history – Empowering women through fiction and history.

Historical Research: A Chicken and Egg Paradox

Many writers do some kind of research for their books. Even contemporary authors often need to research experiences in life of which they have no first-hand knowledge. This could be anything from what a five-year-old will and will not eat (if you’re like me, with no kids and not much exposure to young kids) to the ins and outs of a career as a registered nurse.

Historical authors have the added burden of researching the past. Their research isn’t always related to well-documented events or facts (such as housing prices in the 1950s). In fact, often, their research is about the obscure details, such as how people stored meat in the 17th century (or even if they stored meat at all — we can’t assume the things we take for granted today were possible in past times). Their research isn’t necessarily related to major plot points or main characters either. Only this morning, I was researching the hours of operation for a produce stand in a small town in the early 1920s for some minor characters appearing in my work-in-progress.

Photo Credit: The Bookworm, Carl Spitzweg, 1850, oil on canvas, Museum Georg Schafer, Bavaria, Germany: Iryna Harpy/Wikimedia Commons/PD Art (PD Old 70)

There is no hard-and-fast rule about when researching should be done and how much. Every author goes by his or her own comfort level. Some authors prefer researching everything down to the last detail before they even begin that first draft. Others prefer to get the story down without worrying about historically accurate details and then go back and “fill in the blanks” during revisions.

I tend to do a combination of both. I research general aspects of history when I’m outlining the story because these can affect what direction the story will take. If I have an idea for a murder but research suggests it wouldn’t have been accurate for the time period in which the book is set, then that’s going to affect how the plot moves forward. An obvious example would be if I wanted to write a story where DNA testing plays a role in identifying the real killer and set the book in the early 1970s, I’d be 20 years too early, since DNA testing became common in the early 1990s (bet you didn’t know that, did you?) The appearance of a mob boss in my Grave Sisters Mysteries would be fine, since the series takes place during the Jazz Age, but the mob boss might be out of place in my Adele Gossling Mysteries, set some twenty years earlier.

Now, this last example brings up an interesting point about historical research and storytelling: The idea that just because something is historically accurate in one time frame but is associated with a later time frame doesn’t mean an author should include it in their book. We have to think of reader expectations. If I were to include a storyline in my Adele Gossling Mysteries involving a mob boss, it might be historically accurate (mob bosses existed since the late 19th century), but it would confuse readers since we’ve come to associate mobs and mob bosses with the Prohibition Era of the 1920s.

The outline is just the beginning of my historical research. While I’m writing the first draft, lots of little details come up. My process is to include them in the first draft as I know them in the 21st century, tag them with a note in bold and square brackets, and then go back later and research them. I do that mainly because when I’m writing the first draft, I want to focus on getting the story down from beginning to end. I don’t want to be distracted by popping onto Google and going down the research rabbit hole. One example that sticks in my mind was when I was writing one of the earlier Adele Gossling Mysteries, I decided it was time for the Arrojo police force to wear uniforms. Except I had no idea if police in America even wore uniforms in the first decade of the 20th century! Those are the kinds of details we might think are obvious, but when you’re dealing with the past, you have to suddenly stop and think about them. Spoiler alert: American police did wear uniforms in the first decade of the 20th century.

So doing research can be like the old paradox of the chicken and the egg — do you research first and then write, or can you only research once you start writing because you don’t know what you’ll need to research until you write?

If you’re new to my historical cozy mysteries, why not take the plunge into my Adele Gossling Mysteries? You’ll find a lot of interesting research plus a compelling story about Adele Gossling getting pulled into the murder of her next-door neighbor in the first book of the series, The Carnation Murder. It’s free to download on all bookstore sites. Find out more about the book and where you can get it here.

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

A Safe and Sane 4th of July

Today is Independence Day in America, also known as the Fourth of July. Americans have always been enthusiastic about their freedom, especially when you consider it’s an integral part of the American philosophy of life.

The Gilded Age and Progressive Era were no exceptions. America was coming into its own during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Spanish-American War of 1898 brought America to the world stage for the first time. The nation was prosperous, and social reforms were making it even better. Things were pretty good.

But sometimes Americans carried their enthusiasm a little too far. Today the Fourth of July is largely a social holiday with parades, family BBQs, and fireworks. I’ll never forget my first San Francisco Fourth celebration in 1995. I went to Crissy Field to see them shoot fireworks over the bay. It was an amazing spectacle of national spirit and dedication.

Photo Credit: Drawing of a skeleton dressed up for the 4th of July celebrations, 1899, lithograph, created by L. Crusius, Welcome Collection: Look and Learn/CC BY 4.0

Ironically, during the Progressive Era, however, many politicians and reformers were pushing for a “quiet” Fourth of July celebration, encouraging Americans to stay home instead of going out into the street. They had good reason. The enthusiasm for the Fourth had, by that time, gotten out of hand. Children were going around shooting off toy guns, and sometimes their aim wasn’t so careful. Fireworks, as you might imagine, weren’t exactly sophisticated in those days, so safety wasn’t a priority. Added to that were cannons, firecrackers, and other explosives that caused many injuries and even death. And we’re talking serious numbers here. In 1903, more than 400 people died, and 4,000 were injured during the nation’s Fourth of July celebrations. Many of these fatalities came from shrapnel wounds acquired by dangerous explosives or careless toy guns that resulted in tetanus.

The reformers of what was dubbed the Safe and Sane movement weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms. Many Americans made fun of the reform movements taking place in the early 20th century, and they resented these reformers who wanted to take away their holiday fun. But they could do little about it when cities began to implement ordinances to curtail these dangerous practices. In San Francisco (where part of my Adele Gossling Mysteries series takes place), women’s clubs worked hard to get toy guns banned from kids under seventeen. Sadly, they did not succeed, but they did succeed in restricting dangerous explosives, cannons, and firecrackers from these celebrations.

By the 1920s (when my Grave Sisters Mysteries series takes place), Fourth of July celebrations were an entirely different animal. The transformation from chaos and danger to community was complete. You were more likely to see people running in a three-legged race or participating in a pie tasting contest than shooting off cannons or toy guns. Other events besides fireworks included sports and picnics. These practices gave Americans a chance to celebrate the holiday in a social environment that was, well, safe and sane!

Feel free to check out my Adele Gossling Mysteries and my Grave Sisters Mysteries to learn a lot more history from the early 20th century (and engage in some fun mysteries too!)

International Women’s Day: Quotes that Inspire

Happy International Women’s Day!

This day has become pretty special to me in the last few years because I went back to work as an English language teacher for business professionals all over the world. I work with a lot of women from different countries. I hear about their struggles and their triumphs and their views about women’s place in their country and in the world, and I see what they are trying to do for their daughters.

So, if anything, this blog post is a tribute to their wisdom, strength, and insights.

If you want to get to know some wise, strong, and insightful American women living through tougher times than ours, don’t forget to check out my Adele Gossling Mysteries series and my new Grave Sisters Mysteries series!

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

The (Not so) Roaring Presidents of the Roaring Twenties

President’s Day is on February 16 in America. In spite of how people feel about the current president, presidents have had a major influence on the nation throughout the years, and each president, in many ways, reflects the era in which he serves.

Some decades have had more presidents than others. The 1840s and the 1880s tie for the most presidents in America, as people saw five during each of those decades (that’s a lot of presidents!) But the 1920s, when my Grave Sisters Mysteries is set, saw its share of presidents too. The decade had no less than three presidents who occupied the Oval Office at one time or another.

In many ways, these three presidents (Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover) represented the ethos of the 1920s. Since the Republicans dominated politics at the time, the men favored business and incorporated things like low taxes for large corporations, high important tarrifs, and a hands-off approach to business regulations that sharply contrasted the pre-war anti-trust politics. Not surprisingly, they embraced a free market, which was partly responsible for the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties. They also shied away from the global market, focusing more on domestic issues (though not focusing on them enough, as we’ll see with the Hoover administration).

Photo Credit: Warren Harding and a group of men outside the White House, Washington D.C., 1923, Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress: Public Domain Media/Public Domain

However, each of the presidents faced very different challenges. Harding, who took office in the first third of the decade, was dealing with a nation devastated by the effects of World War I. His campaign promise was a “return to normalcy”. Consequently, his approach to politics was so laid back that many people thought him lazy and incompetent. It may be that this laid-back attitude was the reason why his administration was riddled with scandal. Of special note was the Teapot Dome Scandal, where the Secretary of the Interior accepted bribes from private oil companies to whom he had leased reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and in California. In addition, the head of the Veterans Bureau (established in 1921 and which is featured in Book 2 of the Grave Sisters Mysteries) ran off with nearly $250 million, though he did return and was tried and convicted after Harding’s death in 1923.

Photo Credit: Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover walking outside the White House, 1928, Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress: Picryl/No known restrictions

Succeeding Harding was Coolidge. If Harding was thought incompetent, Coolidge was thought ineffectual. In fact, he really didn’t do much for the country other than clean up the mess left behind by the Harding administration. He was known for his silence, and his involvement in politics was quite minimal by today’s (and even 1920s’) standards. Nevertheless, this uber laid-back attitude was popular with voters, and he lasted until 1929. In fact, one of the reasons why he wasn’t re-elected was because he chose not to run with no reason other than “I choose not to run.” How’s that for a man of few words?

You would think, with two Republican presidencies marred with scandal, incompetence, and inefficiency, the Democrats would win the election at the end of the 1920s, but such was not the case. This was mainly because the Democratic candidate, Alfred E. Smith, had several strikes against him that made him unpopular with many voters. He was Irish and Catholic, for one. It seems incredible now that Americans would be so prejudiced as to consider these aspects a drawback, but it would take another 30-odd years until they voted an Irish Catholic into the White House (that would be John F. Kennedy, of course). Smith was also anti-Prohibition and had big-city manners, which didn’t go over well with the small-town voters of the time. So Hoover got the presidency. However, the Republican laid-back politics and free market favor proved to be exactly what the country did not need at the time. Less than eight months after he was inaugurated, the stock market crashed, and the years Hoover served were the most difficult of the Great Depression. He was defeated when he ran again in 1933 for a president who could take the country by the hand and create interventions that would pull America out of the biggest economic disaster in history (that president, by the way, was Franklin D. Roosevelt

My Grave Sisters Mysteries begins at the start of Harding’s administration, and you can expect the series to run well into Hoover’s and beyond. You can get the first book of the Grave Sisters Mysteries, The Case of the Washed-Up Corpse, here.

Forensic Pathology in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Mourning practices were an art form in the 19th and early 20th centuries. When I did research on mourning for my Gilded Age family saga, the Waxwood Series, back in 2022, I found no shortage of information. People during these eras had a fascination with death that is almost the antithesis of how we approach death in the 21st century.

However, when I started doing research on the more technical and scientific aspects of dealing with the dead for my Grave Sisters Mysteries series, the information was surprisingly lacking or difficult to find. As Deborah Blum emphasized in this TED-ED video, in our CSI-friendly era, crime investigation relies heavily on picking apart the corpse (both physically and emotionally). But 19th and early 20th century crime investigation focused much more on clues, witnesses, and suspects, and less on the victim’s body.

In the 19th and early 20th century, you couldn’t even say American forensic pathology was in its infancy. More like it was in the womb. The role of medical examiner was pretty ad hoc and didn’t officially exist in many places until the 1930s. In addition, many medical examiners were not trained specifically in pathology, consisting mostly of local doctors who were good at treating the living but had little experience with examining the dead. Both my Adele Gossling Mysteries and Grave Sisters Mysteries feature this type of medical examiner, though both doctors have enough experience to know what they’re doing. In contrast, in the latter series, Helena Wright (the middle Grave sister), is the mortician of the family funeral home, and her training provides her with more in-depth knowledge of pathology (something the medical examiner resents!)

Medical examiners and pathologists were, like policemen and mayors, government-appointed, and as such, subject to the kind of corruption that ran rampant in the 19th and early 20th centuries (until the Progressive movement called for reforms). They could be bribed to cover up evidence for various reasons. Maybe the victim was a well-respected citizen, and the pathology brought up something that pointed toward a less-than-stellar life the influential family didn’t want made public (like certain diseases). Or maybe the examination of the victim showed foul play that would require important people to be involved in the case, who didn’t want to be involved. The examination might even implicate someone important to the town in a dastardly crime, so evidence needed to be covered up or distorted. I’m reading a true crime book right now about the death of a woman in the early 20th century, where the writers surmise this is exactly what happened.

Photo credit: Leather doctor’s bag and its contents dated between 1890 and 1930, Wellcome Collection Gallery: Fae/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0

Thankfully, things started to change in the 1920s. Law enforcement began to take forensic experts and medical examiners more seriously and saw them as a vital part of the investigation rather than just part of their standard procedure. One example that changed the way the New York police thought about forensic pathology happened in 1923. A housewife living in one of the tenement buildings in the city was found dead in her apartment. At first, the case seemed cut and dried – accidental death by poisoning from a gas oven (not an uncommon thing in the early 20th century, as gas was the main source of power in tenements). However, because of reforms going on in the city at the time, the coroner was also a trained medical man and was able to determine that death had not occurred due to carbon monoxide poisoning (interestingly, based on the color of the dead woman’s skin) and in fact had been strangled (as there were marks on her neck). Later, it was discovered her husband had indeed strangled her (for the insurance money) and had tried to stage the murder to look like an accident, which the authorities almost bought.

Pathology plays a role not only in my Grave Sisters Mysteries (as I discussed above), but in Book 3 of my Adele Gossling Mysteries. A doctor is asked to write out a new death certificate because what looked like an accident proves to be anything but. It was possible to retract the death certificate if further examination suggested otherwise. This is what starts off the investigation into Thea Marsh’s death in the book.

Death At Will has been chosen by Barnes & Noble as a favorite reading year pick! To celebrate, I’ve discounted the book to $2.99. You can grab it here. And did you know Book 1 of the series, The Carnation Murder, is free? If you haven’t yet gotten into this series, you can start now by getting your copy of the first book for free here.

And if you want to see some more fascinating early 20th century pathology at work (without the gore!), check out my Grave Sisters Mysteries! Book 2 of the series was just released last November and is on Barnes & Noble’s Top Indie Favorites list for this month. The book is still at a nice discount of $3.99, so you can get The Missing Witness now.