Thursday, October 20, 2022

Inspired the past Alicia Beckman on BLIND FAITH #Bookgiveaway

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Long buried secrets… For mystery writers they're the golden threads woven into our novels.

Today we’re delighted to host three-time Agatha award winner Leslie Budewitz, writing this time out as Alicia Beckman, with a just-published novel that began with her own golden threads.


Alicia Beckman/Leslie Budewitz: Fifteen books and I’m finally going home again, on the page.

Blind Faith, written as Alicia Beckman, is my fifteenth book and second standalone suspense novel. And in all those words on all those pages, only once before, in a short story, have I set anything in the town where I was born and raised, Billings, Montana, even though it’s a place I love and home to many stories.

An oddity of publishing is that by the time a book comes out, an author has usually written another book and is well into a third. I started Blind Faith in the summer of 2016, thought it was finished in early 2019, then revised it yet again in 2020. I worked on it between other projects and honestly can’t tell you how many other books and stories I’ve written since starting it. So I’ve been going back over my book journal to remind myself of the process. (Thank you to the late Sue Grafton for the brilliant tip to keep a journal for each book, to keep track not only of story ideas but your own doubts and questions.)

Boy, was I surprised by what I discovered, especially the process of overcoming doubt and finding the story. Though I’ve been practicing law for decades, I’d never written anything with a lawyer as a main character. (Corpse, yes, but that doesn’t count.) As this story emerged, I knew it was best told through multiple points of view and a dual time line, a contemporary cold case investigation interspersed with scenes from the past. Could I pull that off? Could I find the right factual twists to unearth the deep emotions that drive psychological suspense?

And I found lists of things I remembered from childhood, like this one:


Let me explain that last one. For many years, my parents bowled on Saturday nights at an alley not far from our house. It was a family-friendly place, with a kids’ play area and a lunch counter run by one of the bowlers. When he was in a good mood, he’d mix cherry Cokes and Green River sodas for the kids.

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who knew what a Green River was, so maybe it was a regional treat or Mr. Tollefson’s own invention, taking its name from the thick green syrup he mixed by hand with flavors, then added carbonation to create a lemon-lime soda.

The bowling alley also had a bar, called the Jubilee, and occasionally my parents would stop for a drink with other bowlers after the last pin fell. Kids were—still are—allowed in bars in Montana, and I enjoyed sitting in the curved leather banquette, the neon beer signs flickering in the windows, and listening to the adults talk. It was the late 1960s and talk covered the range of issues burning across the country.

One thing they did not talk about were labor unions, particularly the United Mine Workers, despite the union’s strong presence in the state and the national ruckus over allegations of corruption, rigged elections, and misuse of power and influence by union leaders, namely its president, Tony Boyle. Why? Because the head of the local, a kind, nondescript man who bowled in the same league as my parents, was Tony Boyle’s brother. A few years later, Tony Boyle was charged with embezzlement and later with conspiracy for the murders of a rival, his wife, and daughter, and was convicted. He died in prison.

Is that not fascinating, how one brother’s ambitions focus on the ten pin while the other plots a gruesome murder for hire?

When I started Blind Faith, I wanted to write about Tony Boyle, but he was too old to be connected to the key events, involving two teenage girls who meet in 1981 and again in 2016 as middle-aged women. But I could take what I perceived as his ruthlessness, his seeming talent for using people against each other, and the determination to escape the hardscrabble life of a mining family, and play that out on a local stage.

Then I read a lengthy newspaper feature about the Rainbow Bar in Billings, still owned by the same family that founded it as a beer hall shortly after Prohibition. The Jubilee was long gone, but after a dip into divedom and a thorough scrubbing, the Rainbow thrives. I hadn’t been in it in years, but could easily picture the block, a long row of two- and three-story redbrick buildings facing the railroad tracks on the edge of downtown.

I could see one of those women, lawyer Lindsay Keller, walking down the street, passing under the curved neon sign, and reaching for the old brass door handle.

While nothing on that list from the early days of Blind Faith except the school and the pop made its way into the book, those lists set my conscious and subconscious wheels turning. A lake. Brothers. A ruthless man. A fast car and a forbidden party. A murdered priest. A lawyer haunted by her choices. And a bar, where an old man mixes Green Rivers and whiskey-and-sodas with equal ease.

Readers, is there a notorious crime or criminal from your childhood that still haunts you? (Or maybe a sweet treat, lost in a childhood memory?)

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books, one lucky reader will win a copy of Blind Faith. (US addresses only.)

Alicia Beckman writes moody suspense, beginning with Bitterroot Lake (April 2021) and continuing with Blind Faith (October 2022). As Leslie Budewitz, she’s a three-time Agatha-Award winner (2011, Best Nonfiction; 2013, Best First Novel; 2018, Best Short Story) and best-selling author of the Spice Shop mysteries, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, inspired by Bigfork, Montana, where she lives. Leslie is a practicing lawyer, a national board member of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of Sisters in Crime.

88 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Alicia/Leslie, on your new book. It certainly sounds thrilling [and mysterious] and the juxtaposition between the two brothers is simply fascinating. I’m looking forward to reading “Blind Faith” . . . .

    I can’t say, off hand, that I remember any notorious crimes or criminals from when we were growing up. Perhaps having an uncle who was the township sheriff made some difference????

    Sweet treats were a big deal in our family because my grandmother would always make her special iced coffee [which was a combination of coffee, milk, and ice cream] . . . yum.

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    1. That sounds delicious with my mother it was coffee and sweet whipped cream

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    2. Thanks, Joan. Wonder if I might have that coffee concoction for breakfast this morning . . . Sounds delish!

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  2. Sounds amazing Leslie! I'm envious of your journals. I have never kept one for life or books and I'm certain I've forgotten more than I remember. There was a tragedy down the street when I was a kid, a mother who killed herself and left her 2 young kids in the house alone. It still haunts me and I did use it in the advice column mysteries...

    I'd love to hear which you enjoy more, writing light or dark?

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    1. Old journals - pure gold. We think we remember. I used to start writing a diary … a page then a half page then a sentence then goose eggs

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    2. Oh, Roberta, that tragedy gives me the chills! As for journals, I have notebooks for everything! As for light or dark, I love them both, and love that the different stories tell us how they are best told.

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  3. Leslie, congratulations on your new stand alone! Your list is revealing of a time and I love your memories of your hometown. I remember rumblings of those crimes but no specifics although everything sounds familiar.

    There was a crime here in the late 1950's that was so shocking, the legislature changed laws concerning hours of operation for package stores.

    As for treats, my grandmother was a wonderful baker and when I think of her, I still picture her in the kitchen in front of the mixer.

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    1. I used to "help" my grandmother make her thin crispy cinnamon cookies - I got to brush butter and sprinkle sugar on the top of them before they went in the oven. Wish wish wish I had the recipe...

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    2. Thanks, Judy. You have me curious about that crime. And now I am picturing a woman in front of her vintage Kitchen Aid (my mother's was a pinky-beige) in an apron, making Hallie's grandmother's cookies!

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  4. Hi Leslie/Alicia welcome back to JRW's. I just ordered your first stand alone, Bitterroot Lake and Blind Faith is on my TBR list. Now; about Green Rivers. Because there is a Green River in Seattle, I thought they were a local specialty. I remember them from my childhood, and so did my mom. It sounds like the same formula, so maybe a soda jerk recipe known in the PNW?

    Instead of answering child hood crime memories, I would like to share a possible connection to the Jubilee Bar. My children's grandfather lived in Montana in the 1920's and 30's. Their grandmother, who died young, was born in Deer Lodge. They lived in and around Anaconda. Given that this is about 200 miles from Billings I doubt the children or Louella visited the Jubilee. George was another story. During this period he listed his occupation as 'barrel maker' (cough cough). I know it was not maple syrup that was put into those barrels.. Sooo, perhaps on his 'road trips' he did visit the Jubilee. and had a Green River (suuure he did.)
    Thanks for helping bring up some memories for me.

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    1. Wonderful, isn't it, how one person's memories sparks another person's memories... (Barrel maker!)

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    2. Hi, Coralee! Love your Montana story. I needed a bar in Blind Faith, so I borrowed one that's still in operation, with the family's permission, the Rainbow. Turns out it really did have its roots in bootlegging, run by a woman!

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  5. Leslie, congratulations on bringing this book to its birthing! Your book journaling is fascinating--that creative sifting through memory and how it played into the development of the story. BLIND FAITH is now beeping on my radar!

    I can't think offhand of any long-ago crimes that haunt my area. However, making a mental list of memories from my hometown--the forbidden old quarry where teenagers would go swimming, necking, drinking in the late 50s, early 60s; a straitlaced, stern-faced librarian who hid all the supposedly salacious histories of the town's founding behind locked cabinet doors (our town was founded by a free-love society from New England); the cars with those long tailfins; cigar smoke from the barbershop on Main; the house in the woods whose rich family just moved in and the daughter was beautiful and had a monthly clothing allowance (unheard of in our town); the cousins who vied for her attention....

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    1. Oh, Flora, what a great setting that would make for a mystery novel!

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    2. Thanks, Hallie! Feel free to write it! :-)

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    3. Thanks, Flora! Love those snippets of memory -- so rich and evocative.

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  6. Leslie, I can't wait to get home from my west-coast trip and grab my preordered book from my local indy! It sounds fabulous.

    I didn't know it at the time, but when I was growing up a girl was being imprisoned by her parents - mostly her father - only blocks away on my street. She was seventeen when her mother freed her and she had no language. Linguists pounced. People exploited her. It was a bad scene.

    A drugstore downtown would fix cherry cokes - yum! And in the hot southern California summers, I enjoyed many a thick milkshake whirred up in our two-speed blender or a root beer float outside under a tree with a book.

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    1. Oh, Edith, that would haunt me! Have you written a book with a linguist as a character? A sort of Maisie Dobbs character?

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    2. Hallie, this is a great idea!

      A sort of Maisie Dobbs character. I'm writing a sort of Maisie Dobbs / Lady Georgie character for my novel. Can you imagine a character who is a combination of both?

      Diana

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    3. Oh, Edith, that gives me the chills. Whatever happened to her, do you know? Root beer and floats were special treats for us, too, from the A&W or Dogs and Suds. (Now I want one and I haven't even had breakfast!)

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    4. Hallie, my first novel, Speaking of Murder, features a contemporary Quaker linguistics professor. It's sequel, Murder on the Bluffs, does too. I wouldn't say she's a Maisie Dobbs, thought.

      Leslie, last time I looked up Genie, she and her mom went into seclusion or something, or maybe it was her and her social worker. I don't know if she's still alive or not.

      She never really was able to acquire fluency in English, and it was the key test for the theory of the innate "language acquisition device" that all humans have - IF they are exposed to human language - and then lose after adolescence, at least for attaining native-speaker fluency.

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  7. Green River is an actual soft drink brand here in the Midwest - it's especially popular around St. Patrick's Day.

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    1. Curious minds... Wikipedia sez: Green River is a bright green, lime-flavored soft drink.[1][2][3] It was created by Richard C. Jones in Davenport, Iowa, sold widely by the Chicago-based Schoenhofen Edelweiss Brewing Company in 1919, subsequently sold by other vendors, and is currently manufactured by Sprecher Brewery

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    2. I wonder if they sold the syrup for fountain drinks, as they did other soft drinks at that time.

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    3. Mystery solved! But the odd thing is, the lunch counter at the bowling alley didn't offer it on their menu, as far as I recall, and I don't remember anyone else mixing them up for us. Did Mr. T keep his own secret stash of the syrup? One mystery begets another!

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    4. Charlene Miller-WilsonOctober 20, 2022 at 1:50 PM

      I remember drinking Green Rivers at the drug store in Port Clinton, Ohio in the 50's. I've never seen bottles of it though. And after a movie, we'd go there for tin roof sundaes too! Yum.

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  8. Congratulations, Leslie! No criminals in my history. Drunks, yes, but not criminals.

    My grandfather made fabulous milkshakes.

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  9. Congratulations on the new book! I have added it to my TBR list. Two of the most notorious criminals from my area (Dallas/Fort Worth) were Bonnie and Clyde. They were way before my time, though. One of the most notorious crimes in my lifetime — the Cullen Davis murders back in the 70s. Cullen Davis was only tried for the murder of his 12-year old stepdaughter, and he was acquitted. He was later tried and acquitted of charges that he tried to hire a hit man to kill his ex-wife and the judge from his first case. Even after all these years, most everyone here believes he got away with murder.

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    1. That was a wild case. His wife Priscilla was characterized as trailer trash. I remember his house was surrounded by tall Johnson grass.

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  10. Leslie, congratulations on the new book! I'll have to get it for my dear friend Annette, who grew up in Billings. Her parents were both professors at Rocky Mountain College. We've been buddies since we met in college here in Oregon in 1977, so I've heard a lot about Billings and been there a couple of times. I love Montana and will definitely be looking for your books.

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    1. Thanks, Gillian! We lived just a few blocks west of Rocky and I often roamed the campus, though I didn't know your friend -- we're probably the same age, as I'm class of 77, but was a Catholic school kid. I hope you both enjoy the trip, on the page!

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  11. LESLIE: Congratulations on the release of BLIND FAITH! Great idea to use a writing journal to address those doubts and questions. Looking forward to reading this one.

    There is an unsolved child disappearance in Toronto that I remember. In July 1985, 8-year old Nicole Morin left her Toronto apartment building to meet her friend in the building lobby to go swimming and simply vanished.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Nicole_Morin

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    1. Stories of children who've simply vanished... so haunting. I wrote a book inspired by that kind of story, but of course in my version, the girl comes back.

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  12. Hi, Leslie! Looking forward to reading Blind Faith!

    The only crime that I can think of from my own childhood did not directly affect me, except that women in this corner of Ohio were so terrified that locksmiths couldn't keep up with the demand for better locks. The Cincinnati Strangler operated in 1965-66 a mere 30 miles from my hometown, notoriously attacking older women, strangling and raping them. My Police Science criminal investigation class took a field trip to Cincinnati to visit the morgue and CPD headquarters, where we were shown actual crime scene photos from the murders. They haunted my dreams for years, those defenseless "elderly" (gulp, ages from 51 to 68, with one exception) women in housedresses, lying disheveled on the floor.

    The man who was arrested, Posteal (three syllables) Laskey, was a cab driver, and may or may not have been the actual murderer of the rest of the women. He was convicted of the death of the 31-year old woman he stabbed, raped, strangled, and ran over with his cab. The other murders did stop, and he died in prison many years later, after repeated denials for his release.

    My dad sometimes worked as a bartender, especially at the Moose Lodge, and we kids sometimes hung around with the bowling alley guy's daughter, Tex while he was working. Her real name was Connie, but no one ever called her that, and she was a pistol. Cokes in those days were made from fountain syrup made with cane sugar, and Daddy would sometimes let us have one. The stuff in plastic bottles, made with corn syrup, is a pale imitation.

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    1. Karen in Ohio, they are doing DNA science now and solving the unsolved murders by finding the killers through DNA!

      Diana

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    2. Diana, isn't it amazing how DNA and genealogy are being used now to solve old crimes? Only an option when correctly preserved evidence is available, but such a relief to families just to know for sure what happened.

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    3. Yesterday I interviewed the chief of police of a small northern California town pretty much like my new fictional one. He said a teen girl was murdered in 1982 and he has just reopened the case. Fingers crossed for new technology to find the killer.

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    4. Yes, and they weren't as careful back in the day about preserving evidence, since they didn't have any idea of its importance in the future. No one could have predicted how far the science would progress by now. We thought blood typing and fingerprints were the big deal then.

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  13. Leslie / Alicia, Congratulations on BLIND FAITH.

    BLIND FAITH sounds like a great title. I am guessing that the main character has Blind Faith in someone? Sounds very suspenseful and perfect read for Halloween.

    Off the top of my head, I can recall a few cases. A teacher at my high school was on a camping trip with his family when their daughter was kidnapped. I am sorry to say that her bones were found and the family never recovered from the death. I think they found the killer. This happened before I started high school. The daughter was about my age.

    And I was in high school or college when a deaf child was kidnapped. Her mother had remarried and her father was a policeman. The child was playing outside the family house when she disappeared. One minute she was there and the next minute she just vanished. Her mother was interviewed on the news and I noticed that the mother did Not sign. I was surprised. I think the family did know sign language. I was thinking that if the deaf child was watching the news, then she would not know what her mother said because she was not signing. I do not know if they found the child, who would be in her 30s or early 40s if she was still alive.

    And another case that was in the news. I remember when an adult at my school talked about the Patty Hearst kidnapping. She was a student at Berkeley living with her boyfriend when she was kidnapped by a domestic terrorist ? organization. If I recall correctly, she was brainwashed and became a bank robber. She ended up in prison then President Carter pardoned her. Patty Hearst married a policeman and they had children. I was a young child when she was kidnapped.

    Diana

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    1. Thanks, Diana! My first thought when you said the mother of the vanished child didn't sign was that she knew what had happened to the child and that the child would not see the interview because she was dead. Creepy-scary.
      Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a group that called itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. I was in high school then and both terrified and fascinated by the case.

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  14. Hi Leslie and congrats on the book! I love your prompts and your book journal process. I always begin one but once I really start writing it tends to get abandoned. I always vow to do better!

    Can't wait to read Blind Faith!

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    1. Thanks, Debs! I honestly could not write without that book journal. All credit to the great Sue Grafton.

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  15. Green River was a favorite of mine in grade school in the mid-fifties. A drug store set near the train station in downtown Northbrook, IL served them at a real soda-fountain counter. Bottle or syrup I don't remember.

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    1. You would probably never have seen the syrup unless you worked behind the counter. I remember my dad swapping out Coke syrup bottles behind the bar at the Moose when they ran out at the fountain.

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  16. Both a horrendous murder and a sweet treat--I grew up in the Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood in Chicago where, decades after the fact, people were still horrified by the Loeb/Leopold case where two young U of Chicago students murdered Bobby Frank, a boy of twelve or so. Our next-door neighbor went to the same private school as Frank and had been scheduled to play with him that afternoon. I made one attempt to treat it in fiction and gave up--it was too cold-blooded for me, a thrill killing. But the local Steinway drugstore had its own version of your Green River--they called it a Lime Rickey. It wasn't, however, peculiar to Steinway's and there is a recipe online.

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    1. Oh, Judy -- two degrees of separation from one of the most horrifying crimes in American history. < more shivers >
      I never knew there was a soda pop version of Lime Rickey -- it's also a well-known cocktail, with gin or vodka, I think.

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  17. I can't wait to read this!

    I'm from Jersey. It might be better not to ask about crimes! One of my dearest friends grew up two houses away from a well-known mobster who was serving time for extortion for much of the time I knew the family. To the credit of the neighborhood parents, all of the kids were told, and believed, that Uncle Tony was in the hospital. For years. No one ever questioned it. The fiction was so complete, the conspiracy of kindness so unbroken.

    Never heard of a Green River! Sounds intriguing. What was the green mixture made of? Do you know?

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    1. Thanks, Kait! I love your phrase "the conspiracy of kindness."

      The Green River was lemon-lime. Others here remember it too, and it sounds like the syrup is still being made!

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  18. Congratulations on Blind Faith. Lifting a glass to selling out the first edition in a couple of weeks!

    I’ve never been to Montana, but my mother was born in Billings in 1917. My grandparents were homesteaders there

    And you can guess how that worked out! They were out of there in a few years

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    1. Thanks, Ann! Lifting my OJ/Pellegrino combo to join your toast!
      Ah, yes, the teens and twenties were a rough time in those parts. My own great-grandparents and a great-uncle and his family homesteaded on the Hi-Line, the northern part of the state, though they lasted a little longer. The railroads and land agents touted dry land farming as the next great innovation in agriculture, but it was a bust, even before the drought of the 1930s. There's an intriguing book about the time period that you might enjoy, Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban.

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  19. When I was in grade school, I remember overhearing my parents and other adults saying that the mother of one of my classmates was dating a mobster. I don’t remember if they ever mentioned his name. (And they didn’t know I was listening to/eavesdropping on their conversation. I did a lot of that:-)

    DebRo

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  20. Congrats on a wonderfully thrilling new book! I'll be on the lookout for it.
    The biggest unsolved mystery around here is the disappearance of news anchor Jodi Huisentruit in 1995. Every year on the anniversary there's another update (basically that nothing new has come up) and anytime human remains are found somewhere, the first thing they clarify is that it's not her. There's a million conspiracy theories.

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    1. Thanks, from one Alicia to another!

      The case you mentioned sounded vaguely familiar so I looked it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodi_Huisentruit One of the links was to the case I was actually remembering, the 2002 murder of Jennifer Servo, a TV reporter in Abilene TX who was originally from a town just north of mine, here in NW Montana. Her case, too, has never been solved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jennifer_Servo Both so tragic.

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  21. Congratulations on the release of Blind Faith which sounds captivating. A sweet treat that was very popular and extremely yummy when I was young was a visit to a dairy which had the best ice cream. During the summer we would drive to the area which was not far and indulge. Everyone was crazy about the place as it was authentic and home made.

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    1. Thanks, Traveler! What a sweet -- pun intended -- memory! Love those truly local places.

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  22. Congrats on Blind Faith. During the 1950's where I lived we would visit the Woolworth's nearby. What a joy that was. Browsing through the treasures and then afterwards sitting at the counter, a large counter filled with goodies of all types. We looked forward to enjoying anything and everything. My favorite was a fountain drink. Cream Soda.

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    1. Thanks, Petite! I remember how special I felt stopping at Woolworth's in Billings and sitting at the counter with my mother, though I don't remember what I had. Cream Soda? Maybe -- it's still a special treat on occasion, made by the same company that makes Flathead Lake Monster Root Beer!

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  23. Having just finished reading Blind Faith yesterday, I highly recommend it to everyone. Totally absorbing, beautifully written with a lot of deep considerations about faith, how lies and secrets impact generations, and the beauty of family and roots. And it's such fun to read this post on how so much of the setting is really there and part of the actual landscape of Billings.

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  24. Fascinating tidbits!
    I love your author photo. It looks happy and relaxed and your glass frames are great.

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  25. Thanks, Libby! In the photo, I'm sitting on the rock step to our back porch on a summer day. I desperately need new lenses and so hope I can keep the same frames!

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  26. Congratulations on your new book, Leslie! That is such a great cover. I'm intrigued by who would need to kill a priest, as there's usually a pretty air-tight confidentiality between a priest and a parishioner. Something must have been really bad. I am looking forward to seeing the different roads this mystery goes down to get at the truth.

    For over fifty years I've kept one murder incident in mind from my hometown, and I think I've mentioned it here before. Maybe I really need to write about it. It was the case where a good friend of my father's lost his wife. At their home in the country that day were the bedridden grandmother and the man's wife and two of their daughters. The other daughter was in school, high school, that day. The two daughters at home were out of high school. So, the wife is shot by a gun that's in a closet (as I recall it was the closet in the grandmother's room), and she immediately dies. When the police arrive (and the father), the two daughters say it was the grandmother who did it. The father did not desert the grandmother, who was his wife's mother, and supported her through the time after. She was not imprisoned but taken to a care facility, as she was suffering from dementia. The daughters (I believe all three) fell out with the father because he didn't abandon the grandmother whom they said shot their mother. There was always a bit of uncertainty as to how the grandmother got the gun off the shelf up in the closet. It makes for interesting speculation.

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    1. Thanks, Kathy! Crooked Lane is doing amazing covers -- I feel like I'm falling into the forest when I look at this one.

      That's a helluva hometown murder story. So many questions. Were the girls ever suspects?

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    2. The girls were never suspects with the law, but there people who thought some questions went unanswered.

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  27. When I was a teenager there was a clerk working alone at night at the local convenience store called Lawson's (known for their French Onion Dip and Chip-chopped Ham). Mom stopped in frequently to buy things or sent one of us kids by bicycle to pick up something. A pretty, friendly college girl worked there and we all knew her. One night she was working alone and a guy who worked across the street at a factory who bought things on break came in. He'd apparently had a crush on her. Nobody knows exactly what happened but he ended up killing her with a knife. My whole family felt bad since we knew the co-ed. After the murder happened it became company policy to always have 2 employees in the store. They reopened that store location after the crime scene cleanup but the store soon failed. Most of the regular customers, including my family, couldn't bear to go into the store anymore. Later Lawson's was sold and became Dairy Mart. The man who killed the clerk ended up going to prison for murder. It was such a sad, tragic incident.

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    1. Oh, Sue. Such a tragedy. How can a crush go so terribly wrong? And yet, they do.

      There was a murder at a rental up the road from us a few years ago, and when the owner sold the property, the cabin was torn down and a new house built. Part of it is on the old concrete pad from the cabin. It's had numerous owners and I often wonder when I walk by whether it feels strange or haunted inside. I was only in it while it was under construction, and the only thing I felt was that it had a really strange floorplan!

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  28. I can tell I'm going to love this, Leslie! I grew up in a small town and can relate to so much of this!

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    1. Thanks, Jenn! In some ways, we never leave our hometowns, no matter how far we move.

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  29. My big brother and I used to go to Mading's Drug Store in Houston way back and at the fountain they had the Green River dispenser. That stuff glowed green like it belonged in a mad scientist's lab or an alien's insides. I'm not sure what the flavor was. I know I tried it at least once. As for tragic murders, Houston has had its share over the years. One of the more infamous ones was turned into a TV movie and book, Blood and Money. Socialite Joan Robinson Hill died suddenly and mysteriously. The autopsy was inconclusive but her doctor husband was suspect and Joan's father was positive he'd poisoned her. He tried to prove it for years and funnily enough, the doctor was gunned down later. This was a wild story that took place over several years. While I lived in New Orleans Jim Garrison the D.A. had his vendetta on Clay Shaw, trying to implicate him in JFK's assassination. Another wild and crazy ride.

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    1. Hey, Pat! Yes, it was almost Kelly green (like our horrid PE uniforms) and I love your description of the glow!

      Do we know who gunned down the doctor-husband and why? I wonder if Joan's father was ever a suspect.

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    2. A hitman was charged with the murder but died before doing any time. Ash Robinson denied being behind it and was never arrested. Hill's third wife and Robinson's grandson by his daughter Joan sued him for wrongful death but the jury acquitted him.

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  30. I have had a Green River! They have it on the menu at Hickory Park Restaurant in Ames, Iowa.
    Not from my childhood, but will not forget locking the doors and listening for updates on the news while they were searching for David Brom. He killed his family with an axe in 1988 here in Rochester, MN. Also the Jodie Huisentruit disappearance in 1995.

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    1. Another Green River memory! I shouldn't be surprised that it has midwestern origins -- Billings sits at the edge of the midwest and the Rocky Mountains.

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  31. Stardust Lanes in Merrillville Indiana served extra-syrupy Cokes. My husband and I still talk about those Cokes 40 years later!
    Lisa in Long Beach

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  33. I remember when there was a robbery at the Kroger store in a strip mall not far from our house. The manager was killed and the police came to the house and told us to stay inside and lock the doors and shut the windows. One of the robbers was found in the apple tree in our backyard.

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  34. My family was eating breakfast listening to the radio when my dad said "That's Lester"! The truck driver who worked with my dad had been arguing with his teenage or young adult son. The son escaped out the window but Lester killed his wife and himself. Wonder if the son ever forgave himself. Such a tragedy. I don't usually read standalones but I did read your other book.

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  35. Your backyard? That's scarier than any grizzly bear poop under our apple tree!

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  36. This was fascinating to read and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all worked out in becoming a book. I might take notes! It echoes for me because I have lately been pulled toward the idea of writing about my home town too. I've been working on something else, very different, but that pull is there. And there is a home town crime, but long before my time. In the early 20th century there was a never-solved murder at the splendid home of the town's richest woman, a much admired philanthropist. I knew the home, her good works, her name but you can be sure this was never mentioned when we studied local history in 7th grade! What do you think? A prosperous time with its own tensions, a scandal covered up, lots of history to research. Hmmm

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  37. Leslie, you already know I loved Blind Faith. The crime from my childhood that's always haunted me was the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (or their judicial murder, depending on your perspective) and especially the impact of their deaths on their children, who were about my age. I didn't know them, but I knew kids who knew them. I've written about it twice, once in a short story and once in a poem, both published many decades later.

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    1. Liz, so glad you enjoyed the book. The Rosenberg case remains, to many, one of the most significant of the 20th century, especially now that the historical consensus appears to be that Ethel was wrongfully executed, and likely innocent, Impossible not to think of their sons, isn't it?

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  38. Thanks to Hallie and the Reds, and all you lovely readers, for such a warm welcome. I hope you'll take the trip to Montana with me, on the page. And if you ever get a chance to try a Green River, enjoy a taste of nostalgia!

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  39. I definitely need a copy of Blind Faith! My first and only, so far, novel, The Drinking Gourd, takes place in my hometown, Oberlin, Ohio. So much delicious history from early days. I’m tempted to explore the life and times of my grandfather in Wyoming. He was a traveling preacher who rode from town to town saving souls, spreading the gospel and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Cattle Queen Kate, a notorious rustler who was later hanged. He said the invocation when Wyoming became a state. There’s a small family book about him, and Souls and Saddlebags.

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  40. Oops, anonymous is Kat Fast.

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  41. Got my copy of Blind Faith right here. Now just to find time to read it! Looking forward to revisiting Butte (in literature) - the last time I was there was when I read Work Song by Ivan Doig. Quite the town, I must say.

    No Green Rivers in my hometown of Lusk, Wyoming (located in Niobrara County, the least populated county in the least populated state), but I was very fond of Black Cows at the Dairy Bar (soda fountain), in the 1960s. A concoction that involved chocolate syrup and malted milk powder, if I remember right.

    And like you Montana kids, we spent plenty of time in bars with our parents. :-)

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