Boston certainly didn't prepare her for carrying urgent messages while perched high above the ground on a full-size horse. (Don't get me started on how tall the horse was. Thank goodness for true experts like Amanda Gustin at the Vermont Historical Society, who can talk clearly and with authority about Vermont Morgan horses.)

As a poet as well as a novelist, I also want the words to sound fluid and interesting in the reader's "ear." One result of that is that I sometimes recognize my own writing in places I hadn't expected to see it -- a description of a local town that someone borrows from my own, posted online, or a review on the back of a book, mentioning the author's earlier work. 

Yes, that's a great gift of being a published author: If you choose to, and don't mind working without pay (we can discuss that more at some other time), you can get involved in reviewing other historical fiction. I treasure the chance to do that for the Historical Novels Review. It can be a great challenge to devour 400 pages, then work out a description to guide other readers -- condensing it to 300 words,  which is a bit less than a page. (The end of that sentence reached 359 words here, just to give you a better notion.)

One book I am reading for review this week is set in the 1850s, like my work, and by 10 pages into the story, I realized its author didn't care about language in the same way that I do. Probably the most shocking moment was when one of the characters, of Irish heritage, referred to Irish immigration to the United States as caused by "the potato famine." That raised two problems: First, Irish immigration began much earlier than that, and Irish Americans were well represented in our patriots of the American Revolution. Second, and what drives me to write about this today, is I knew that the Irish didn't say "the potato famine."

At least, I was pretty sure. But it's part of my way of writing and researching, that I needed to check. So I pulled out one of the vital books on my reference shelf: The Story of the Irish Race by Seumas MacManus. It came to my collection during the writing of Cold Midnight, a novel set in 1920 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, when many people working for the well-to-do came from Ireland. And I bet you might not ever have heard of Seumas MacManus, because he died in 1967, but here's how he's been described: "Seamus MacManus is considered by many to be the last great seanchaí, or storyteller of the ancient oral tradition. He wrote down and interpreted traditional stories so that they would not be lost to future generations." (Wikipedia summary.)

Sure enough, his chapter LXX starts on page 602 (people did write longer books then), and is titled The Great Famine. It begins:

The Great Famine, usually known as the famine of '47, really began in '45, with the blighting and failure of the potato crop, the people's chief means of sustenance. 

You'll search long and hard for a copy of that book. But you can get a marvelously well-written modern (2015) exploration of America's relationship with that part of Irish history in Maureen O'Rourke Murphy's book Compassionate Stranger: Asenath Nicholson and the Great Irish Famine. Are you hooked on Vermont and its history? Asenath Nicholson was born Asenath Hatch in Chelsea, Vermont, on February 24, 1792.

Give yourself an adventure for this month of St. Patrick's Day: Look up a bit more about Asenath Nicholson. Let me know what you think, when you discover what she did. 

And I hope you noticed the phrase "the Great Irish Famine." Not the potato famine. See, you're already gaining an ear for the well-chosen words of  well-written historical fiction. Go ahead, tell someone else what you've discovered!

 

MAPS: Poetry, Historical Fiction, and My Mind

It feels like I've always loved maps: looking at them, figuring out how places are connected, planning trips, and with historical fiction, discovering more about how things used to be. One of my pleasures has been trying to re-draw maps of the two neighborhoods I lived in as a kid, seeing how many family names I could still place on the houses.

So I was very surprised to learn, some years ago, that maps are not intuitive -- someone has to sit with you and show you how they represent places and distances and relationships. Ever since then, I've tried to include them in school presentations, and once helped a kindergarten/first grade create a map of their town and the bus routes, on an old white sheet.

This map of my home town of Waterford is such a big reference item for me that I have it on the refrigerator, not on the front (where grandkid items and medical appointments may cluster) but on one side, all to itself. Even the smallest notes and family connections on it remind me of things I should make clear in my 1850s historical fiction. I depended on "old" maps of Peacham and Danville for THE BITTER AND THE SWEET. I needed to know the turns that Almyra would make with the horses, and what she'd see along the way.

In the past few months I've tried writing poems in clusters around themes, and MAPS became one of them. So I was tickled when Hole in the Head Review published this one. If the type here feels too small, look on their page at this link.

What kinds of things might you "map" about your life -- as a kid, or now? 

The Winds of Freedom, Book 3: It's the Money, Honey

 

Merchant "scrip" from North Troy, Vermont.

Realizing that the teenaged girl leading the action in THE BITTER AND THE SWEET (Winds of Freedom book 3) would not be either Alice or Caroline -- the teens we follow in the preceding book, This Ardent Flame -- happened well before I started writing book 3. With a two-year jump for each novel in the series, the next protagonist would have to be Almyra Alexander.

Almyra intrigues me for several reasons: She's from Boston, a transplant to the Vermont village of North Upton (aka North Danville), so she's seen more of the sophisticated scenes than either Alice or Caroline. As a result, she brings with her some fashionable clothing and, more importantly, an assertiveness that goes with her outward confidence. That makes her a contrast to the other teens.

But her confidence is a  bit rocky, because she's almost an orphan: Her mother died young, and her father, a political operative, is way too busy to parent his lonely daughter. So when her North Upton aunt and uncle bond with her, and give her the opportunity to stay in the village instead of returning to the city, she's relieved to experience the first real sense of family support she's had in a while.

That's the underlying emotional pin for the book. Add to that her curiosity and unquestioning embrace of the social issues of the day, namely, the abolition of slavery, rights for women, and ending alcohol abuse, and I had the resonant situation that I wanted to write from.

But of course a historical novel is almost always threaded around an urgent plot of some sort, whether it's an adventure, a crisis, or a mystery. Choosing the one for THE BITTER AND THE SWEET came with the discovery of Professor Stephen Mihm's book A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States. Not only is this book full of tales of criminal and law enforcement action in our nation's early years, but -- to my astonishment -- one of the major locations for counterfeiters in the early 1800s was our own borderlands of the Northeast Kingdom and Canada's Eastern Townships.

Professor Mihm even replied to some emailed questions, and soon I was on my way, deep into the new manuscript.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR: We'll have a party for THE BITTER AND THE SWEET at Kim Crady-Smith's Lyndonville, Vt, shop, Green Mountain Books, on Saturday Nov. 23 at 11 am. Later the same day, at 2 pm, I'll talk about the book at the North Danville Brainerd Memorial Library, and explain Danville's own connection to the counterfeiting landscape!

Three Teenaged Girls in 1850s Northern Vermont: My Protagonists for The Winds of Freedom

When I wrote THE LONG SHADOW, the story of Alice Sanborn's discovery of injustice and loss in her home village of North Upton, Vermont, I reached for integrity: not just for Alice and her family as they continue their commitment to the abolition of American enslavement, but also for how we see that time, that piece of our past. I wanted to give readers an experience of aromas and tastes as much as possible, along with the binding constraints of the layers of women's garments at the time, and the ways family could be both supportive and harsh. When Alice's uncle rages about the politics of the time, I want you to feel with Alice the scary and exhilarating moment of seeing someone take a stand for a difficult position.

In fact, I was so immersed in this 295-page novel that when I completed it. I was startled to hear the editor at Gale/Five Star, the publishing house, say "I hope we'll be seeing more of Alice!" "How much more are you thinking?" I asked. She responded, "Until everyone is free." That is, from 1850 to 1865.

Well, why not? Alice's interactions with her younger Black friend Sarah and the innkeepers' daughter Jerushah came to a natural end at the end of that novel. But as we all know, when one friendship ends or changes, another often comes along.

 

For THIS ARDENT FLAME, I chose a very different sort of new friend for Alice: Caroline Clark. Because of her inability to hear, Caroline's spent her school years in a boarding school for the deaf and hearing impaired, in another state. Returning to North Upton for Caroline could be far more traumatic if it weren't for Alice. As the two teens learn to communicate in a layered set of "languages," they learn more about the diverse people around them, and develop their own fierce commitment to abolition, as well as to the linked issue of women's roles and rights.

Readers may have been startled by the decision of these characters at the end of the book: They are headed West, to a place where their presence may be critically important to how America develops the laws and freedoms of its added territories, soon to be states. How could the Winds of Freedom series continue? Was it moving West?

Not at all. When the editor invited me to develop a series for this "young adult crossover" genre -- that is, one that features young adults (teens) as protagonists, but is read enthusiastically and with curiosity by adults, including parents and grandparents -- I saw right away that pushing the sequence by a year at a time, all the way to 1865, would mean a much longer and slower sequence than I wanted to write ... and, more urgently, it would mean that after the first few titles, the main characters would no longer be teens. Not only would that break the genre, it would take me into a kind of novel that didn't interest me. I really like writing "YA crossover."

So I came up with a plan: Each book would jump forward two years, not one; and the protagonists would shift with the timing, like a relay race, passing the action to another girl growing into the responsibility of working for a more moral nation and for the freedoms of those around her.

 

That's why book 3 in the Winds of Freedom series, THE BITTER AND THE SWEET, features would-be minister in training Almyra Alexander, whose Boston mother has passed away and whose politically active father is far too busy to raise a teenager (other than perhaps planning a marriage for her!). Readers met Almyra in book 2, when she was a pesky newcomer, dressed in city fashions and ignorant of rural ways, but already interested in the role she embraces in book 3: to become qualified to lead her own church. What about the push for abolition, a necessity for a moral person of her time -- will that get in the way of becoming a minister? And who ever heard of a woman leading a church??

I'm eager to learn what you think of Almyra's choices and adventures (including with a notorious counterfeiter) in THE BITTER AND THE SWEET. Please do let me know.

And when you've finished the book, tell me who you think the next young woman (teen!) is that I've chosen for the focus book 4. Think carefully, and remember the two-year jump involved. Can you guess the right one? I want to hear your thoughts, of course!

The Winds of Freedom: How Vermont's Northeast Kingdom Approached Abolition

In this presidential election season, I think it's been clear that the effects of the American Civil War continue to affect beliefs around the country. President Lincoln's long approach to the abolition of human enslavement in America gave us a fundamental piece of today's view of human citizenship in our nation. At the same time, the long delay in getting there, with some 250 or more years of enslavement behind that, contributes to an awareness that we are not always as "good" or principled as we ought to be. And now we have a nation divided on what goodness and principle mean.

In the 1990s, when I began writing my historic novels, I came face to face with prevailing myths in Vermont history that dismayed me. Many of them revolved around the Underground Railroad, one of the heroic efforts in America in the early to mid 1800s. What we know today, historically, is that the Underground Railroad in Vermont might as well have been called the Aboveground Railroad -- because in the theme noted now at Rokeby in North Ferrisburgh, Vermont, if you were Black and reached Vermont in the 1850s (or had lived here for many years already, like the Mero family of Coventry), you were "Free and Safe." No need for hiding places.

But many people couldn't process that idea when I talked about it. So, based on my personal connection with historic fiction, I opted to write about the 1850s here through the voices and experiences of local people, hoping that readers could internalize that experience and reshape their own vision of what happened.

That led to THE LONG SHADOW, book 1 in the Winds of Freedom series, set in North Upton (aka North Danville) in 1850, from the points of view of teenagers enmeshed in adventures there. At the moment, the printed version is out of stock, but you can get the ebook here. Also ask Kim at Green Mountain Books to watch for a gently used copy for you!

More about that story later this week ... and then about books 2 and 3.

If you'd like to hear how the abolitionists of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and the surrounding towns saw their world in the 1850s and how they entered the movement toward abolition, here's my talk recorded at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum. I hope you find some fascinating discoveries when you listen/watch it.

Billy Boyle World War II Mystery #19: THE PHANTOM PATROL, James R. Benn

Sure, autumn is great for crisp air, colorful leafs, and seasonal sports. But when cold rain or darkness (or needing a break) sends you back indoors, one of the big treats of the season is a new Billy Boyle mystery from James R. Benn. And number 19 in the series, THE PHANTOM PATROL, comes out this month. 

Apparently the publisher suffers from mild autumn flu or something, and has pushed back the release date to September 24. Definitely a nuisance for the author, as well as for bookstores hosting release events! But it will all work out. And I've got an advance copy, so I can fill you in and you can place a pre-order now, for delight in three weeks.

Yes, the new Billy Boyle is a keeper! This series has moved slowly through World War II, digging up extraordinary pockets of history that this young Irish cop turned wartime detective (working for "uncle Ike," General Eisenhower) discovers in assignments, official or not. His powerful friendship with Kaz, a Polish baron also working in his corps, his alliance with his boss Colonel Harding, and his romance with the very British Diana, who has even engaged in espionage behind German lines, have all lit up the books and given them emotional resonance.

In that way, THE PHANTOM PATROL cuts new ground for Benn. Although Kaz and a few others are with him as the book opens in the darkness of a Paris night, December 13, 1944, in the enormous Père Lachaise cemetery, much of the action depends instead on how Billy interprets what's going on a round him. We get to track his experience, his questions, and his choices, smart or not, as he sorts things out.

"I fired at the afterimage of the muzzle flash, then ducked as another burst slammed into the mausoleum. Kaz let off two more shots and I backed up, taking cover behind a tree as a gunman fired into the position I'd just vacated. I didn't have a clear shot at him, but as I scrambled between the graves, I realized these guys must be soldiers." 

Most of these enemies escape—leaving only one behind, neatly executed so he won't talk. "Excellent planning and ruthless approach," comments Billy's friend Kaz. ""Who are we dealing with here?" 

"And what the hell was in that grave?" I asked.

A quick bit of perspective: At this point in the war, the German occupying forces in France knew they'd been licked, and most officers invested in personal aspects of retreating. That included carrying away the spoils of war, which notoriously included priceless artwork. But others may have a stake in the profits. Soon it's clear that the gang activity Billy's hunting down must be engaged with masterful paintings. The obvious questions are, how are they being moved and how can the American team cut the supply lines?

Lightening up the action are cameo appearances from some of the American noncombatants embracing Paris and sometimes reporting for newspapers or enlarging their careers. Watch for J.D. Salinger and Ernest Hemingway, as well as British actor David Niven, drawing on his own military expertise from between the two wars. (I found myself pausing often to look up some of the surprises, and Niven's career was one of the really remarkable ones.)

David Niven (Wikipedia).

Benn is fully trustworthy as a historian and researcher, and deftly braids his details into Billy Boyle's investigations and personal stakes. It's hard to guess how long this series will run, as Benn's been adept at mining the war, month by month—but readers know the war will end, maybe not as soon as Billy and Kaz and Diana would like, but as even the Nazis know, the tide has turned and can't be resisted. Ramping up the suspense of this period is Benn's subtle threat to the relationship between Billy and the love of his (young) life: Will a Boston cop and an English aristocrat find a way to sustain their love and purposes when peace finally arrives?

Billy's own comment near the end of the book sums up what's at stake, and I can quote it without spoiling the plot: "When this is over, it damn well better have been worth it. We deserved a world worthy of both the sacrifice of the dead and those exquisite paintings. We deserved a world of love and beauty."

Don't miss this episode; it's the footing for the remaining Billy Boyle volumes, a rich platform of meaning and suspense garbed in the significant history of our time.

 

Winds of Freedom Book 3 Is Coming This Autumn!

The Bitter and the Sweet, the third book in my Winds of Freedom series (after The Long Shadow and This Ardent Flame), should be in print by early November -- maybe sooner! -- from All Things That Matter Press. I know it's been a long wait (thanks to, you know, COVID). So I thought I'd give you a bit of a recap of what the young ladies of North Upton (in real life, North Danville) Vermont have been doing in the 1850s, as Vermont is seized by a passion for Abolition ... that is, the legal abolition of slavery in a nation that had profited in many ways from enslavement for two centuries.

But of course, for northern Vermont teenagers, that's not initially the focus of their attention!

Here's what went on in 1850 in The Long Shadow (can be ordered here or as an ebook here):

THE LONG SHADOW Synopsis

 

            ALICE SANBORN, age 15 in March of 1850, is the youngest member of her family and the only one not taking a stand on Abolition. In her Vermont village of North Upton, she and her best friends – JERUSHAH, whose family owns the tavern, and SARAH, a younger black girl who is waiting in Vermont for negotiations to free the rest of her family from slavery down South – are more interested in maple sugaring and the arrival of spring than in politics. Still, Alice sees enough to guess that her married brother WILLIAM is conspiring with messenger SOLOMON McBRIDE to protect fugitive slaves. 

            When a slave-hunter reaches the area, Alice’s father sends the three girls, driven by Solomon, to a nearby large town to stay briefly with the elegant MISS FARROW, herself a former slave.  But the slave-hunter spies on Solomon and follows them. The girls elude danger, as Alice starts their horse and carriage north. Solomon sends the slave-hunter on a false trail, catches up with the girls, and drives them farther, despite snow, bad roads, and a catamount.

            By the time the girls reach sanctuary with the HAYES family of Free Blacks near the Canadian border, Jerushah and Sarah are desperately ill. Solomon leaves on his own mission. Alice meets the challenges of helping Mrs. Hayes nurse her friends. CHARLES HAYES startles Alice by laying hands in prayer onto Sarah; he offers the same for Jerushah, but Alice declines on her behalf, unsure her friend would want this.

            Sarah recovers and is happy to stay with the Hayes household to await her own family. But Solomon visits and persuades Alice that Jerushah, still fretful and frail, needs to return to her own mother. Solomon, Alice, and Jerushah endure a storm, flooding, and wolves to drive home. Along the way, Alice learns about Solomon’s freedom-fighting work and considers becoming an active Abolitionist herself – a role that won’t fit her father’s view that the Union of states is more important than freeing slaves.

            The return proves disastrous: Jerushah suffers a relapse, and blame falls on Alice. Although Jerushah’s family won’t let Alice visit, there is an almost-forgotten tunnel that links Alice’s home to the tavern. With help from Jerushah’s brother MATTHEW, the two girls reconnect and begin to leave messages for each other. Alice is dismayed to realize that Jerushah’s friendship for her includes expectations of long-term affection and living together as “spinsters,” a situation Alice does not desire. At the same time, the girls’ brothers – William and Matthew – ask Alice to help in the risky transport of documents that Solomon needs for men escaping slavery and headed to Vermont.

Alice learns to navigate the tunnel even in the dark. But Jerushah’s too fragile to do that, and when she tries to, she takes a terrible fall. Is it Alice’s fault again? All this guilt burdens Alice, and being part of Solomon’s righteous efforts can’t dispel the darkness.

  * * *         

 To learn how it all works out, of course, you need to read the book! (If I told you here, that would really be a spoiler, wouldn't it?)

 

Watch for news about The Bitter and the Sweet, coming soon!

The Writer, the Page, the Reader: A Magical Triangle

If you were a shy kid in elementary school, you will see entirely different things in a poem than your neighbor will, who arrived in first grade with friends from the neighborhood.

If the first time you made love was with the person you married, romance as a thread in the mystery you're reading may feel familiar and make you chuckle; when you've just concluded an acrimonious divorce, you might skip over those pages.

That's why I think of a piece of writing as one point on a triangle; the other two are who I am, and who you are. Good writing leaves room for the triangle to spin in different directions, expand, make a fresh angle, and rise into a second dimension. Yet the triangle, the bond between story and reader, must remain resilient and still touch all three anchors.

On August 12 at 5 pm (Eastern time), I'll bare my reviewer "chops" on Medium.com and offer a tips session for writers of haiku to short story to novel -- even applicable to nonfiction feature articles. There'll be some time for questions and answers, maybe even controversy.

Please do stop in and check it out! Scan the offerings for Medium Day and register here.

Meanwhile, a couple of sites with intriguing material on "endings":

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-the-perfect-ending-for-your-novel

https://www.emwelsh.com/blog/find-best-ending-story

https://scribemedia.com/write-book-conclusion/

Make A Promise In Your First Chapter: How-To Tips And Q&A For The Writing Life

Whether you’re writing a segment about your life, insight into history, a feature article, a novel, or a poem (yes, even haiku!), you’re laying out a path, an adventure, for your reader. There’s a reason for every ending: It seals the promise you make in your first line or paragraph or chapter. Then satisfaction makes your reader say, “Ah, that was good!” This seasoned author and reviewer shows how crafting your opening builds a promise to a reader. Discover the power of a beginning and ending that fit together (even when they have to fit head to toe). Gain a strategy for writing stronger and more memorable work. You’ll shape your writing with fresh insight from this chat.

Tag:Writing

Beth Kanell Writing That Braids Loss, Joy, Love

A Photo of Gracie's Hotel, Lyndonville: As Promised!

Last month I was honored to present a talk on writing historical fiction for the DKG VT (active and retired teachers), Northeast Kingdom section, meeting in Lyndonville. I promised to try to locate an image of Gracie's Hotel for one of the people at the meeting.

And here it is! By way of explanation, here's what my husband Dave (the true Lyndon expert in the family) wrote about it, on April 11, 2018:

Looking Around Lyndonville, Vermont Today: Postcard circa 1950?. The sign on the building says "HOTEL LYNDONVILLE"

To the left of the building and over the door way is another sign that says "RESTAURANT" At this point of time the hotel was owned and managed by Nap. G. Clements who was from Montreal. ( I wonder if the NAP was shortened for the name Napoleon.) The second image is an advertisement from the 1957 edition of the Vermont Year Book/Walton's Register.

The hotel had 30 bedrooms. The Sportman's Room and The Casbah Lounge (A Replica of an Egyptian Tent)

The Hotel advertised in the Lyndon Teachers Yearbooks in 1953, 1954 and 1958.

Over the years the Hotel had many names: *The Pleasant View House * Centennial House * Union House * Chase's Hotel, * and Gracie's Inn. On line someone wrote that the Hotel burned to the ground on June 3, 1969 and another person gave the year the Hotel burned down as 1967.

This is a winter scene. The hotel was located in the vicinity of where the Union Bank now stands. 

 

DKG folks, please do pass the word on this! 

 

Doing author talks often opens up fresh historical research for me. Glad we can all share this.

Just a Little Further: Writing the Novel and Learning the Horse and Buggy

In the collection of the Shelburne Museum. No brake!

Within the next week or so, I expect to finish writing the third book in my Winds of Freedom series. It's set in Vermont in 1854, and it's had a working title of Kindred Hearts, but I'm quite sure that will change. I'm waiting until the last plot twist, passion for the future, and page of dialogue are done.  Then I'll brainstorm titles.

Meanwhile, I've been working hard at learning how to hitch a horse to a buggy and drive it! Somehow this was not mentioned in any of my history courses. Luckily, although Vermont winter isn't exactly conducive to asking a neighbor to show me the reins, there are many engrossing YouTube videos that show how to put on a harness, how to attach the "hames," and much more.

Then I've also been taking a crash course (self-taught) in buggies themselves. My protagonists, Almyra and Susannah, are fortunate to have access to the resources of a small livery stable at their village inn. That means that sometimes they don't have the kind of buggy or carriage they want -- and sometimes they end up on horseback themselves. Learning about riding with a sidesaddle was another treat of this book!

Here are some of the images I've studied, working out who puts her foot where, how much risk there is that she'll show a shocking amount of her ankle or petticoat, and more.

Thanks in advance to Fran and Bert Fissette, neighbors who've loved their horses and have answered some of my questions via text, so I could keep typing!

Circ1 1915:

Late 1850s:

Cotton Mather: From Salem Witch Trial Disaster to Hybrid Corn Experiments to Immense Loss

Check out these early provincial boundaries, via a Creative Commons map created by Kmusser.

I'm about halfway through writing KINDRED HEARTS, and every surface around me is covered with research. Not very tidy, but how exhilarating!

At this stage, also, almost everything around me spurs fresh inquiry ... 

Neighbors up the road just took their daughters to visit Salem, Massachusetts, and that sent me to reviewing the Salem Witch Trials and the notorious role of Cotton Mather (1663-1728) in them.

In turn, that sent me to Wikipedia for a quick review -- I often find Wikipedia to be a great jumping-off site for research, loaded with footnotes. I don't take the view of the Wiki writer as necessarily "valid" but I find a lot to explore from, after looking at this, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather—and the last paragraph made me very sad:

Mather was born in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, the son of Maria (née Cotton) and Increase Mather, and grandson of both John Cotton and Richard Mather, all also prominent Puritan ministers. Mather was named after his maternal grandfather John Cotton. He attended Boston Latin School, where his name was posthumously added to its Hall of Fame, and graduated from Harvard in 1678 at age 15. After completing his post-graduate work, he joined his father as assistant pastor of Boston's original North Church (not to be confused with the Anglican/Episcopal Old North Church of Paul Revere fame). In 1685, Mather assumed full responsibilities as pastor of the church.^[1]: 8

Mather wrote more than 450 books and pamphlets, and his ubiquitous literary works made him one of the most influential religious leaders in America. He set the moral tone in the colonies and sounded the call for second- and third-generation Puritans, whose parents had left England for the New England colonies, to return to the theological roots of Puritanism. The most important of these was Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) which comprises seven distinct books, many of which depict biographical and historical narratives.^[3]

Mather influenced early American science. In 1716, he conducted one of the first recorded experiments with plant hybridization based on his observations of corn varieties. This observation was memorialized in a letter to his friend James Petiver:^[4]

First: my Friend planted a Row of Indian corn that was Coloured Red and Blue; the rest of the Field being planted with corn of the yellow, which is the most usual color. To the Windward side, this Red and Blue Row, so infected Three or Four whole Rows, as to communicate the same Colour unto them; and part of ye Fifth and some of ye Sixth. But to the Leeward Side, no less than Seven or Eight Rows, had ye same Colour communicated unto them; and some small Impressions were made on those that were yet further off.^[5]

In November 1713, Mather's wife, newborn twins, and two-year-old daughter all succumbed during a measles epidemic.^[6] He was twice widowed, and only two of his 15 children survived him; he died on the day after his 65th birthday and was buried on Copp's Hill, near Old North Church.^[1]: 40

How Magical!: THIS ARDENT FLAME and Harriet Beecher Stowe

This Ardent Flame is now in print, and the magic continues. 

This is the second in my Winds of Freedom series of historical mysteries, seeing the approach to the Civil War through the eyes of Vermont teenaged girls. In 1852, to be 14 was to be on the verge of womanhood—and to contemplate big questions, like Abolition, Temperance, and votes for women. Also, if you are Alice Sanborn, to confront the wickedness of a man who beats a horse and probably does the same to humans.

Writing This Ardent Flame became magical for me as Alice and her bosom buddy Caroline, deaf from childhood and newly home to Vermont after years of boarding at the School for the Deaf in Hartford, CT, were riding the train north from Boston. Their mission at that moment was to help provide a merry family distraction around two Black men traveling with Alice’s brothers. The men were freemen, but still at risk even in New England, due to the horrors of the Fugitive Slave Law.

As the girls were “conversing” in their adapted language of American Sign Language, lip reading, and already being well attuned to each other’s thoughts, a woman paused to observe and then to ask them about the exchange of Sign. Fascinated, she assured them she’d be following up on this, then leapt off the train for her connection to Maine.

I suddenly knew who it was, before the girls were aware, of course: Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a woman who would later meet President Abraham Lincoln, who supposedly said to her, “So this is the little woman who started this big war.”

Students and teachers at the American School for the Deaf

Abashed at my own hubris in walking such an important person into the scene, I emailed one of my consultants: the historian at the American School for the Deaf. “Do you mind,” I asked with shaking typing fingers, “if Harriet Beecher Stowe walks through a scene? Could that be historic?”

The quick reply was basically: “Go for it!” Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Catherine, it turned out, had been close friends of Alice Cogswell, who ran the school! And in Alice’s scrap book was (gulp) an unpublished poem by the famed Hartford author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin! Here is the actual response from the school historian:

Alice Cogswell kept a scrap book, which we [were] fortunate to inherit from one of her relatives back in 1936.  The scrap book is a collection of poems, letters, and drawings from friends and family members.  She certainly did have a connection with the Beecher family because her scrap book includes a poem from Harriet Beecher Stowe and one from Catherine E. Beecher.  I have no documentation of the circumstances, but it stands to reason.  Both families were prominent in the same Hartford circles, and both women were activists in their own right.  Especially Catherine’s crusade for the education of women.  I imagine Alice’s education at ASD would have been of particular interest to Catherine.

And that, my friends, is the magic of writing historical mysteries—that every now and then, an unexpected guest walks into the scene, and turns out to uncover a real-life revelation.

Cover Release! THIS ARDENT FLAME, Publication in June 2021

 I love this cover design from Five Star/Cengage -- it certainly tells you that the protagonists in THIS ARDENT FLAME are women! In this case, they are teens, taking on their share of putting the abolition of slavery front and center for Americans, especially Vermonters, in 1852. You already met Alice Sanborn in The Long Shadow (Book 1 of Winds of Freedom). Join her as she meets Caroline, whose return to North Upton startles Alice into recognizing how limited her own world has been.

Now, of course, I'm writing book 3 of Winds of Freedom, set in 1854, and featuring Almyra Alexander. You'll want to watch for her arrival, too, in THIS ARDENT FLAME.

Looking forward to sharing the new novel with you soon!

Lemonade from Pandemic Lemons: Here Come the Ebooks!

Although hardcover publishing for my next book is delayed until June 2021, Speaking Volumes has created an ebook of The Long Shadow, my 1850 Vermont adventure novel. A new cover accompanies the publication, and I love it! 

It's wonderful to be able to share more of my work via ebook versons now. And there will be other novels soon to come.