All Behind the Book essays

RomanceHistorical Romance

Dancing our way into a colorful Regency

Behind the Book by Vanessa Riley

Regency romances with diverse casts such as Netflix’s “Bridgerton” may be perceived as merely a laudable fantasy, but the reality is that the time period was far less lily-white than many historical romances acknowledge. Daniel Thackery, the titular nobleman in Vanessa Riley’s An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler, is Black, and was inspired by real people of color who were elevated to similar positions by the prince regent, George IV. In this essay, Riley explores the many fascinating layers of Daniel’s experience as a Black aristocrat.

In 1982, cartoonist Bob Thaves wrote a memorable line in his “Frank and Ernst” syndicated strip: “Sure he [Fred Astaire] was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards . . . and in high heels.”

It’s a sexist quote humorously offered to disclose what we don’t often talk about, the fact that two wonderfully attired peers whirl about a ballroom floor, spinning with that look of falling in love—shimmering eyes, bated breath—but the world doesn’t see them as equals.

The melanated set did exist in this world of finery built on exquisite manners and wealth from colonization, where gossip could spread from an impertinent look.

When writing people of color in the aristocracy, I think of Thaves’ quote. The melanated set did exist in this world of finery built on exquisite manners and wealth from colonization, where gossip could spread from an impertinent look. One could be vilified for being on the wrong balcony with the wrong person or getting caught falling in love with the wrong peer at the wrong time.

Imagine a couple dancing to a reel composed by a famous violinist. The couple is touching, lovingly in each other's arms, spinning around a leased, luxurious ballroom. Thousands of scenes from books may have entered your head, but did any include the renowned Black musician George Bridgetower or the rich rooms of the well-connected Black proprietor Jack Beef?

Now make the couple interracial, or Black, or Asian, or LGBTQ+ or with a visible disability. Whether we want to admit it or not, the story changes. Different sensibilities come into our well-conditioned, biased minds. We can’t help it. We’re born that way.

In An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler, Daniel Thackery is one of the prince regent's favorites. It is a fact that Prinny elevated exceptional people of color, investing in their careers and allowing them access to his social world. It is also a fact that wealthy people of color attended balls, held balls and were outfitted in all the trappings money could buy.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler.

We originally met Daniel, now Lord Ashbrook, as a reserved barrister and nephew to the Widow’s Grace mastermind Lady Shrewsbury in A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby. In An Earl, the Girl, and a Toddler the second book of the Rogues and Remarkable Women series, we see him moving in all his responsibilities. He’s a widowed single dad. He’s trying to keep his aunt and her women out of jail. He works in the prince regent's courts. His hands are full, but he deals with the imperfect world as it is.

Daniel must contend with those who don’t like his ascension. He must ignore the glares of some who don’t want him at the balls daring to dance with a member of the ton. He must share the chalked floor with those who refuse to acknowledge his humanity and hope his ratafia is watery.

Things as simple as making sure his cuffs are pressed and his cravat is perfectly tied feed into his anxiety. He understands that are people waiting for the slightest appearance of wrong to allow that niggling feeling, that suspicious notion of his character and motives, to convict him in their minds.

Guilty.

They will cheer if he’s scandalized. For some of his peers, it’s wrong for Daniel to be here, to be anywhere, to breathe.

And our hero knows this. He’s trying to build a better world for his little girl. He has hope. Breathe.

Did I mention the ones who love him? He’s an earl, right? Daniel is not a victim. He is a man who is a party to a system built for men. He has money and power within a patriarchy that rewards power.

Daniel is smart. He’ll not do life alone. He refuses to be one speck of color on a snowy canvas. He has good friends who share his ethnicity, his interests or both. They help him laugh and remember that he’s bright and loved. They’ll help him pick out his dancing slippers with an inch of Regency heel.

I’ve given you a glimpse of some of the things I think about when I write about people of color intersecting with the aristocracy. By acknowledging the knee-jerk discomfort that may arise from seeing Black characters in these roles while still surrounding the characters in the joy of being who they are and loving the skin they bring to the ballrooms, the world expands.

In this context, we learn about people and enjoy differing perspectives without the othering or painful narratives long associated with history and Black people and people of color. That’s a ballroom all can visit for a celebration of dance, dexterity and killer shoes.

Author Vanessa Riley explores the many fascinating layers of her latest hero’s experience as a Black aristocrat, which is more rooted in historical truth than many readers would expect.

Nonfiction

How Elizabeth Letts discovered the freedom of the open road—in the midst of lockdown

Behind the Book by Elizabeth Letts

The Ride of Her Life tells the story of Annie Wilkins’ epic horseback road trip from Maine to the West Coast in 1954. As author Elizabeth Letts finished writing her book in 2020, she learned from Annie how to find contentment and freedom even during quarantine.

Annie Wilkins inspired me. In 1954, 62 years old, penniless and unwell, she set off from Maine on the cusp of winter believing she could ride her horse all the way to California. When I decided to write about her, I thought I’d found a path to escape just like she had. I imagined myself gliding down endless highways as I did research for my book, freed from the concerns of daily life. I’d be Annie, unfettered, alone, no cell phone in my pocket relentlessly calling me to the things of this world. Or at least, that’s how I pictured it would go.

And no wonder escape was my fantasy. I’m a member of the “sandwich generation,” juggling the demands of a frail, aging parent and a growing teenage son. My life is punctuated by ordinary things—grocery shopping and doctors’ appointments, kids’ sports practices and calling the plumber. Most of the time, I find it hard to leave town even for a few days. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Ride of Her Life.

Despite all this, I geared up to investigate Annie’s epic adventure, a journey that I had already planned to retrace inch by inch—if I could just find the time. In 2017, I started to follow Annie’s route in chunks. Using vintage maps for guidance, I sought out a landscape that no longer existed but whose traces nonetheless remained in plain sight if you knew where to look—filling stations with a couple of pumps out front, roadside diners and motor courts, Main Streets of small towns. America as it was, just on the cusp of being transformed by the massive interstate highway system. Each time I ventured out, I was caught up in the romance of the vast American landscape. Each time, I hurried home before I was quite finished, wishing I had more time to stay on the road.

I confess I envied Annie’s freedoms—a woman on her own, with her horse and dog for company, doing precisely and only what she pleased. I often wished I, too, could leave everything behind—the instant messages, the emails, the work and home responsibilities that modern technology allows us to bring along so that we never truly get away. 

“As I spun the results of my research into a story, my own vista grew smaller. But Annie’s world got bigger and bigger as she traveled to the wide-open spaces of the West.”

The Ride of Her Life was mostly complete when, in late February 2020, I decided to squeeze in another trip. I didn’t know it would be the last one—but as every reader now knows, the world was about to change. Within a month, my son was sent home for online schooling; my older daughters both moved home. The quiet sanctuary where I did my writing was filled with people jostling for desk space, fridge space and bandwidth. I moved my laptop from my home office into my bedroom and immersed myself in what solitude I could find.

Throughout the next months, as I spun the results of my research into a story, my own vista grew smaller. But Annie’s world got bigger and bigger as she traveled from the wooded confines of New England to the wide-open spaces of the West. And it seemed that the longer I stayed in my own home, the better I understood Annie. She was a single woman, short and square, working class and proud of it, divorced and with no children at a time when women were judged mostly by their relation to others—mother, wife, widow. Annie Wilkins never went anywhere or did much of anything except work in the kinds of jobs available to a woman with a sixth grade education. She was trapped in a life that was pretty much inevitable for her. She had no means of escape.

“The binds I had chafed at were less like boundaries and more like the yellow lines on the highway—not walls to keep me confined but guidelines to keep me straight on the road.”

And how did she respond to that? Unfailingly, for the first 62 years of her life, she just kept going. Not a word of complaint. She adopted her father’s motto—“Keep going and you’ll get there”—which is helpful for a journey, even if it’s the ordinary journey of life.

As I wrote about Annie’s life and travels, I began to perceive that I hadn’t really been stuck before. The binds I had chafed at were less like boundaries and more like the yellow lines on the highway—not walls to keep me confined but guidelines to keep me straight on the road.

Yes, Annie’s journey was epic, but the things she carried—her pluck and determination, her faith in the essential goodness of the world and her love for her animal companions—were all things she possessed before she started. And so, as I sat at home with my laptop, slowly growing used to the restricted world we’ve been living in, I learned that the truest journeys of our lives take place in our hearts. That’s the lesson Annie taught me. And it was a lesson I needed to learn.

 

Author photo credit © Ted Saunders

Writing about an epic horseback road trip from 1954 helped author Elizabeth Letts find contentment in the pandemic world of 2020.
Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical Fantasy

Me and my shadow

Behind the Book by A.C. Wise

Author A.C. Wise sheds a light on the “inherent darkness” of Peter Pan, which she explores in her new historical fantasy, Wendy, Darling.

There were several aspects of the Peter Pan story I wanted to explore through Wendy, Darling. To my mind, there’s a lot of darkness inherent in the tale—the idea of a boy who refuses to grow up, who kidnaps children from their beds at night and who is able to become separated from his shadow. There’s a forced innocence to Peter, a determination not to see the more frightening and unpleasant aspects of reality (for instance, the stealing of children) by narrowly focusing on the bright world of make-believe, and never looking behind him at what kind of chaos his actions might cause.

“Once you’ve been to a world where animals talk or children can fly, how do you return to the mundane world, the day to day?”

I also wanted to look at how that worldview might play into various definitions of family, particularly motherhood. When Peter takes Wendy to Neverland as a child, he wants her to be a mother to him and the Lost Boys. By his definition, that means cooking, cleaning up after him, telling stories and sewing his shadow back on when he loses it. It’s yet another abdication of responsibility. Peter wants someone to do all the work, deal with all the consequences of his playing and running around and making a mess, so that his fun is never interrupted and he never has to pause or look back, knowing someone else will deal with it.

The inciting incident in Wendy, Darling is when Peter reappears in Wendy’s life when she is grown, with a child of her own, and takes her daughter, Jane, away to Neverland. I wanted to contrast the realities of motherhood as Wendy experiences it with Peter’s idealized version. In a similar way, I wanted to contrast Wendy’s process of building a family and a life for herself after Neverland with Peter’s attempts to create a family within Neverland by stealing children and forcing them into certain roles. Found and chosen family stories are of great interest to me, and here, Peter’s idea of found family is a dark inversion of Wendy’s healthier version.

Another aspect of the Peter Pan story I wanted to explore in Wendy, Darling is what happens after “the end.” With portal fantasy stories, I’ve always been interested in the lasting impact the journey to another world has on a character. Once you’ve been to a world where animals talk or children can fly, how do you return to the mundane world, the day to day? How does it change your relationships with the people around you who haven’t experienced that kind of magic? Several creators have done a wonderful job of tackling these questions in films, novels, short stories and games, and since many of those are stories I love, I wanted to try my hand at providing some possible answers as well.

 

Author photo by Steve Schultz.

Author A.C. Wise sheds a light on the “inherent darkness” of Peter Pan, which she explores in her new historical fantasy, Wendy, Darling.

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

China, then and now

Behind the Book by Brian Klingborg

Brian Klingborg’s Thief of Souls follows Inspector Lu Fei as he hunts a serial killer operating around a tiny town in northeast China. In this essay, Klingborg explores his enduring fascination with China and the unique combination of factors that make it a perfect setting for a mystery.

I first visited China in the summer of 1987 and took a three-week odyssey by sleeper train from Guangzhou to Nanjing, Shanghai, Xian—home of the famous terra-cotta warriors—and finally to Beijing.

Despite economic reforms launched in 1978, the country seemed caught in a time warp during that hot, humid summer. Most businesses remained state-owned, and the nefarious “iron rice bowl” system was in full effect—many workers enjoyed job security, but low wages and a lack of merit pay led to poor motivation.

Like the country itself, Shanghai was frozen in time. Grandiose European buildings dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries lined the Bund but were mostly derelict. Beijing was a city of expansive highways, nearly devoid of vehicles. The pickings were slim in food aisles. If you wanted chocolate or other import items, you had to go to a “Friendship Store”—where no Chinese citizens were allowed to shop—and pay with “foreign exchange certificates.” Tiananmen Square was vast and empty, and viewing Mao’s corpse required only a short wait in line.

My, how times have changed . . .

Shanghai is now a city of towering skyscrapers and blinding lights. Private industry is booming, and upward mobility is the name of the game. Foreign goods are widely available, and judging from the Louis Vuitton handbags and designer clothes in evidence, people have the money to pay for them. Beijing’s roads are clogged with stop-and-go traffic, much of it consisting of imported luxury cars. And you can forget about visiting Mao—the line currently stretches for what seems like the entire length of the Great Wall.

These dazzling changes signify a rapid period of Chinese growth, a trend that, if it continues, may see the nation become the world’s foremost political, economic and military power. For some, this is a frightening prospect.

A rising China is the setting of my new novel, Thief of Souls, in which a Chinese police officer investigates a bizarre murder in a small northern town and runs afoul of local Communist Party bosses, corrupt business interests and a truly deranged murderer.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Thief of Souls.

In writing Thief of Souls, I had several goals in mind. I hoped to create a compelling mystery that did justice to a unique culture and people that many westerners are only familiar with through negative references. I wanted to explore the pressures and paradoxes Chinese citizens face as their society and way of life undergo radical transformation. And last but not least, I figured it was high time I leveraged the 30-plus years I spent studying Chinese history and religion into something productive!

I drew on my own academic background and the four years I spent living in Taiwan, three of those working locally for a Chinese company, as well as many later years of professional and personal travels to the region. I also conducted scads of research. And I was very aware that, as someone who is not Chinese, I had a solemn responsibility to base my story on a factual framework and to feature characters of flesh and blood rather than cardboard cutouts.

I hope readers enjoy the mystery and suspense of Thief of Souls but also see a kindred spirit in the daily challenges faced by many Chinese citizens—and their aspirations for a better future.

After all, as the old saying goes: “Within the four seas, we are all one family.”

 

Author photo by Lanchi Venator

Brian Klingborg explores his enduring fascination with China and the unique combination of factors that make it a perfect setting for a mystery.

Fiction

The Catcher and the Essence

Behind the Book by J. William Lewis

For fans of J.D. Salinger’s classic novel The Catcher in the Rye, the vast emotional and existential explorations of the hero of J. William Lewis' debut novel will ring true. The magnitude of the adolescent burden found a home in Holden Caulfield, and so it has once again in Kit Biddle of The Essence of Nathan Biddle. Kit was inspired not only by Holden by also by the author’s teenage self, and here Lewis elaborates on these connections—and where they begin to fray.

July 16, 2021, will mark the 70th anniversary of the publication of The Catcher in the Rye. The first printing caused an almost imperceptible ripple in the publishing world, perhaps because it was a coming-of-age novel about a rich kid from Manhattan who has been expelled from his prep school.

The ripple became a tidal wave as young people, including me, found something familiar about Holden Caulfield’s angst in a troubled world. We loved the vernacular, the seemingly effortless use of language, Holden’s verbal skills and artistic perceptions. We identified with Holden even if we didn’t have the same experiences, because we shared his insecurities and bafflements. We had angst, we felt alone, and we struggled to work through the inscrutable quandaries of life. We knew we were reading a literary tour de force that would continue to resonate with readers for generations. The angst of young Holden is universal because we live in a world that, in the best of circumstances, is often harsh and incomprehensible.

When novelist David Armstrong observed that “The Essence of Nathan Biddle is like discovering The Catcher in the Rye all over again,” I was immensely flattered. I was also impressed by his perspicacity: I had conceived the notion of writing The Essence after rereading The Catcher in my late 40s. When I read the book as an adolescent, I mostly focused on the similarities, i.e., the actions and reactions, emotions and insecurities I shared with Holden. The peculiar thing was that when I reread the novel as an adult, I focused more on the dissimilarities: the sources of angst and confusion I had as an adolescent that Holden seemed only vaguely concerned about.

The angst of young Holden is universal because we live in a world that, in the best of circumstances, is often harsh and incomprehensible.

Holden was at once naive and peculiarly sophisticated for his age. (His age is not clear, but he was probably 15 or 16 when he left Pensey and maybe 17 when he began describing his adventure.) He had obviously read David Copperfield, and he knew his way around New York. He also knew how to find a hotel that would rent a room to a teenager, and he seems to have understood that the hotel he chose had prostitutes available. I knew no one at 16 who thought he could rent a hotel room. Despite his sophistication, many of us felt superior to him in some ways, particularly his perception of and interactions with the opposite sex. Indeed, Holden’s relationships with the novel’s female characters seem almost pre-adolescent. He mostly talks and watches and wonders. When I read the novel as an adult, it occurred to me that Holden is endearing precisely because he is both superior and inferior at the same time.

The dissimilarities in the actions and reactions of Holden and Kit Biddle, the protagonist of The Essence of Nathan Biddle, stem from the primary sources of their angst. Both are off-balance, but Holden is seriously unstable. Kit requires psychiatric attention, while Holden is institutionalized. The destabilizing event in Holden’s life is the sickness and death of his brother Allie from leukemia when Holden was 13. The destabilizing event for Kit is the murder of his cousin by Kit’s intelligent but unstable uncle. Both Holden and Kit suffer from post-traumatic stress that leads to disruptive behavior. Neither gets immediate help from a counselor, but Kit, unlike Holden, gets emotional support from his mother, who ultimately arranges for Kit to talk to a psychiatrist. By contrast, Holden is sent to a sanitarium in California, all the way across the continent, where visits from family and friends will be few and far between.

The disparate points of view of these protagonists stem from their responses to the tragedies in their lives. Both become isolated and obsessive, but Holden’s primary response is to declare the world absurd and “phony” and to dissociate from the realities of his life: In particular, he develops a hero complex in which he is the protector and savior of young kids (like his brother Allie). He imagines himself as a catcher if a kid falls off a cliff near a field of rye, mixing his emotional needs with his garbled lyrics from “Comin’ thro’ the rye.”

Most of Holden’s trek from Pensey prep is dissociative but not dangerously destructive behavior. In contrast, Kit’s reaction to the bizarre murder of Nathan is not only isolation and introspection but ultimately near self-destruction. Holden tells the story of his meandering trek from Pensey only because the sanitarium personnel demand it, not because he wants to tell it. Kit, however, needs and wants to tell his story and to tell the story well.

While the disparate points of view are defined by circumstances, the underlying angst is universal. To the suggestion that Kit will ever be the protagonist that Holden is, we in the Catcher cult demur vigorously. It is nonetheless a great honor to have their stories compared.

 

Visit J. William Lewis’ website for more information about The Essence of Nathan Biddle.

The magnitude of the adolescent burden found a home in Holden Caulfield, and so it has once again in Kit Biddle of The Essence of Nathan Biddle. Kit was inspired not only by Holden by also by the author’s teenage self, and here J. William Lewis elaborates on this connection.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

From book to film, and back again

Behind the Book by Robert J. Harris

In 1942, the rights to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories passed from 20th Century Fox to Universal Studios. Rather than continue to tell the adventures of Holmes and Watson in their original Victorian setting, Universal had the unorthodox but brilliant idea to bring Holmes and Watson into then-contemporary London, which added a jolt of modernity to Conan Doyle’s work and gave the war-weary British public a chance to see the heroic detective battling the Nazis on the silver screen.

Robert J. Harris’ A Study in Crimson takes its inspiration both from those films and the original stories. The result is a World War II-era adventure in which the iconic sleuth must hunt down a copycat of Jack the Ripper. In this essay, Harris explores how this unique fusion of literature, film and history came to be.

"The name of Sherlock Holmes will always be associated with a hansom cab racing through the fog-bound streets of Victorian London—but suppose he had been born later. Just imagine if he had been there when his country most desperately needed his help."

This is how I might have introduced A Study in Crimson if the concept of Sherlock Holmes in World War II had been my own invention. But it was Universal Pictures who in 1942 brought the detective forward in time in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, the first of a classic series of 12 films starring Basil Rathbone. This was done with the full approval and support of the Conan Doyle estate. In fact, Conan Doyle’s son Adrian Conan Doyle declared this to be the best Sherlock Holmes film ever made. One might argue accordingly that these new adventures have much more of a claim to be an official part of the Holmes legacy than many of the other pastiches on the market.

All of this was in my mind when the idea occurred to me of adapting this version of the character for a novel. I grew up watching these films on television, and Basil Rathbone has always been my Sherlock Holmes, with his faithful Watson played by Nigel Bruce. Watching them in later years with my own children, I was struck by how seamlessly the transition from Victorian times to wartime London was made. This was due in great part to the fact that Rathbone and Holmes were already well established as the duo in two earlier Victorian-set movies and a very popular radio series.

In recent years, I have written three novels for younger readers in my Artie Conan Doyle Mysteries. In these, I imagine the young Conan Doyle having a series of adventures that will later inspire the creation of Sherlock Holmes. One of the most important aspects of these stories for me was that the mysteries should be worthy of the great detective himself. This naturally brought to my mind the notion of writing a Sherlock Holmes novel, but what held me back was that there are already so many Holmes pastiches out there, and that unless I had a different approach, there would be little point in my adding another.

Then one day my eye lighted upon my boxed set of the Basil Rathbone Holmes films. The producers, writers and directors of those films had managed to transfer Holmes to the 1940s while still retaining all the qualities that make him so memorable. Would it be possible, I wondered, to do the same thing in a novel?

I was very taken with the idea, but it was some weeks later before I had my plot. I was leafing through a Sherlockian biography of Holmes when I came to a chapter on Jack the Ripper. Holmes and Jack have confronted each other a number of times in books and on screen, and it occurred to me that the blacked-out streets of London provided a perfect setting for a new Ripper, one who called himself Crimson Jack. This would not only present Holmes with a worthy case but would also maintain a strong connection with the character’s Victorian roots.

I hope readers will be hugely entertained by the result, and perhaps even be ready for a further adventure.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of A Study in Crimson.

How a classic film series and a legendary killer inspired Robert J. Harris' new Sherlock Holmes adventure.

RomanceContemporary Romance

Green Gables grows up

Behind the Book by Brina Starler

In Anne of Manhattan, Brina Starler transforms the beloved children’s classic Anne of Green Gables into a modern, New York City-set rom-com. In this essay, Starler explores why Anne’s story means so much to so many people and why it’s just as fresh and inspiring today.

I think I was 12 the first time I read L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve read it since. Like Anne, I’m an only child and spent many hours in my own head, ignoring the reality around me and spinning stories in my mind. I’d sit at the edge of the woods behind our backyard and build fairy houses out of twigs and moss, or use reams of paper to draw stories of magical elves having adventures and falling in love. Or I’d find a solitary place and hide there with a book for hours, instead of what I was supposed to be doing.

When I was introduced to the world of Green Gables, I felt like I’d found a “kindred spirit” in Anne, as she would say. Her propensity for building entire worlds out of pure imagination, her love for books, her inclination toward drama and her affection for interesting words felt very relatable. I immediately fell in love with her hilarious, unfiltered stream of consciousness and kind heart.

The first book in the original series may have been written in 1908, but the characters are still relevant today. Because of that, it was easy in many ways to transition them to modern-day New York City, even as I made changes to diversify the cast to fit a more realistic portrayal of what Anne’s social circle and family might look like now. Anne is still Anne (with an E, if you please), with her thirst for knowledge, fiery temper and competitive edge. Gilbert “Gil” Blythe is still pining after Anne while working hard to keep her on her toes. And Marilla will always be Marilla, trying, and failing, to hide her deep love and pride for Anne behind a gruff exterior. These are the characters who have endeared themselves to millions of readers across multiple generations. Anne of Green Gables has inspired hundreds of thousands of young people to read, write stories and chase their dreams, including myself.

Montgomery’s Anne Shirley taught me that I didn’t have to tuck away my imagination or make myself small in order to accomplish my goals. I wouldn’t be the writer, or person, I am today without her. I’m incredibly honored to have been given the opportunity to create a new adventure for Anne, and I hope you enjoy reading Anne of Manhattan as much as I loved writing it.

“Oh, it’s delightful to have ambitions. I’m so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them–that’s the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.” —Anne of Green Gables

In Anne of Manhattan, Brina Starler transforms the beloved children’s classic Anne of Green Gables into a modern, New York City-set rom-com.

NonfictionBody, Mind & Spirit

Embracing a practice that doesn’t make perfect

Behind the Book by Jessamyn Stanley

Jessamyn Stanley’s guide to the ancient practice of yoga turned out to be deeper and more demanding than she ever imagined. The author of Every Body Yoga shares the revelations that shaped her second mold-breaking book about yoga, Yoke.

When I pitched Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance to my publisher, I thought I knew what it would contain. I knew I would have to talk about internalized racism, sexual assault, capitalism and cultural appropriation. Mind you, this was in 2017, before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were murdered for all the world to see and before white people were forced to stop pretending racism doesn’t exist. But when I actually started tickling the keys, the book became about much more than what a marketing pitch could contain.

I definitely thought Yoke would be about offering tips and tricks for navigating an ancient practice in modern times. But in the process of writing it, I realized the most important way to teach yoga has nothing to do with other people. The way to teach yoga is by authentically living it. Even the most gifted and inspiring teachers will only lead you to the teacher inside yourself, and they can only do that by being fully themselves.

Writing Yoke led me down a lot of philosophical rabbit holes. I ended up spending a solid year of the manuscript-writing process solely on research. I dove headfirst into American yoga’s history and theory, and I was forced to come to terms with the intersection between American history and American yoga history—how both have bloomed in the soil of white supremacy. I gained a deeper respect for the differences between American yoga and Classical yoga, and all the while, I was forced to interrogate myself.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Yoke.

For example, I was excited to write about cultural appropriation among yoga practitioners, and if I’m honest, I was excited to tell other people how to best live their lives. I’ve always been a know-it-all in that way. But once the dust settled, I realized I don’t have anything to offer readers beyond being open and honest about the ways that I appropriate other cultures. 

Similarly, I was excited to write about racism and the ways it crops up in the yoga world, mostly because I was excited to air my grievances against all the white yoga people who have annoyed me over the years. But it didn’t take long to recognize that I have nothing to say to white people that I don’t first need to say to myself. I found that I needed to accept the ways in which I embody racism—first against myself and then against others.

Writing Yoke made me examine parts of myself I’ve never wanted to acknowledge and generally prefer to ignore. I didn’t know what it would take to get real about this shit. I didn’t realize there’d be so much crying. I didn’t know writing the truth would feel like disemboweling myself. I thought the whole thing would be a little more dignified than bawling into my laptop for weeks on end. But accepting my shame was the price I paid in pursuit of my truth. 

I will say, though: It’s one thing to accept that you’re a messy bitch. It’s completely different to ask other people to read about it.

“I didn’t know what it would take to get real about this shit. I didn’t realize there’d be so much crying.”

Some of Yoke cuts very close to the bone for me. Yoga may be about accepting the truth of yourself, but the truth I tell in Yoke is one I was always told not to tell. The truth that I’ve been running from. The truth that no one wants to see in the light. And reading the truth without rose-tinted glasses can be painful. 

I think Yoke will be inspiring even to people who have never practiced yoga, people who are not Black, fat or queer and people who’ve never been sexually assaulted. No matter your background, we all embody contradictions and feel pain. We all find identity at the heart of intersections. But our intersections are also founts of compassion—first for ourselves, then for others. This is true now more than ever, when we’re being asked as a society to reckon with the sins of our collective past in order to move forward. Yoke is a microexample of a process that’s needed on a very macro level.

I wrote this book because I had to tell the truth, even if I came out on the other end looking like an asshole. That’s who I am. I am problematic. I say the wrong thing. I am offensive. But I think that by letting my stank-ass baggage hang out, I can make space for other people to accept themselves as well.

 

Author photo © Cornell Watson

Jessamyn Stanley’s guide to the ancient practice of yoga turned out to be deeper and more demanding than she ever imagined. The author of Every Body Yoga shares the revelations that shaped her second mold-breaking book about yoga, Yoke.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

No guilt, no rules

Behind the Book by Elaine Murphy

Author Elaine Murphy explains how she got sucked in by the queasily liberating allure of sociopaths—and why you will, too.

Most people use the terms sociopath and psychopath interchangeably, though they’re technically different personality disorders. In both cases, the person acts without conscience and without fear of consequences. They are prone to manipulation, impulsiveness and lies, and they act recklessly. The primary difference is that sociopaths have a bit more emotional wiggle room, if you will. They might have real feelings for one or two people, they might experience a tiny bit of empathy or guilt, and they might have some emotion (like rage), although the emotion is fleeting. 

We’ve all known someone who has one or many of these characteristics, and I’ve personally done my best to avoid them in my life. So why are we still drawn to reading about these types of people?

Because it’s fiction! It’s so fun to watch these characters in action precisely because the stories aren’t real. Sociopaths are impulsive and unpredictable, so we never know what they’re going to do next. But much like when we follow a story about a zombie apocalypse or killer mermaids, we have the safety net of our TV screen or the pages of a book to keep the real threat at a distance. (Keep in mind that not all sociopaths are violent, just as all non-sociopaths are not harmless.)

In Look What You Made Me Do, Carrie Lawrence’s older sister, Becca, is a 30-year-old sociopath. Becca has been killing people since high school and roping her sister in to help hide the bodies. There’s a moment in the book when Carrie notes, “Not once in my life have I been afraid for my sister. She’s always been the biggest predator in the room, the one sitting at the top of the food chain, picking and choosing her next meal.” Sociopaths have no regard for how their behavior affects others and enjoy a “rules don’t apply to me” type of attitude. 

Becca was an amazing character for me to explore as a writer because she’s never boring. She has an idea, and she acts on it. She plunges headlong into whatever motivates her in any given moment and never considers the consequences. Becca wants to break into a building? Let’s go! Learns there’s a serial killer in town and he’s stealing her thunder and needs to pay? Let’s take care of this immediately, no planning required! 

Becca does all those things we wish we could do but have been raised—and possess the empathy and guilt that guide “normal” behavior—not to. Have you ever been in a conversation and just desperately wanted the other person to shut up? Seen something more entertaining over their shoulder and wanted to walk away? Thought the pretzel in their hand looked delicious and wanted a bite? You can watch a character like Becca in that scenario and know you’re not in for a boring scene in which the other person drones on. She’s going to take action. Maybe she’ll simply walk off. Maybe she’ll take the pretzel with her. Maybe she’ll kill the other person and call it self-defense for trying to bore her to death. As a reader and a writer, these are the types of characters that keep me turning—and typing—the pages. 

 

Author photo by Laura Shortt Photography.

Author Elaine Murphy explains how she got sucked in by the queasily liberating allure of sociopaths—and why you will, too.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Goodbye to the Super Spy

Behind the Book by Dan Fesperman

Dan Fesperman’s new espionage novel, The Cover Wife, could have been a soapy, simplistic experiment in dramatics. It follows CIA agent Claire Saylor, as she goes undercover as the wife of an academic in Hamburg, Germany, while a parallel plot line follows Mahmoud, a young Moroccan immigrant who’s being slowly sucked in by a radical group of men at his mosque. But Fesperman, a former journalist who covered both the Yugoslav civil wars and the Middle East in the wake of 9/11, roots Claire and Mahmoud’s stories firmly in reality. In this essay, he reveals why why an individual spy is far less powerful than you’d think, and why that makes their work all the more thrilling.

Behold the Super Spy, who knows all, anticipates all, and because of their operational autonomy, is almost always a step ahead of the competition. Need to Know? That’s a doctrine for chumps and desk jockeys.

Such is the misconception some readers have of CIA officers and others who work in the shadowy world of espionage, believing that spies step into their assignments in full knowledge of the stakes, the objective, the tasks their colleagues will be carrying out and so on.

Claire Saylor, my main CIA character in The Cover Wife, enviously wishes this were true. But, as just about anyone who’s worked in the spy business will tell you, it almost never is.

In a manuscript I’ve just completed, for example, here’s a bit of Claire’s thinking as she approaches an assignment for which she’s been told very little about what to expect. All she knows for sure is that she has been asked to show up for an appointed rendezvous with an unnamed source who will announce his presence with a designated code phrase:

“On its face, it was a simple chore with clear but limited instructions and open-ended possibilities. She was no stranger to work like that. At times, her job in Paris seemed to offer nothing but: Take this parcel and leave it there; Meet Man A and deliver his message to Woman B; Sit on that bench until 3 p.m., while noting every coming and going from the opposite doorway. And so on. Simple orders with complex possibilities.”

The archetype for the Super Spy, of course, is James Bond, although not even your most bedazzled reader seems to believe anymore that real spies live in his glitzy world of casinos, martinis and luxury cars, complete with dinner jacket and an exotic gun.

And, about those guns: There is no such thing as a standard issue weapon for a CIA officer, except for the ones who serve in war zones. Most spies travel unarmed. Not only is carrying a weapon illegal in most countries, it would be a giveaway that you were up to no good.

On the face of it, such limitations make the job seem less exciting. But for me—or, more to the point, for characters like Claire—it only adds to the challenge. She’s always trying to expand smaller roles into bigger ones. Withhold info about an upcoming task and she’ll try to find out more. Or, as I’ve described her: “Whenever an op confined her to the dark, she sought her own path toward the light. It kept the job interesting even as it tended to thwart professional advancement.”

It also helps when, as in The Cover Wife, her supervisor is willing to participate in the subversion, by assigning her additional duties which they both try to hide from their superiors. Layers upon layers.

I suppose this tendency of Claire’s is the spy novel’s equivalent of the detective novel trope of gumshoes who never play by the rules. And you certainly can’t let characters wander too far off the straight and narrow without risking implausibility. But when you’re valued for your ability to dig out forbidden knowledge, it’s not much of a leap to expect this inquisitiveness to exceed its limits. Although Claire, alas, will never enjoy the freedom of the Super Spy.

Author Dan Fesperman reveals why an individual spy is far less powerful than you’d think, and why that makes their work all the more thrilling.

NonfictionHistoryFood & Drink

The top 12 weirdest moments in food history

Behind the Book by Matt Siegel

In his debut book, Matt Siegel takes intel from nutritionists, psychologists, food historians and paleoanthropologists and weaves together an entertaining account of the food we eat. These 12 surprising food facts offer a taste of the weird, wonderful backstories you’ll find in The Secret History of Food.

1. In 1893, the Supreme Court had to rule whether tomatoes were a fruit or a vegetable. This happened not long after people finally decided that tomatoes weren’t poisonous (a belief that lasted for hundreds of years, owing largely to their botanical relationship to mandrakes and deadly nightshade) and that they weren’t used to summon werewolves (the tomato’s scientific name, Solanum lycopersicum, literally means “wolf’s peach”).

2. People used to think potatoes caused syphilis and leprosy. This was chiefly because of their resemblance to the impacted body parts of the afflicted. Now, of course, potatoes are America’s favorite vegetable, largely thanks to french fries. (Tomatoes are in second place, owing largely to their use in frozen pizza and canned tomato sauce.)

3. Vanilla isn’t very “vanilla.” While vanilla has unfortunately become a synonym for “ordinary,” it’s really anything but. For starters, it’s the only edible fruit to come from orchids, even though they’re the largest family of flowers. Vanilla gets its name from Spanish conquistadors, who named it after the Spanish word for “vagina.” It has to be pollinated by hand using a technique developed by an enslaved 12-year-old named Edmond Albius. And it’s the world’s second most expensive spice behind saffron.

4. The first breakfast cereals were intentionally bland. Ready-to-eat breakfast cereals were created in the 1800s by religious health reformers who believed sugar and spices were sinful and that consuming them incited bodily temptation, leading to such sexual urges as chronic masturbation and adultery—and ultimately resulting in eternal damnation.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Secret History of Food.

5. Our affinity for certain comfort foods begins in the womb. Research suggests many of our adult food preferences are influenced by flavors (e.g., vanilla) present in breast milk and amniotic fluid, which absorb flavors and odors from the parent’s diet. Meanwhile, other food preferences, such as people’s polarized responses to cilantro, go back even earlier to the genetic inheritance of specific taste receptors.

6. People used to believe personality traits and intellect were passed on through breast milk. As a result, early wet nurses were screened for things like breast shape, manners and vices such as day-sleeping and gambling addiction to ensure their milk was “child friendly.”

7. An entire ear of ancient corn used to be about the size of a cigarette. Over thousands of years, corn was selectively bred from a nearly inedible weed into the modern staple many cultures now depend on.

8. There’s a decent chance the honey in your cupboard comes from lawn weeds or poison ivy. And that’s OK. (Though there’s also a chance it’s not honey at all but a mixture of corn syrup and yellow food coloring . . .)

"Cinnamon, it was said, came from giant bird nests and had to be transported using rafts without oars on a treacherous journey that took five years and was powered by courage alone."

9. Fidel Castro was obsessed with American dairy. He spent decades funding the genetic manipulation of a dairy “supercow” named Ubre Blanca (“White Udder”) that produced four times the milk of American cows, was assigned a security detail in an air-conditioned stable and was eulogized with military honors and a life-size marble statue after her death.  

10. No one wanted to eat Patagonian toothfish until they were rebranded as Chilean sea bass in 1994. Now they sell for $29.99 a pound at Whole Foods. 

11. Spice traders used to make up stories about the exotic origins of spices so they could sell them for more money. Cinnamon, it was said, came from giant bird nests and had to be transported using rafts without oars on a treacherous journey that took five years and was powered by courage alone. Black pepper was said to grow in forests guarded by serpents that had to be scared away by setting the trees on fire, which explained why black pepper pods were the color of ashes.

12. The adage “you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar” isn’t really true. Rather, catching flies depends on a host of complex variables including the age, gender, sex drive, mating status, thirst and stress level of each fly—as well as the concentration of the vinegar, the time of day and the season. (Even then, some research suggests you’ll catch even more flies with beer or human semen, with one scientist calling semen “the crack cocaine of the fly world.”)

Everything you never knew about Patagonian toothfish, Cuban supercows and cinnamon sticks
RomanceHistorical Romance

Five romances that sparkle with fairy-tale magic

Behind the Book by Charis Michaels

Fairy tale adaptations are always popular with romance readers, but Charis Michaels’ new historical romance series has a particularly clever twist. While each Awakened by a Kiss book is inspired by a classic story, the characters are based on supporting characters such as Snow White’s huntsman and Cinderella’s stepsisters. Isobel Tinker, the spunky, take-no-prisoners heroine of Michaels’ latest romance, When You Wish Upon a Duke, is (of course) inspired by Tinkerbell.

If you’re in search of more enchantment after reading Michaels’ latest love story, here are five more fairy tale-inspired romances with the author’s stamp of approval.

Little known-fact: I used to work at Disney World. And not as a disgruntled teenager or Orlando local. I actively pursued a job at the Most Magical Place during my junior year in college. I forsook serious internships to drive four states away and join the Disney “cast.” Wearing a Mickey name badge and black leather Reeboks, I pointed tourists in the direction of Space Mountain. The experience did not disappoint; I left Florida at the end of the summer in a happy swirl of chlorine and pixie dust.

Perhaps the natural next step was to write historical romance. Romances are, in many ways, fairy tales for adults. My current series, Awakened by a Kiss, is dripping in pixie dust. The trilogy explores “whatever-happened-to” sideline characters from classic tales like Snow White, Cinderella and Peter Pan. The first book, A Duchess a Day, follows up on the Huntsman from Snow White. The third book, If the Duke Fits, will give the happily-ever-after treatment to a stepsister from Cinderella. But perhaps the book I’m most excited about is my current release, When You Wish Upon a Duke.

The heroine, Miss Isobel Tinker, is inspired by Tinkerbell from Peter Pan. After a chaotic youth spent cavorting around Europe, Miss Tinker has sworn off two things: travel and men. She works as a clerk in a travel agency and vows never to leave her safe, reliable life in London. (Best-laid plans.) When a dashing duke strides into the shop and makes an offer she cannot refuse, Miss Tinker is compelled to dredge up her latent language skills and serve as his translator. Hilarity, adventure and passion ensue, with pirates and geothermal pools and that oh-so-important happily ever after.

Fairy tale themes in popular fiction have enriched and captivated readers for decades. To help celebrate the release of When You Wish Upon a Duke, I give you five novels that take inspiration from the words, “Once upon a time . . .”

 

The Beast of Beswick by Amelia Howard

If you love a beastly aristocrat in need of redemption, look no further than this "Beauty and the Beast"-inspired Regency.

 

One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

This contemporary romance combines Moyes’ beautiful writing with the timeless tale of a maid who falls in love with a prince of a rich guy.

 

The Devil’s Own Duke by Lenora Bell

Another Cinderella story, this is a reverse fairy tale. The hero is a working-class Cinderella and he comes up from the streets to marry a duke’s daughter. (This one’s not out until September 28, so preorder it now!)

 

Out of Character by Annabeth Albert

While not inspired by a specific fairy tale, this contemporary romance features a prince and frog wizard (in costume!). Friends-to-lovers takes center stage here, with a magical backdrop of cosplay and fantasy gaming.

 

Once Upon a Tower by Eloisa James

Few authors revisit a fairy tale like Eloisa James. Her Fairy Tales series spans multiple books, each one more magical than the next. My favorite is the Rapunzel-inspired Once Upon a Tower. The magic begins with the gorgeous cover and the story inside carries you away.

When You Wish Upon a Duke author Charis Michaels recommends five fantastic romances inspired by fairy tales.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Four gripping thrillers set in gorgeous locations

Behind the Book by Lexie Elliott

Lexie Elliott’s new book, How to Kill Your Best Friend, is perhaps the ideal escapist thriller: a possible murder, a friend group practically bursting at the seams with drama and some very twisted secrets, all against the backdrop of a luxury resort on a gorgeous, isolated island in Southeast Asia. We asked Elliott to share more suspenseful novels with stunning settings.

Writers: We’re a strange breed, and none more so than crime writers. Give us a beautiful villa overlooking a secluded beach and we immediately wonder what might be buried under the palm tree or weighted down at the bottom of the ocean. A sun-dappled European city has us looking past the landmarks and museums for what might be lurking in the narrow alleys. The contrast between the light and shade of human nature is never so stark as when played out in the most seductive of settings, the kind of places where people come to relax and forget their cares. Two of my novels (my debut, The French Girl, and my most recent novel, How To Kill Your Best Friend) feature exactly that delicious contrast, and with that in mind, I bring you some suggestions for thrillers where the gorgeous settings almost steal the scene.

 

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Mongibello, San Remo, Rome, Venice, Greece: The locations in this novel read like a travel agent’s advertisement (though the first is admittedly fictional—Highsmith took inspiration for it from Positano, Italy). Readers will be captivated as the young, wealthy American trust fund socialites of the 1950s frolic through the radiant Italian Riviera, unaware of the twisted obsession growing in the heart of Tom Ripley. I discovered this novel in my teens and it awoke in me a longing (never quite lost) to travel to these beguiling destinations, where surely I would dress most fabulously to drink cocktails in the warm summer evenings at the bars of the most fashionable hotels and restaurants. . . . Highsmith unerringly captures the details of both the time and place, and it’s her depiction of the juxtaposition of the glorious sun-drenched locations with the darkness of the conniving, murder and betrayal carried out by our extraordinarily creepy antihero Tom that truly sets this novel apart. (Oh, and the 1999 movie, with Matt Damon as Tom and Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, is excellent too.)

 

Pompeii by Robert Harris

The weather. The landscape. The opulent villas. The togas. Harris’ tautly accurate prose transports the reader to the heart of ancient Italy in the heat of late summer, with a tale of sleazy urban corruption, 79 A.D.-style, with a rigorously intelligent hydraulic engineer to guide us through it—all while trying to keep hold of both his integrity and his life. I defy any reader to finish this novel without a burning desire to immediately visit the ruins of Pompeii (though preferably without Vesuvius erupting at the time).

 

The Chalet by Catherine Cooper

Glamourous locales aren’t always warm: A luxury ski chalet in the snow-covered Alps also ticks the box (Champagne in front of the log fire, anyone?). Cooper’s descriptions of the beautiful, glacial landscape place the reader squarely inside a dual-timeline tale of twisted revenge spanning two decades.

 

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

The queen of crime and the original luxury train experience: It's a match made in exotically located thriller heaven that spans both hot and cold climes. The opening chapters are set in bustling Istanbul, before the action steams along to snow-covered Yugoslavia. With Poirot aboard, and the train itself providing the “locked room” setting, you know you are in for a treat.

 

Author photo © Nick James Photography.

How to Kill Your Best Friend author Lexie Elliott shares four thrillers set in gorgeous locations.

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