All Behind the Book essays

How Riot Grrrl saved my life

Behind the Book by Jennifer Mathieu

Jennifer Mathieu’s fierce new novel, Moxie, takes a look at the powerful influence of the 1990s Riot Grrrl movement—a punk-influenced wave of feminism—and how it helps a group of teens find empowerment. When Vivian Carter decides she’s sick and tired of her high school’s misogynistic football players and an administration that refuses to stand up for the girls they harass, she looks to her mom’s past and decides to create a feminist zine. When other girls start to come forward with a desire to join in, it looks like Viv is the de-facto leader of a full-blown feminist revolution.

Mathieu shares the inspiration behind her triumphant new novel, her favorite Riot Grrrl musicians and how the movement is still relevant today.

It was the summer of 1993, I was 16 years old, and a long, hot suburban summer stretched out before me like a snake. Anxiety, depression and deep insecurity badgered me as they had through most of my adolescence. I would be starting my senior year of high school that fall, and I was ready for something good to happen in my life.

Alone at my local pool, I flipped through the May issue of Seventeen and an article on something called Riot Grrrl caught my attention. This was pre-Internet, and I had no idea that the piece I was reading had arrived on my radar as the strongest waves of Riot Grrrl were starting to peter out—after all, if mainstream media had caught whiff of it, the movement had to be mostly over. Likewise, I had no way of knowing that I was a 15-minute drive from one of Riot Grrrl’s epicenters in Washington D.C., where I spent weekends visiting my grandmother. All I knew was the article about badass punk rock girls who made their own zines and wrote provocative words like “slut” and “rape” on their bodies while advocating for girls’ rights captured my attention so much I read it over and over until I almost had it memorized. It was my only link to a world I intuitively knew I somehow wanted to join. That fall I wrote Revolution Girl Style Now on a desk in my science class. That was the same fall my Current Topics teacher called me a feminazi because I argued that women should be able to attend military academies, one of several “radical” ideas that got me into trouble in that class.

I was a bit late to the first swell of Riot Grrrl, but the early ’90s feminist punk movement has had an enormous influence on my life, so much so that my latest novel Moxie is all about a new generation of girls who adopt the Riot Grrrl spirit and make it their own. Fortunately, my Riot Grrrl education went beyond that Seventeen magazine article. In 1994, I escaped to Northwestern University outside Chicago and discovered punk music, going to shows where my ears would explode and ring for days after. While I fell in love with boy bands like Fugazi and NOFX, my interest in Riot Grrrl was reenergized when a high school friend sent me a cassette of the iconic Riot Grrrl band Bikini Kill. Lead singer Kathleen Hanna’s voice was a punch in the gut in the very best possible way: “Gotta listen to what the Man says. Time to make his stomach burn.” Never before had I heard a girl assert herself like this, take the world by the throat and demand to be listened to and respected. By the time I discovered the band Sleater-Kinney in 1997, I was all feminism and the feminist punk rock movement had fundamentally changed my world view for the better. Lyrics and zines about body image, self-respect and girl love helped me reject diet culture as much as a girl can in this thin-obsessed world, exit a bad relationship in my very early 20s, and seek out friendships with other girls who were committed to supporting each other and rejecting society’s message that girls should mainly see each other as competition for male attention. I remember seeing Sleater-Kinney live at the Metro in Chicago several times, my face slick with sweat, surrounded by other girls who knew all the same lyrics as me from songs like “Words and Guitar” to “One More Hour.” I felt so powerful, alive and loved.

Moxie is an outgrowth of that feeling. I originally thought about writing a ’90s book and accepting the bonkers idea that would count as historical fiction! But eventually I came up with the story of Vivian Carter, a small-town Texas girl who, along with her friends, transforms Riot Grrrl culture into something new for a new generation. After discovering her mom’s shoebox of old Riot Grrrl memorabilia, Vivian sparks a revolution that takes down a sexist culture that teenage girls are all too familiar with, but she does it with a modern twist.

Something I tried to tackle in Moxie is the fact that the original Riot Grrrl movement was overwhelmingly white. While there were absolutely Riot Grrrls of color, like Ramdasha Bikceem of Gunk fame, one of the few criticisms of Riot Grrrl that I absolutely agree with was the movement’s clumsy tackling of race, which often turned conversations about race into white-centering experiences where white girls asked to be absolved for racist behavior. My beloved Texas is a diverse place, and I wanted my Moxie girls to reveal that. If there’s one thing the newest generation of feminists has taught me, it’s that if my feminism isn’t intersectional, then it is nothing.

I often think back to that Seventeen magazine article that first sparked my interest in the punk rock movement that changed my life. Not as often, but sometimes, I think about that Current Topics teacher who humiliated me in class by calling me a feminazi. It was a true pleasure to dedicate Moxie to him to prove he didn’t wear me down but energized me. Honestly, it felt like a very Riot Grrrl thing to do.

 

Author photo by Pablo Gomez.

Jennifer Mathieu's fierce new novel, Moxie, takes a look at the powerful influence of the ’90s Riot Grrrl movement—a punk-influenced wave of feminism—and how it helps a group of teens find empowerment.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Finding Eliza Hamilton

Behind the Book by Susan Holloway Scott

With her new novel, I, Eliza Hamilton, bestselling author Susan Holloway Scott brings to life the story of Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Eliza. Readers will discover a novel of rich and fascinating details—and at its heart, an admirable woman of great devotion and courage.

If you visit the grave of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (1757-1854) in New York City, you’ll see that her simple stone describes her only in terms of the two most important men in her life. She’s her father’s daughter, and her husband’s wife, and that is all.

True, she’s best remembered today as the wife of Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), a Revolutionary War hero, statesman, politician and abolitionist, the first Secretary of the Treasury, a signer of the Constitution, the founder of the American financial system and, perhaps most famously, the only Founding Father to die from a duel.

You might also have heard that Eliza’s husband inspired a certain award-winning Broadway musical that carries his name.

But like so many women of the past, Eliza’s own story has been overshadowed by that brilliant husband. She didn’t help her place in posterity by destroying (or permitting to be destroyed) most of her letters, and thereby virtually eliminating her own words from history. As a result, she’s too often been dismissed by historians, who variously describe her as shy and reclusive, a saint, a homebody and even a victim.

With my new historical novel, I, Eliza Hamilton, I’m determined to change that. I hunted for the “real” Eliza at the Schuyler Mansion, her family’s home in Albany, New York, and the Grange, the house she and Alexander built in New York City, and visited other places in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania that she would have known. I searched for clues to her in historical societies, libraries and museums, poring over the fading ink of 18th-century letters. I was even fortunate enough to see—and touch—the gold wedding ring that Alexander slipped on her finger when they married in 1780.

And I found Eliza, too, in the letters of others who knew and loved her, in portraits, in memoirs and in her charitable work. She was the mother of eight children, who recalled her perseverance and devotion through the most difficult of times. She was a trusted, affectionate daughter and sister in the large Schuyler family. A list of her acquaintances reads like a who’s-who of early American history, including Martha and George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Dolley and James Madison—and those are only a few of those who knew her.

Most poignantly, Eliza’s presence remains in the letters that Alexander wrote to her over the 24 years that covered their courtship and marriage. There’s no doubt that they loved one another dearly, and that that love supported Eliza not only throughout Alexander’s life, but in the long years afterwards.

As a widow (she survived her husband by more than 50 years), Eliza continued a lifetime of kindness and generosity to become an advocate for the poor women and children of New York City. She helped found an orphanage whose mission continues to this day in the social service organization Graham Windham, and she served as the institution’s directress until she was 91.

But all that is only the beginning of what I discovered. Eliza Hamilton was intelligent and resourceful and strong, a woman who lived in the thick of some of the most turbulent and exciting times in American history. Her life and marriage were filled with love, passion, regard and devotion, but also were marred by public scandal and unimaginable tragedies that broke her heart, but not her spirit. I’m honored to tell her story.

 

Scott is the bestselling author of over 50 historical novels and historical romances. Learn more about her book—and Eliza Hamilton—on her website and blog: www.susanhollowayscott.com

Author photo by David Campli Studio

With her new novel, I, Eliza Hamilton, bestselling author Susan Holloway Scott brings to life the story of Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Eliza. Readers will discover a novel of rich and fascinating details—and at its heart, an admirable woman of great devotion and courage.

FictionHistorical Fiction

A woman history should never have forgotten

Behind the Book by Natasha Boyd

Immerse yourself in the milieu of 1700s South Carolina, where 16-year-old Eliza Lucas is left in charge of her family’s three plantations. With her new novel, The Indigo Girl, bestselling author Natasha Boyd draws from the true story of Eliza Lucas Pinckney for a story of ambition, betrayal and sacrifice—and at its core, the secret process of making indigo dye.

Boyd, the author of contemporary romantic Southern fiction and other novels of historical fiction, shares the inspiration behind The Indigo Girl.

People will tell you the Lowcountry begins a slow but irrevocable seduction on all those who venture within its boundaries. For me, it would take several visits, falling in love with a Lowcountry man and ultimately moving there, for the seduction to be complete.

Little did I know it would lead me to writing a book, The Indigo Girl, about Charleston’s beloved Eliza Lucas Pinckney. When you marry a man from Charleston, South Carolina, hearing the name Pinckney sort of settles into the general noise of life. It was a name I heard, but didn’t give too much thought to. I grew up in Europe, so I was used to being surrounded by history and, to my shame, probably took it for granted. Besides, we made our home in Atlanta, not Charleston, so unless we were visiting family I never thought much about it, beyond seeing the occasional sign for the Charles Pinckney historical site.

A move to Hilton Head Island in 2010 would change that forever. Lacking the beautiful architecture of Charleston, Hilton Head has a different sort of charm, predominantly nature-based. Every time you drive onto the island, you cross over Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, an island formerly owned by, of course, the Pinckneys. But it was at a local gallery exhibit showcasing artists who work with indigo where I first truly heard Eliza’s story. A 16-year-old girl in the 1700s had been left in charge of her father’s plantations? I sidled closer. She was tricked and set up to fail in her attempt at growing lucrative indigo by a man her father sent to help her? I no longer pretended to eavesdrop. I was rapt. She taught her slaves to read in return for them helping her make the dye?

Well, it was a done deal. Almost.

Trying to get Eliza’s story right kept me up at night. There was a story between the pages of the texts and the letters she wrote. There were differences between what she wrote when she was young and how she looked back on her life. That shouldn’t be a surprise, obviously, as like most humans she had grown and matured over the course of her life. But I felt a little bit like an amateur sculptor chiseling away at a valuable block of marble, knowing that a statue of Venus could materialize if I could just work at the right angle. I saturated myself in her letters and all available mentions of her I could find, and then . . . I put them aside.

This will be where the hardcore historians wince. But here’s the thing: The story, her story, was in there, but the constraints of the available texts were like prison bars preventing the “story” from unfurling. There’s an underlying structure to most storytelling that any experienced genre fiction novelist or screenwriter will tell you. As humans we respond to this story structure. If it is done right, there’ll be a feeling of satisfaction upon completion of the story. We’ll sigh when we close the book, whether we’re happy about the ending or even if we’re sad.

We know the hero or heroine will be put upon to start a journey of some kind. There’ll be forces working against them. At some point, they’ll reach a reckoning to rise to their fullest potential, only to have the rug pulled out from under them, for the unthinkable to happen. Then there’ll be a final battle, a test, from which our hero or heroine will finally emerge victorious and be permanently changed into their new, stronger self.

The story of Eliza’s battle with indigo is such a story. And it was a battle. She was thwarted at every turn, either by her own or others’ ignorance, by nature or simply straight malice. She drew upon her inner strength to overcome these challenges. The end result being that her success with indigo overcame a challenge for South Carolina, and ultimately the United States of America. She is, quite simply, a woman history should never have forgotten.

I hope now they’ll remember her.

With her new novel, The Indigo Girl, bestselling author Natasha Boyd draws from the true story of Eliza Lucas Pinckney for a story of ambition, betrayal and sacrifice—and at its core, the secret process of making indigo dye. Boyd, the author of contemporary romantic Southern fiction and other novels of historical fiction, shares the inspiration behind The Indigo Girl.

FictionDebut Fiction

Magical beginnings for a debut novelist

Behind the Book by Emanuel Bergmann

Debut novelist Emanuel Bergmann shares a look behind his sweet and dazzling first book, The Trick, a Holocaust tale with a touch of magic.

I like to think of my novel as a comedy about divorce and the Holocaust. (And stage magic!) Divorce is something I’m very familiar with—I was one of those kids who, at an early age, got to experience their parents’ separation. It left a deep impression. Many years later, after my own marriage had failed, I started writing it all down.

At the time, I hadn’t planned on writing a book. I just wanted to get some thoughts on paper. I had gone to see a circus show for the first time in 30 years, and that triggered one of the key scenes of the book. Suddenly, it all came together.

My ex-wife was a magician’s assistant, and so I decided to set The Trick in the world of stage magic. It’s a world I knew very well; I had spent many, many hours backstage at magic shows, and I felt that magicians were generally portrayed inaccurately in literature and cinema. More often than not, they are depicted as dark, brooding, handsome men. But in my experience, they were—by and large—needy and narcissistic.

That insight led to my main character, Moshe Goldenhirsch, aka the Great Zabbatini, a middling and highly egotistical stage magician. I decided to make him an immigrant, a German Jew who came to America during the dark years of the Shoah. This is another topic close to my heart. In fact, I’ve been known to be able to turn any perfectly normal and pleasant dinner conversation into a lengthy discourse on Holocaust minutiae. But it’s not my fault! I grew up Jewish in postwar Germany. My grandmother was a survivor of the Shoah, and she raised me with constant tales of atrocities. The moral always seemed to be: One day your friends at school will turn you over to the Nazis, so you better eat your spinach, young man!

It’s one of the reasons I came to America—I didn’t want to live like that anymore, one of the last Jews of Germany. But coming here had its own challenges. I was 19 or 20 years old when I arrived in Los Angeles, and I had no friends or family there. The character of the Great Zabbatini allowed me to put it all into words. He’s a lonely man, a stranger in a strange land, a refugee. But he’s also a selfish man, and his only passion is his art, stage magic. One day, he’s approached by a young boy, Max Cohn, whose parents are about to get divorced. Max is convinced that only magic can save his family . . .

After I wrote the first draft of the manuscript, I was surprised how personal the story had become. None of the events in the book are autobiographical, but the emotional foundation is deeply personal. When I wrote it, I didn’t think it would ever be published. There was no plan. But then I decided to send it out—who knew, maybe someone would like it? But no one liked it. After dozens of rejections, I finally gave up on it. The manuscript went into my drawer. Years later, through a series of coincidences, the book landed on the desk of an editor who did like it. To my surprise, seven years after I had written the manuscript, I suddenly received an email from a publisher in Germany expressing interest in it. I ignored the email. I thought it was some kind of prank. But they kept at it. And now, I am grateful that there’s an actual book that people can hold in their hand and flip through, and even read, if they like.

Debut novelist Emanuel Bergmann shares a look behind his sweet and dazzling first book, The Trick, a Holocaust tale with a touch of magic.

Science Fiction & FantasyFictionHistorical Fantasy

A grandfather’s broken past inspires a new historical fantasy

Behind the Book by Mindy Tarquini

A historical fantasy set in 1918 flu-ravaged Philadelphia, The Infinite Now by Mindy Tarquini (Hindsight, 2016) follows Fiora, a young immigrant struggling to learn the intricacies of time bending, teamwork and living in a world which seems as hell-bent on breaking her spirit as she is to keep it.

My fascination with the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 began during a bout of genealogy, which found me paging through Philadelphia death certificates. In late September of 1918, the typical causes of death—cardiac issues, cancers, accidents—gave way to another, ominous in its simplicity: pneumonia, often followed by the notation “subsequent to influenza.” Something tickled at my brain, a newspaper article regarding the bird flu scares of recent years, that the H5N1 virus responsible for that flu may be related to the virus which killed so many in 1918.

The reason for my deep dive into digital death certificates was due to my grandfather’s curious absence from the 1920 census. I’d found family records in Italy going back two centuries, found my grandfather’s emigration to the United States as a young boy, found his father’s naturalization papers, then unexpectedly, found a record from late in 1920 listing a marriage between my great-grandfather and, of all things, a second wife. But in the 1920 census, not a hint or a whisper, not on their street, or any neighboring street, nor any of the blocks after blocks that I searched page by tedious page.

Then I stumbled on records from an orphanage far outside the city that listed my grandfather as an “inmate,” a sad little name among many sad little names. He was only 12 years old.

My heart broke.

Quizzing my relatives revealed the story. My great-grandmother had died suddenly circa 1918-1919. My great-grandfather, a grief-stricken and overwhelmed father of four, had farmed out the children until he could find them a new mother. He married within a year of my great-grandmother’s passing. The family reunited, their lives continued.

Stories are birthed from a myriad of circumstances and ideas. I could not get the vision of my all-but-abandoned grandfather out of my head. Dumped in an orphanage, far from anybody or anything he knew or loved, desperate to return home. I also couldn’t shake the hundreds of death certificates from pneumonia, some “subsequent to influenza,” that I’d uncovered in my quest for my great-grandmother’s passing. So many of the victims had been young adults, an unbearable irony when viewed through the prism of the war raging a half a world away.

My forays into family history gave me a good impression of my great-grandparents’ immigrant community. Newspapers from the period, histories of the Great Influenza and an insatiable curiosity provided the rest. One morning, a girl woke me. Just 16 years old, she filled my mind’s ear with her tale:

Her parents had just died from the influenza. Her immigration status was precarious, her brothers fighting in the war, and a neighbor had dumped her at the door of a mysterious old man, a shoemaker the girl did not know, but who was the only person standing between this girl and an orphanage. Because this girl’s mother had been the village fortune teller. Because her neighbors feared her.

The girl was bright. She was a modern thinker born into a traditional world, tough as they come, hopeful without end and determined to prevent the metaphorical tornado churning its way through her city from sweeping her American dream into the maelstrom.

I knew I had to tell her story.

Connect with the author at mindytarquini.com.

A historical fantasy set in 1918 flu-ravaged Philadelphia, The Infinite Now by Mindy Tarquini (Hindsight, 2016) follows Fiora, a young immigrant struggling to learn the intricacies of time bending, teamwork and living in a world which seems as hell-bent on breaking her spirit as she is to keep it.

Come in and get (un)comfy

Behind the Book by Nic Stone

Nic Stone’s poignant YA debut, Dear Martin, addresses the vital issue of police brutality against African American teens. Informative, honest and incredibly important, this novel follows a bright 17-year-old student named Justyce McAllister. After a harrowing experience due to a police officer's racial bias, Justyce tries to process his trauma, anger and confusion by writing a series of letters addressed to the late Civil Rights champion, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

I hate being uncomfortable, so when I can avoid it, I do. The temperature inside my house is always set to 74 degrees, and I deliberately live in Georgia, which gets hot but rarely gets cold. (Being cold is infinitely worse than being hot, in my opinion.) I like my tea iced and my coffee steaming; my dresses loose, but my sneakers laced tight. And to sleep, I need my legs in pants, but my feet bare; my duvet warm, but my pillowcase cool.

These are obviously #FirstWorldProblems, but the thing is: I luxuriate in the comforts I do have a measure of control over, because, for the most part, my very existence in the world is pretty uncomfortable.

I’m African American. And while I’ve had people question this because of the placement of my cheekbones and the length and texture of my hair, at no point in my 32 years of existence have I been immune to the systemic racism embedded in the foundations of American society. I exist in this place at this time because my ancestors were taken from their homeland, sold and bought as chattel and made to work, day in and day out, without pay. They were forcefully separated from their families, literally whipped into submission and stripped of their humanity. They were physically, emotionally and psychologically brutalized. And when finally granted freedom, they were treated as second-class and told—through word and deed—that their ancestry and, therefore, the color of their skin made them inferior.

This is my legacy.

It is uncomfortable.

Especially when people—white people specifically—say “all that was a long time ago” and that we, American descendants of African slaves, should “let the slavery thing go” and “get over it.”

For a long time, that was exactly what I tried to do to avoid discomfort. I was often (read: usually) the only African American in the spaces I inhabited, and because my white peers often stated that they “didn’t even see me as black,” I just . . . went with it. I acted like being African American wasn’t a big deal and didn’t make a difference.

While this was also uncomfortable, it wasn’t as bad as the alternative: acknowledging the legacy and its trickle-down effects here in the 21st century.

But then an unarmed 17-year-old African American boy was shot to death by an overzealous neighborhood watch coordinator. Another unarmed 17-year-old African American boy was shot to death over loud music. An unarmed 18-year-old African American boy was shot and killed by a police officer in broad daylight. An unarmed 12-year-old African American was shot to death in a park. An unarmed . . .

You get the point.

Over and over. Death after death.

Hashtag after hashtag.

African American after African American.

I have two little African American boys of my own. They’re 1 and 5 now, but eventually they’ll be 12, 17, 18, like those other boys were. Continuing to act like there isn’t an issue—like the African Americanness didn’t matter . . .

That got uncomfortable.

It also made me realize something: None of us like being uncomfortable. And what seems to make us good ol’ Americans most uncomfortable are questions we can’t answer or problems we can’t fix. We hate those. I didn’t want to acknowledge the existence, let alone pervasiveness, of racism in this country because I didn’t know what the hell I could do about it. It made me feel helpless.

Which made me uncomfortable.

BUT.

I did it anyway. I dug into my legacy and faced the implications. I plumbed the depths of modern racism and waded through American history in search of its roots. I examined the civil rights movement, the Jim Crow era, Reconstruction, and American chattel slavery. I faced down the unanswerable questions and unsolvable problems.

And I put them in a book.

Because, the thing is, at the bottom of that well of discomfort was stuff I didn’t expect to find: Understanding. Empathy. Compassion. Respect for my fellow man.

And while I can’t fix racism, my discomfort over its existence has made me kinder. More considerate. Less judgmental.

Perhaps it’s time we all get a little uncomfortable.

 

Nic Stone was born and raised in a suburb of Atlanta, and the only thing she loves more than an adventure is a good story about one. After graduating from Spelman College, she worked extensively in teen mentoring and lived in Israel for a few years before returning to the U.S. to write full-time. Growing up with a wide range of cultures, religions and backgrounds, Stone strives to bring these diverse voices and stories to her work.

You can find her goofing off and/or fangirling over her husband and sons on most social media platforms as @getnicced.

Nic Stone’s poignant YA debut, Dear Martin, addresses the vital issue of police brutality against African American teens. Informative, honest and incredibly important, this novel follows a bright 17-year-old student named Justyce McAllister. After a harrowing experience due to a police officer's racial bias, Justyce tries to process his trauma, anger and confusion by writing a series of letters addressed to the late Civil Rights champion, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

FictionHorror

A school’s menace inspires a sinister novel

Behind the Book by Colin Winnette

The Job of the Wasp, the sixth novel from Colin Winnette, slips under your skin. When corpses begin to appear in a strange state-run school for orphaned boys, the novel’s unnamed narrator begins an investigation that steadily builds in surrealist horror. Winnette takes us back to his own creepy school, where a buzzing menace laid the groundwork for what would eventually become this twisted, experimental tale.

In The Job of the Wasp, a new arrival at a facility for orphan boys discovers several dead bodies hidden around the campus. He quickly begins the obsessive work of piecing together what’s happened and why, and along the way, he encounters the possibility of ghosts—and the wasps of my childhood.

The layout of the facility in the novel is drawn from the middle school I attended in Denton, Texas—although one wouldn’t necessarily know it to see the place. The gauze of memory, and the scant details included in the book itself, set the world of the novel at a slight distance, making it hazy and uncertain for the reader at times, just as it is for the narrator. But in order for that to work, to be more than just confusing, I needed a reliable foundation on which to build the dream. I needed a fixed sense of how the facility was laid out—how the yards looked, the lunch hall, where the lake was or the headmaster’s home—and my childhood memories made for a handy map.

My middle school sat on a series of rounded hills on the edge of town. It was an old facility, designed by a local architect long dead. The campus consisted of a series of long, narrow buildings, built almost entirely from red bricks, large panes of glass and some kind of splinter-prone wood. And in the eaves of almost every building, you could find a wasp’s nest.

A groundskeeper was always fighting them, hosing down the nests with chemicals or knocking them with a broom. And they always came back. The kids bolted through doorways, our books held above our heads. We stood warily in the halls, watching the wasps rebuild on the other side of a pane of glass. At lunch, they swooped down to our tables. At recess, they drifted into our field of play. They were everywhere. This constant, unpredictable threat.

These wasp nests were like a viral growth in the joints of our school’s buildings, and I couldn’t imagine the campus without imagining them. They were just always there. And because I was afraid of them then, and writing about fear, I knew I couldn’t ignore them now. The wasps became an integral part of the novel—a story about a young boy living at the heart of a dark and violent secret. Unsure how he fits into it all. Unsure what’s happening or why. Only confident in the presence of the threat, leading him to one of the novel’s central questions: What’s to be done with a threat that will not go away?

 

Author photo by Jennifer Yin

The Job of the Wasp, the sixth novel from Colin Winnette, slips under your skin. When corpses begin to appear in a chilling state-run school for orphaned boys, the novel’s unnamed narrator begins an investigation that steadily builds in surrealist horror. Winnette takes us back to his own creepy school, where a buzzing menace laid the groundwork for what would eventually become this twisted, experimental tale.

FictionHistorical FictionFamily Saga

A fierce beauty comes to life

Behind the Book by Gregory Blake Smith

The new novel from award-winning author Gregory Blake Smith explores Newport, Rhode Island, through five stories spanning three centuries. From a tennis pro in 2011 to Henry James as a budding writer, the novel connects lives and loves in an emotional, moving epic that presents a truly unique portrait of America. In a Behind the Book feature, Smith introduces a few of his characters: closeted gay man Franklin Drexel, tennis player Sandy Alison and his love interest, Alice du Pont—plus a few more.

I fell in love with Newport, Rhode Island, as a young man when I was teaching myself how to make 18th-century furniture. Newport, with its fabulous Goddard-Townsend cabinetmakers, was like a mecca to me. Only years later did I get the idea of setting a novel there. It’s a city whose remarkable history is preserved in its streets and buildings. It almost seems like you can hear the boot heels of the past on its cobblestones, or spy the ghost of a Quaker peering out the tiny window of a half-cape, or see in the harbor the masts of ships, or dream of life in one of the fabulous Gilded Age “cottages” on Bellevue Avenue. Building my own cottage, Windermere (with the brick and mortar of my imagination: all 28 rooms!), and peopling Newport with three centuries of characters has been the greatest pleasure of my writing life.

So about those characters. Readers seem to wonder to what degree they’re based on historical people. While there are a couple of historical characters—my bon vivant conniver Franklin Drexel is very loosely based on Harry Lehr (called “King Lehr” for the way he ruled over Newport society)—most of the characters in The Maze at Windermere are the inventions of a novelist’s imagination. Where they come from is as much a mystery to me as it is to readers. But just as an illustration, here’s how my 21st-century heroine got herself born.

I had just returned from Newport, where the idea for the novel had first bloomed in me, and I was wandering in a kind of creative delirium through the Boston Public Gardens, dreaming of the novel-to-be, when I happened to see a young woman with cerebral palsy walking near the swan boats. I only saw her for a short time, but in those few seconds, the character of Alice du Pont came alive in my head. I saw her in all her tragic beauty: the encumbrance of her disability, and yet the fierceness with which she lives her life, her wit, her daring, her moral courage. OK, no doubt that’s not literally true—the complete character must have come later in the writing of Alice—but that moment, the sight of that young woman walking with her strained yet beautiful grace set in motion the story of Sandy and Alice.

And what about Sandy? For all his good looks and easygoing charm, there’s a kind of emotional blindness to him, isn’t there? A limitation to his moral sight that requires the reader to constantly re-evaluate him, especially in regard to what degree he is responsible for what happens to Alice. When he kisses her in that scene in the library at Windermere, is he succumbing to the duplicitous motives that lie at the heart of so many of the other characters in the novel? Or is it a moment when he begins to reach beyond conventional ideas of female beauty, of personal worth, and begins to grow both morally and emotionally?

In each of the novel’s eras, the reader is confronted with similar questions of culpability: Is Franklin Drexel’s scheme to marry a rich woman he can never love excusable because he lives in a world that has no place for him as a gay man? Should the young Henry James have seen sooner that his attentions to Alice Taylor might be misinterpreted? And is even the despicable Major Ballard redeemed by his beginning to love the young woman he had only meant to seduce? None of these questions are simply answered, but the reader’s mission—should she choose to accept it!—is to note the ways in which the different stories parallel or mirror or invert one another, and in doing so, to marvel at the infinite capacities—and the duplicities—of the human heart.

 

Author photo by Laura Goering

The new novel from award-winning author Gregory Blake Smith explores Newport, Rhode Island, through five stories spanning three centuries. From a tennis pro in 2011 to Henry James as a budding writer, the novel connects lives and loves in an emotional, moving epic that presents a truly unique portrait of America. In a Behind the Book feature, Smith introduces a few of his characters: closeted gay man Franklin Drexel, tennis player Sandy Alison and his love interest, Alice du Pont—plus a few more.

FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

The box buried in the backyard

Behind the Book by Chanel Cleeton

Romance author Chanel Cleeton was unsure whether she’d ever write again after finishing her latest series, Wild Aces. The only things that inspired her were the stories she had grown up hearing about her grandparents’ flight from Cuba, and how they had buried their prized possessions in the backyard the night before they left the island for America. But as Cleeton began work on a plot inspired by her family history, she realized the story would need to be a different genre entirely in order to do it justice.

My favorite part of writing is the adventure my characters take me on as their story emerges. When I begin working on a book, it’s that adventure I look forward to most, and while I usually have a kernel of an idea to guide me, a rough sketch of a plot and of my characters, the heart of the story is often unknown to me until I sit down at my computer and discover where the story will take me. That sense of adventure fuels my passion for writing, making it exciting and challenging while pushing me to grow as a writer, explore new boundaries and learn new things about myself.

In the summer of 2016, I was at a crossroads in my career. I had finished writing the final book in my Wild Aces series, and while I had some romance ideas rattling around in my mind, nothing was really jumping out at me. I liked the characters in the story I was working on well enough, but I didn’t love them like I wanted to. And as a writer, when you spend months working on a book and exploring your characters, it’s difficult when you don’t feel that connection. To be honest, although I didn’t admit this to anyone, I was at a point where I wasn’t sure if I would keep writing—and that was scary. I didn’t know what my next book would be or if I would have another publisher deal. And honestly, it was a familiar feeling. It wasn’t the first time I had felt that way, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But it did inspire me to step outside my comfort zone and write something different, something a little bit scary.

Because I did have an idea that had taken hold. But it wasn’t a romance novel like my earlier books. It was based on my family’s history in Cuba, based on my own attempt to better understand my Cuban identity, to explore an island I was desperate to visit yet had only ever experienced through my grandparents’ memories. It was inspired by a family story told to me by my father—of the night before they left Cuba, when my grandparents snuck out to their backyard and buried their most prized possessions, knowing they would be forced to leave them behind when they fled the country. That story stuck with me for weeks, posing the question that inspired Next Year in Havana. If you were forced to leave your home, and you had a box in which to place your most cherished items, what would you save for the day you would return?

I knew that the heart of the book would be about two women, that they would be bound by a powerful legacy, and because I am a hopeless romantic, I knew that each woman would have a great love, a man who would challenge them—epic love stories set against the backdrop of revolution and its aftermath. But the focus wasn’t the romances. It was equal parts a love letter to Cuba, then and now, and a story of the courage and strength of these two women and their family and friends.

In the beginning, the scope of the novel was daunting and took me into uncharted territory. Working with dual timelines was often like fighting a Rubik’s Cube, and writing in two distinct time periods brought its own set of challenges. But as soon as I dove into the story, as soon as I met my characters, I fell in love with them, with the experience and with the journey they took me on. And when I found myself wading in murky waters and didn’t know the best way to proceed, it was the lessons I’d learned writing romance that guided my way as I focused on what fueled the story, the human elements of war and political upheaval.

When I began writing Next Year in Havana, I wasn’t sure what would come next or where this journey would take me. Was this move away from romance a one-time thing or a more permanent one? But as with my writing, my characters answered that question for me. As soon as I introduced one of my heroine’s sisters and discovered her fascinating background, I knew I had to write her story. And then another book came, with more characters demanding their stories be told. And I’m loving the challenge that this adventure presents as I move into a new genre, learning new things and incorporating the elements that have filled the heart of my previous books—love, sacrifice, family—in my forthcoming women’s fiction titles. I can’t wait to share this next chapter with my readers and am so grateful to everyone who is joining me on this new adventure.

 

Author photo by Chris Malpass

Romance author Chanel Cleeton was unsure whether she’d ever write again after finishing her latest series, Wild Aces. The only things that inspired her were the stories she had grown up hearing about her grandparents’ flight from Cuba, and how they had buried their prize possessions in the backyard the night before they left the island for America. But as Cleeton began work on a plot inspired by her family history, she realized the story would need to be a different genre entirely in order to do it justice.

Black History

Remembering an American Hero

Behind the Book by James L. Swanson

Chasing King’s Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Assassin, can trace its origins back to my childhood. When I was a boy, my mother—an artist—led me to what she called her “morgue”: a tall, floor-to-ceiling closet with a sliding door that concealed several shelves piled high with vintage source material, including newspapers, magazines and picture books documenting the tumultuous events of the 1960s, including the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. Mesmerized, I paged through old Life magazines from the spring of 1968. I opened long-folded newspapers, their pages browned and brittle, and read their frightening headlines. I wanted—needed—to learn more. For years, I have collected the books, documents, artifacts and original sources that allowed me to write Chasing King’s Killer.

My book is about more than the assassination. The story opens before the tragedy, in 1950s America, when a 29-year-old minister survived a shocking, near-fatal stabbing in New York City and went on to become the greatest civil rights leader in American history. I want young readers to know Martin Luther King, Jr. in life—first as a boy, then as a young man and finally as a leader on the world stage. Readers accompany King on his amazing 10-year journey to greatness. And then they travel to April 1968, and to King’s fateful trip to Memphis, Tennessee. They also meet a mysterious, lifelong criminal whose 1967 escape from prison sent him on a bizarre, year-long odyssey that climaxed with the murder of Dr. King, a dramatic escape and the biggest manhunt in American history. I set the whole story against the backdrop of the tumultuous 1960s that had mesmerized me in my youth: the civil rights movement, the FBI’s harassment of King, the Vietnam War, the counterculture and the race to the moon.

To research Chasing King’s Killer, I immersed myself in the documents, photographs, music and popular culture of the 1960s. I studied biographies, memoirs and histories, but also newspapers and magazines to capture the mood of the era. I combed through thousands of images that tell the story of the turbulent time of civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War protests. I discovered a shocking and surprising new letter written by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, illustrating his hatred for King and his desire to ruin him. (Published for the first time in this book, the letter has already made the news!) And I located original examples of the four different types of FBI wanted posters for James Earl Ray. Each one tells a story. All of these sources put me into the mindset of what it was like to live through the tragic events of 1968. My research was every bit as intense as the work I do in the books I write for an adult audience. I researched everything from slavery and the Civil War to the history of the civil rights movement and the pop culture of 1960s America. All told, I used several hundred sources and several thousand photographs. Some photographs will be familiar, others are seldom seen. All are incredibly moving. I think we achieved seamless matching of text and images.

It is exciting to write a book set in the 20th century. One of the frustrations of writing about Abraham Lincoln is that he lived long before the age of film or sound recording. Everyone who once knew him was long dead. In contrast, while researching this book, I was able to meet some of those who actually knew Dr. Martin Luther King. It was a privilege to meet people like Julian Bond, Dorothy Nash and Congressman John Lewis, who wrote the foreword to the book. And unlike Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. can speak to us through films and recordings. We can watch him in action striding across America’s stage, and hear his magnificent and stirring voice.

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, haunts us to this day. We miss him still. But the tragedy of 50 years ago can also inspire us. King was a great man who loved America. He was an optimist about the country’s future who believed that one day “we as a people will get to the promised land.” He was also one of the bravest men in American history who lived for years under the near-constant threat of violence and death, even more so than Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy. On the last night of his life, in the most moving speech he ever gave, King said, “Tonight I am not fearing any man,” and that “I want to live a long life.” It was not to be. Half a century later, the all too brief life of Martin Luther King, Jr.—he was only 39 years old when he died—continues to inspire us.

I hope that sharing his story will inspire a new generation of young Americans.

 

Author photo by Lisa Nipp.

Chasing King’s Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Assassin, can trace its origins back to my childhood. When I was a boy, my mother—an artist—led me to what she called her “morgue”: a tall, floor-to-ceiling closet with a sliding door that concealed several shelves piled high with vintage source material, including newspapers, magazines and picture books documenting the tumultuous events of the 1960s, including the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. Mesmerized, I paged through old Life magazines from the spring of 1968. I opened long-folded newspapers, their pages browned and brittle, and read their frightening headlines. I wanted—needed—to learn more. For years, I have collected the books, documents, artifacts and original sources that allowed me to write Chasing King’s Killer.

FictionHistorical Fiction

Eleanor and Hick, Darling and Dearest: Amy Bloom on ‘White Houses’

Behind the Book by Amy Bloom

There are 3,000 letters between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, then a prominent female journalist, in 18 large, heavy boxes in the archives of the FDR Library in Hyde Park. I first read about the letters, written between 1932 and Eleanor Roosevelt’s death in 1962, in Blanche Wiesen Cook’s exceptional biography, Eleanor Roosevelt (Viking, 1992). She quotes from the letters generously, concluding that the two women were lovers. I went and read the letters. No wild speculation was required.

“I long to kiss the south-east corner of your lips . . . ” and

“My dear, if you meet me, may I forget there are other people present or must I behave?” and

“ . . . I went and kissed your photograph instead and tears were in my eyes. Please keep most of my heart in Washington as long as I’m here, for most of mine is with you!”

These are not the kind of things that I have ever said to just-a-friend, no matter how close. But Blanche Wiesen Cook was pilloried by other historians in 1992 for examining the facts and the letters and concluding that Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok were not just good friends, not just in love, but lovers. Within five years, most of those historians contacted Cook privately and apologized saying, Gee, I finally read the letters. You’re right. (Oops.)

Ken Burns, a great burnisher of the Roosevelt name, is one of the last hold-outs, feeling, apparently, that although Teddy’s maniacal escapades in Africa and FDR’s numerous love affairs only brighten their images, Eleanor Roosevelt’s long love affair was just . . . tabloid gossip. His documentary on the Roosevelts aggravated me as much as his one on jazz had delighted me.

“I assume when you say a relationship you are assuming that there was a sexual relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. We have no evidence whatsoever of that, and none of the historians and experts believe it,” Burns said at a television critics event in September 2014. “This is an intimate [look at the Roosevelts], not a tabloid, and we just don’t know. . . . We have to be very careful because sometimes we want to read into things that aren’t there.”

And sometimes, Mr. Burns, a smoking cigar is, indeed, a smoking cigar (to paraphrase both Blanche Wiesen Cook and Sigmund Freud).

The thousands of beautifully written—and beautifully penned—letters between these two women brought them to life for me, from their early attraction to their burning passion (which both of them, as staid middle-aged ladies, found hilarious, unexpected and irresistible) to their 30-year friendship and all of its ups and downs, from feelings of neglect, to feelings of possessiveness, to cheerful gossip and the absolute unbreakable private Christmas party of two, and to their grief at the separation they both chose. Although I wish I’d seen the letters Hick had burnt (too racy, she said), the 18 boxes gave me Eleanor and Lorena, Darling and Dearest, determined, despairing, purposeful, wild and restrained, passionate and incapable of parting—and they gave me this book.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of White Houses.

There are 3,000 letters between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, then a prominent female journalist, in 18 large, heavy boxes in the archives of the FDR Library in Hyde Park. I first read about the letters, written between 1932 and Eleanor Roosevelt’s death in 1962, in Blanche Wiesen Cook’s exceptional biography, Eleanor Roosevelt (Viking, 1992). She quotes from the letters generously, concluding that the two women were lovers. I went and read the letters. No wild speculation was required.

RomanceHistorical Romance

The trailblazing black doctor behind ‘Tempest’

Behind the Book by Beverly Jenkins

Romance icon Beverly Jenkins concludes her Old West series with Tempest, a passionate, sweeping love story between a frontier physician and his mail-order bride. Regan Carmichael understands the dangers of traveling to the Wyoming Territory, and doesn’t hesitate to shoot a man she believes is trying to hijack her station wagon. That man turns out to be her intended, Dr. Colton Lee, who was attempting to rescue the coach from bandits. A dynamic woman who seeks equality in marriage is not what Colton had in mind when he set out to find a caretaker for his home and young daughter. But despite his initial shock at Regan’s behavior, he comes to appreciate her strength, and both explore what it would mean to forge a true partnership.

Many depictions of the Wild West have predominantly white characters, but in reality, the American frontier was extremely diverse. The Old West series tells the stories of people of color, and Jenkins has made a point of sharing the historical inspirations for her novels. In order to write a character such as Dr. Colton Lee, Jenkins researched the opportunities for African-American physicians in the 19th century and came across an incredible true story.

As a writer of historical romantic fiction, one of my pleasures is the research. Mining the works of historians such as Dr. Benjamin Quarles, Dorothy A. Sterling, James M. McPherson and others allows me to pepper my novels with documented facts and introduce readers to real life figures they may be unfamiliar with. In my newest release, Tempest, our hero is African-American physician Dr. Colton Lee. The story takes place in 19th century Wyoming, where Jim Crow and segregation were alive and well, so a writer must ask herself—where was he trained? That question took me to the medical school of Howard University, which opened its doors in 1868 with eight students and five faculty members. Among that faculty was the remarkable African-American physician, Dr. Alexander T. Augusta.

Born free in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1825, Augusta hoped to pursue his dreams of becoming a doctor by attending the University of Pennsylvania, only to be denied entrance. However, a member of the school’s faculty took the young black student under his wing and taught him privately. By 1850, Augusta and his Native American wife, Mary O. Burgoin, were living in Canada after he’d been accepted for study by the medical college at the University of Toronto. Upon receiving his M.B., he was appointed head of the Toronto City Hospital.

Back home in the states, the Civil War was raging, but black men weren’t officially allowed to fight for the Union until 1863. On April 14 of that year, Dr. Augusta became the first of eight black officers commissioned. Given the rank of major, he was appointed head surgeon of the 7th U.S. Colored Infantry, a tenure undermined by discrimination and disrespect. The average monthly pay for a major was one hundred and sixty-nine dollars. Major Augusta was initially paid seven dollars; a rate even lower than white privates, who earned thirteen. His letter to Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts solved the problem and resulted in him being compensated appropriately, but other issues remained. In Baltimore, while traveling to a meeting, Augusta was attacked by a mob who took exception to a man of his race wearing a uniform. Back on the war front, his white assistants, who were also surgeons, complained about taking orders from a black man. Rather than settling the matter in Augusta’s favor, President Lincoln transferred him to Camp Barker’s Freedman’s Hospital near Washington. But by war’s end, Augusta had been promoted to lieutenant colonel, making him the highest-ranking black officer of the time.

After his service, he led Lincoln Hospital in Savannah until 1868, and then moved to D.C. where he began private practice and taught at Howard medical school until 1877. During a number of those years, the school fell on hard times and was unable to pay its faculty. Augusta showed his dedication to his students by teaching for free. When he left Howard, he headed up D.C.’s Freedmen’s Hospital.

Despite the many lives he saved on the battlefield, his spotless military record and his stellar achievements before and after the war, the American Medical Association never recognized Dr. Augusta as a physician during his lifetime because of his race. Yet, he holds the title to many of our nation’s African-American firsts: first commissioned officer, first to teach at a U.S. medical school, first to lead a major hospital.

And there’s one more. When he died in 1890, he was the first black officer buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Beverly Jenkins shares the story of the remarkable man who served as inspiration for the hero of her latest novel, Tempest.

Mystery & SuspenseFictionHistorical Mystery

‘Downton’ writer takes on an infamous Golden-Age family

Behind the Book by Jessica Fellowes

“Downton Abbey” expert Jessica Fellowes (she’s the author of five official companion books) turns an eye to a different headline-making family in her historical debut, The Mitford Murders. Based on the true story of the murder of Florence Nightingale Shore (the goddaughter of the famous war nurse), The Mitford Murders follows Louisa Cannon, the newest young employee at the Mitford’s manor, as she navigates their high-profile world. But when Louisa and 16-year-old Nancy Mitford find themselves at the crime scene of Florence’s murder, their lives begin to spiral out of control.

In a Behind the Book feature, Fellowes dishes on exactly what drew her to the drama-plagued Mitford sisters, the influence “Downton Abbey” had on her story and more.

As a young girl, seeing my uncle Julian was always a treat. He was my father’s younger brother and, until I was 16, unmarried and without a child of his own. We used to go on holidays to Majorca and the South of France together to stay with friends of his who had children, but mostly we enjoyed each other’s company. Julian was never less than a fount of amusing stories, but the ones I enjoyed the most were the anecdotes about our family that he had collected, mostly from his own elderly aunts. My grandfather was born in 1912 and though he was an only child, his father had several sisters and it was these women who told Julian of a dying Edwardian age, with all its extraordinary snobberies and customs, as well as of the challenges and tragedies of a life lived during and after World War I.

It was these stories that we later saw in “Downton Abbey,” which Julian created and wrote for six seasons. I was lucky enough to become a part of the “Downton” world when I wrote the official companion books, which told not only the story of how the series was made but also sought to explain something of the historical context that inspired so many of the characters and plots. I had grown up working for newspapers as well as the iconic Country Life magazine, which taught me a lot about life inside the great houses of Britain. And all the while, Julian and I had continued to talk and share stories, leading me to the writers of the between-the-wars period: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, W. Somerset Maugham and Nancy Mitford.

When I had finished the five “Downton Abbey” books, I knew I wanted to write a novel next and I knew I wanted it to be set in the 1920s—a time that I am both familiar with and endlessly fascinated by. By an extraordinary piece of luck, I was approached by editor Ed Wood at Little, Brown, who asked me if I would consider writing a series of Golden Age-style mysteries featuring the Mitford sisters.

Of course, I knew their legend well—six sisters who grew up in Oxfordshire, England, who each came of age during the 1920s and 1930s. Between them, they represent everything that was compelling, glamorous, political and even appalling about that time: Nancy the satirical novelist; Pamela the countrywoman; Diana the fascist; Unity, who fell in love with Hitler; Decca the communist; and Debo, who became the Duchess of Devonshire and ran one of Britain’s grandest houses. We had the idea for a series, with each book focusing on one of the sisters at a key moment in their lives. I knew I wanted a pair of fictional protagonists who could appear in every book, taking us in and out of every room both upstairs and downstairs, so I created Louisa Cannon, a nursery maid for the Mitfords, and her (sort-of) love interest, policeman Guy Sullivan.

A few weeks after I had started planning the first novel, Ed sent me a newspaper article online about a murder in January 1920 that had never been solved. Could this, he wondered, be our first crime? This was the tragic murder of Florence Nightingale Shore. She was brave, having worked in both the Boer War and World War I, yet only two months after she was demobilized, she was attacked on a train and left for dead.

When I realized that there was a possible connection between Florence and the Mitfords, I knew this was the perfect crime. The inquest records had been destroyed but there were numerous newspaper reports of what had been, at the time, a famous and shocking murder. I was also able to trace details of her will, find photographs of her lodgings and look up the details of her family ancestry as well as those of her close relatives and friends. All of which led me closer to what, I believe, is a likely solution to her terrible death. Alongside Guy’s investigations is always the bright and irascible Nancy, whose predilection for story-telling and close observations are of invaluable help to him. Louisa, too, becomes drawn into the crime and discovers her own talent for problem-solving. For the next book, Bright Young Dead, I’m writing about Pamela Mitford and another real-life criminal. But it’s the smaller details of the world then that continue to fascinate me, and I hope that I can get that across to the readers in a way that feels real and relevant. That, for me, is the privilege of my work.

“Downton Abbey” expert Jessica Fellowes (the author of five official companion books) turns an eye to a different headline-making family in her historical debut, The Mitford Murders. In a Behind the Book feature, Fellowes dishes on exactly what drew her to the drama-plagued Mitford sisters, the influence “Downton Abbey” had on her story and more.

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