Uncategorized – Page 16 – Empowering women through fiction and history.

The Value of Words

Words are important to me. I don’t think any writer hates words, even though we sometimes feel like a puppy tripping all over ourselves trying to get them right.

When I was in high school back in the 1980s, my sister bought the Missing Persons album Spring Session M. The song I loved most was, not surprisingly, “Words” (if you’re into a bit of nostalgia or have no clue what I’m talking about, here’s the song). I find the lyrics “When no on listens/There’s no use talking at all” ironic now because, let’s face it, in the 21st century, we’re not doing as much talking as we did forty years ago. We’re texting and emailing instead.

Photo Credit: monkeybusiness/Depositphotos.com

Since I’m fascinated by words, it makes sense some of my characters in my Adele Gossling Mysteries would be too. Book 2 of the series focuses on a murder victim who is a word freak. Millie Gibb, the English teacher at the local girls’ school, is rather lofty in the position she takes on words:

“May I ask what your book is about?” Adele asked.
“The history to words,” said the woman. “They don’t appear out of the sky. Someone had to make them up. And in the case of the English language, many people put their hand in.” Her eyes still on the invisible shine, she advanced a little, the red returning to her face with the waxy shine. “One word can go through tens of thousands of evolutions.”

Millie’s point is well taken. When I was getting my bachelor’s degree in English in Israel, we had an influx of immigrants from Russia and Ukraine in our class. These students had the double challenge of not only learning Hebrew but English as well. One day, I chatted with one of them and asked her what language she found harder to learn, Hebrew or English (for those who might not know it, Hebrew is a challenge to learn because it uses an entirely different alphabet.) She said without hesitation that English was much harder. When I asked her why, she explained Hebrew has pretty consistent grammar rules (for example, there are certain letters in the alphabet that, if they come first in a word, are always pronounced differently than if they come in the middle or end of the word.) English, on the other hand, is all over the place, and one has to learn the exceptions to the rule because you never know when one will suddenly come up without any logical explanation. I found this view to be consistent with the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) business people I tutored later on in my life.

Adele understands the value of words too because she’s an epistolary expert. Keep in mind letter writing was still the main means of communication in the early 20th century, as telephones were still few and far between. Adele takes letters and writing very seriously, which you know if you’ve read Book 1 of the series. One of the reasons why she decided to open a stationery store was because she values words and their meanings.

You’ll be able to read all about Millie Gibb and her word obsession (and whether her fascination with words leads to her death) on July 30. However, you can snag your copy of A Wordless Death now at a special preorder price here

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy my novella The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to my newsletter subscribers and you can get it here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more!

Boston Marriages and The New Woman

This month is LGBTQ+Pride month so let’s talk about Boston marriages.

These were not really marriages (that is, legally) and they weren’t always in Boston. The term came from Henry James’ novel The Bostonians, published in 1886. This book (made into a film almost 100 years later starring Vanessa Redgrave and Christopher Reeve) tells the story of women’s suffrage and the New Woman from a man’s point of view. In it, the very prim and proper spinster Olive takes under her wing a free-spirited, charismatic speaker named Verena with the intent of educating her and grooming her as a leader of the suffragist movement. Their affectionate and mutually respectful relationship is challenged by Olive’s Southern cousin, a Civil War veteran who is not exactly a believer in women’s lib.

James’ novel is set in Boston and depicts the Olive/Verena relationship as a kind of intellectual marriage of minds — hence, Boston Marriage. But Olive and Verena’s relationship wasn’t exclusive to fiction. In fact, James took the model for their relationship from his own sister. Alice James lived in a Boston Marriage with her companion Katharine Loring for almost twenty years.

Photo Credit: Alice James (reclining) and her companion Katharine Loring, 1890, Royal Leamington Spa in England, unknown source, unknown author: Elisa.rolle/Wikimedia Commons/PD Old 70 expired

To understand the appeal of Boston Marriages, we want to go back to the philosophy of the separate spheres that dominated the 19th and early 20th centuries. Women were confined to a very small space and expected to remain there, physically, mentally, and intellectually. Women who had intelligence, wit, and charisma were oftentimes encouraged not to express it, and those who did have the courage to be themselves were oftentimes ridiculed and mocked.

Women who entered a Boston Marriage, which means they created a domestic partnership where they shared a home, finances, and an emotionally attached relationship, sought to be respected and revered for their intelligence. It was no wonder many of them were New Women, as the ideals and values of New Women fit in with the Boston Marriage perfectly. These were women who were independent in mind and spirit, usually financially well off (so they didn’t need a man to support them), educated, and intellectually curious. They knew they had a lot to give and chose to give it to a female partner instead of a male one.

The question debated for years about these domestic arrangements is: Were they lesbian relationships too? Many say there is evidence from passionate correspondences that many did have a sexual component. However, one thing to remember is the line between romance and friendship wasn’t as tightly drawn in the 19th century as it is in the 21st. If you look at letters written between women friends, and even men friends, during this period, you’ll likely find language we would consider appropriate only for a romantic partner nowadays. So romantic language was not always evidence of romance during this time.

The likely answer to this question is: Some of the relationships were sexual and some were platonic, and because of the taboo put on same-sex love in the 19th and early 20th centuries, we’ll probably never know which ones were and which ones weren’t.

Boston Marriages were one way out of the conventional path for many intelligent and independent women. They had the companionship they deserved and were able to pursue their own values without being expected to behave in certain ways that they found constricting and inauthentic to them.

Between Adele Gossling, my protagonist for the Adele Gossling Mysteries, and Nin Branch, her sidekick, there exists not a Boston Marriage (Adele lives with her brother while Nin prefers to live on her own) but the same respect and reverence for women’s intelligence and wit. Each woman honors the strengths of the other and encourages her in her talents. They give one another emotional support and comfort throughout the series, especially when faced with the more restrictive mindsets of men like Jackson, Adele’s brother, and the county sheriff.

Book 1 of the Adele Gossling Mysteries is out and you can pick it up here at a special price. And don’t forget to check out Book 2 of the series, which is now on preorder also at a special price!

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, sign up for my newsletter to receive a free book, plus news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history and mystery, and more freebies! You can sign up here.

Creative License: Sherlock Holmes During World War II

May is National Mystery Month, so what better way for us mystery lovers to celebrate than to take a look at one of the most, perhaps the most, famous sleuths in history: Sherlock Holmes?

I have to be honest here. I am not a great lover of the Holmes character. I find him too egotistical and woman-hating for my taste. However, there’s no denying Conan Doyle had something when he created this sleuth whose deductive reasoning and attention to detail wove intricate (and sometimes hard to believe) plots. I personally prefer sleuths who appreciate the value of intuition and psychology along with reasoning, such as Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, and, of course, the protagonist of my Adele Gossling Mysteries.

Last month, I binge-watched the Sherlock Holmes films, but not the contemporary ones. I binge-watched the twelve Universal films and the two 20th Century Fox films. All were made in the late 1930s and 1940s and feature Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson.

The series is pretty distinctive in several ways. Classic crime buffs are familiar with Rathbone playing many villainous characters so the series gave him a chance to play a good guy. Bruce, whose name might not be familiar to you, created the Watson character as the lovable but somewhat bumbling sidekick which set a precedence for the Watson character (and many sleuth sidekicks) for books, TV, and film after that.

Photo Credit: Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, cropped screenshot from Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, 1943, Universal Pictures: Patrick CecilF/Wikimedia Commons/PD US not renewed

But the most distinctive feature of the series is that most of them are not set in the late 19th or early 20th century when Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes books. They are set in the late 1930s and 1940s (that is, in times contemporary to when they were made). The series has an interesting history. Fox made the first 2 films which were actually set in the 19th century like the original books. These films weren’t very successful so Fox dropped the series. Universal picked it up and decided to change the setting to contemporary times. It was then the series became a huge hit and went on for twelve more films.

Why did Universal decide to change the time period? When the third film in the series (and Universal’s first), Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, came out, it was 1942 and World War II was raging. They thought the audience would identify more with a contemporary Holmes than a Holmes far removed from the war’s troubling times by fifty years. Audiences identified with the scenery of London and Europe featuring bombed-out buildings, air raids, and blackouts.

Universal took it a step further. The screenwriters revamped many of Conan Doyle’s plots to make them fit with the war. Instead of London underworld criminals. Holmes was fighting Nazi spies. For example, the fourth film in the series, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon is based on a Conan Doyle short story but features a secret code Holmes is trying to keep from falling into German hands.

Universal’s creative license was very effective not only in making the series more successful than Fox’s version but also in inserting messages to boost the morale of British and American audiences. Many of the films end with Holmes imparting philosophical messages to Watson that are essentially telling audiences not to lose faith and good will triumph over evil in the end.

I’ll admit I’m a purist when it comes to films based on literature. I initially resisted seeing the series because so many of the films were set in contemporary (relative) times instead of when the books take place. But once I started to watch them, I got hooked on how the films show the life and struggle of citizens living during World War II. I highly recommend giving them a chance. You can find most of them on YouTube here.

And if you want more mystery, check out my Adele Gossling Mysteries here. The first book in the series, The Carnation Murder, is out! You can find out all about it and pick up your copy here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, sign up for my newsletter to receive a free book, news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history and mystery, and more freebies! You can sign up here.

The East West Players and Confessions of an Opium Eater (1965)

This month is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, so I’m paying tribute to Asian Pacific Americans who fight for visibility, respect, and honor for their culture.

As you know, I’m a huge classic film fan, and I was fascinated by a bit of trivia I read on the Internet Movie Database when I stumbled upon the film Confessions of an Opium Eater (1965) on YouTube. According to the trivia, this film was partly responsible for the formation of a theater group in Los Angeles dedicated to Asian Pacific American actors.

If the title of the film itself sounds pretty tawdry, its roots are historical. The movie is loosely based on an autobiography written in 1821 by Thomas DeQuincy called Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. The book is essentially the granddaddy of the drug memoir, giving accounts of DeQuincy’s addiction to laudanum (a tincture of opium widely available and unregulated in the 19th century) and its consequences. The book was meant as a warning against laudanum addiction, a big problem at the time, though critics claim DeQuincy’s book is rather more about the pleasures of opium addiction than its pains.

But the film is only loosely based on the book. The main character (played by Vincent Price, who steps out of his horror film persona to play a rather dubious hero) is supposedly an American descendent of DeQuincy. Like my Adele Gossling Mysteries, the movie is set in San Francisco and involves crime. Price arrives in Chinatown, looking for the pleasures of opium, and ends up unraveling a mystery that includes prostitution, white slavery, and, of course, opium.

The film, unlike many before it, has a very large cast made up of Asian and Pacific Americans, many of whom would be familiar to fans of classic films, including Richard Loo, Phillip Ahn, John, Fujioka, and Victor Sen Yung (who played in many of the Charlie Chan films in the 1940s as one of Chan’s many sons). These and other actors complained to the producer about how their Asian Pacific American roles perpetuated Hollywood stereotypes of sinister men and loose women, drug addicts and prostitutes. Producer Albert Zugsmith took no notice of their complaints. So this film was one of many that, as they say, became the hump that broke the camel’s back.

Photo Credit: Logo for the East West Players, 2013, East West Players: Yeeno/Wikimedia Commons/PD textlogo

No surprise, nine Asian Pacific American actors, including Mako (Conan the Barbarian, Pearl Harbor), Soon-Tek Oh (Mulan), and James Hong (Blade Runner, Kung-Fu Panda) formed the East West Players that same year. They were tired of Asian Pacific Americans being typecast in sinister roles and seeing Asian Pacific American main characters played by Caucasians (I always found it absurd that Charlie Chan’s sons were played by Asian Pacific Americans in the 1940s but Chan himself was played by Swedish actor Warner Oland.). Their mission was to create a space where Asian Pacific American actors would have better roles and a chance to show their culture and people were anything but the Hollywood stereotypes. The theater puts on performances with Asian Pacific American actors, directors, choreographers, playwrights, and others behind the scenes.

It’s no wonder this amazing group has many Tony award-winning plays under their belt, including A Little Night Music (1973), M. Butterfly (1988), and The Who’s Tommy (1993). You can find out more about the East West Players here.

The Man Who Brought Down Al Capone

Did you know May is National Mystery Month?

Today, May 4, marks a milestone in American criminal history. On this day in 1931, one of the most ruthless and famous crime bosses of the Prohibition Era, Al Capone, began serving his 11-year prison sentence for tax evasion.

America has always had a bee up its bonnet about liquor and in some ways, still does (I live in a county that was a “dry” county — i.e., no selling liquor within county lines — until 1999). Temperance was high on the list of reforms during the Progressive Era. After World War I, the nation’s government decided to do something about it. So in 1919, the Volstead Act was passed, prohibiting the making and selling of liquor in America. In 1920, the Prohibition Era kicked off in America, bringing with it the birth of the gangster, the speakeasy, and the Tommy gun. It also marked the most violent era in criminal history in America.

I meant to write this blog post about the criminal (Al Capone). But digging deeper into the history of Prohibition law enforcement, I became more fascinated by the crime fighters than the criminal. Because there was a team of crimefighters that brought down Capone and they were led by one man: Eliot Ness.

Photo Credit: Eliot Ness, 1933, retouched: Melesse/Wikimedia Common/PD US government

Ness worked for the federal government and he and his men had a reputation for being smart, heroic, and incorruptible (no mean feat during this era). He worked for the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) department which put the fight to enforce anti-liquor laws right up his alley. In 1930, his department paired with the U.S. Department of Justice and Treasury in the fight against violent crimes in America which had reached their peak. That year was also Hoover’s declaration of war against the gangsters largely responsible for those crimes. At the head of the list was Al Capone, who had risen to fame as Chicago’s kingpin and evaded every criminal accusation made against him.

The message was clear: get Al Capone on something, anything. Agents worked several angles, including the (obviously) prohibition violation angle and the income tax evasion angle. In the end, the treasury won. Though Ness and his team managed to get enough evidence together to bring forth thousands of prohibition violations against Capone, the kingpin eventually was sent to jail not for the many people he had killed and the violence he and his gang instigated but for avoiding his income taxes.

Why was Capone found guilty of tax evasion rather than prohibition violations (those charges were eventually dropped?) One theory is prosecutors were afraid the jury would find Capone not guilty of the violation charges because, frankly, everybody hated prohibition, and many saw gangsters that fought against it as heroes rather than criminals. Tax evasion, though, was a different matter. Most citizens weren’t sympathetic to those who didn’t pay their taxes (just as we are today). Keep in mind Hoover’s orders: get Al Capone on anything.

Still, Ness made his mark in history. In fact, he was so well known during this era that in that same year, cartoonist Chester Gould created a tough-talking, smart private eye who would become an icon in detective fiction.

Come meet the crime fighters of my Adele Gossling Mysteries, starting with Book 1, The Carnation Murder, which is out now and at 99¢ (though not for much longer!) You can get all the details about the book Barnes & Noble chose for their Top Indie Favorites list here.