What We're Writing: Rhys is in the Catskills.

 RHYS BOWEN:  Since it's almost Hanukah I thought I'd share a scene from the book Clare and I have just finished. It's called, tentatively IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW and it's set in a fledgling Jewish bungalow community in the Catskills.  For those of you who don't know the details, early in the century Jewish residents of New York, wishing to escape the city heat and disease, started renting cabins (bungalows) from Jewish farmers in the mountains. This gradually morphed into the grand resorts of the 1920s.

Molly has been invited to join her friend Sid's family. Sid has been estranged from them as they are pressing her to get married and behave like a normal young woman. Things become serious when a matchmaker is invited. I won't give away what has happened so far, but the family is in shock before this scene.

After a rather quiet dinner Jacob got the Weiss children involved in stacking firewood in a stone fire ring in the clearing between the bungalows. We pulled logs, chairs and benches around the fire. At first only Mira joined us from Sid’s family. Sid and Gus recited some poetry as promised. I even got up and recited a poem I had memorized at school. Then Professor Rosen and Jacob began to play. They played a folk song in Yiddish that sounded mournful and longing. Jacob sang the melody in a clear voice and Professor Rosen joined in on the chorus, “A shvue, a shvue, af lebn, un toyt.” As the song came to an end, we saw Sid’s grandparents standing at the edge of the firelight.

                “That was beautiful,” Sid’s grandmother had tears in her eyes.

                “Come and join us, Bubbe,” Sid said and we made room for them.

                “I wonder if you know this one,” Sid’s grandfather said and sang the first line, “’Oyfn priptchik brent a fayerl,’ Appropriate don’t you think?”

                “Fayerl is a little fire,” Sid whispered to me. “My grandfather always used to sing this song to me when I was a little girl. It’s about learning the Hebrew alphabet.”

                “Also actually about preserving the Jewish culture.” Jacob had overheard. “I know the song. We teach it to kindergartners.”

                “I know it too,” Professor Rosen nodded and began to play the tune. Jacob joined in with the accompaniment. Sid’s grandfather sang along in a voice that was still surprisingly strong. Hearing Zayde sing brought the rest of the family to the fire. Mr. and Mrs. Weiss joined us as well. I was not accustomed to night in the forest. In the lulls between the music I could hear the wind sighing through the tall trees, making branches creak and crack. In the distance an owl hooted. Sparks rose from the fire to be swallowed into the night. It was magical but a little alarming. If I turned my head from the fire, I could see nothing but darkness. It was as if the rest of the world had disappeared. We were in our own private universe. Perhaps that made us less self-conscious. The mood became less somber. Mr. Weiss sang a song that made everyone laugh. Sid tried to translate it for me but couldn’t keep up.

                Everyone was in a good mood as we carried our lanterns back to the bungalows. It was hard to remember that only that morning Mr. Levin had been alive.

With that a happy Hanukah to all who celebrate!

And if you’d like to get in the Christmas spirit, my Molly book AWAY IN A MANGER is on special at Amazon right now at $2:99

https://www.amazon.com/Away-Manger-Murphy-Mystery-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00WRE4AJO/ref=zg_bs_157313011_sccl_4/142-6958684-1862937?psc=1

What We're Writing: Rhys Down the Rabbit Hole

RHYS BOWEN: It’s interesting that Hallie has just written on research and how you discover weird and amazing things. When I wrote Murphy’s Law, (the first of the Molly Murphy books, over twenty years ago now!!! ) Molly is accused of a murder on Ellis Island and at the end of the book steps ashore in Manhattan a free woman. And I realized this was to be a series and that I knew nothing about Manhattan in 1901. I realized I was doomed to research on every single page. 

 This has turned out to be true, but you know what? The research has turned out to be the fun and surprising part of my writing. In the early days I went to New York and walked every street that Molly had walked. Browsed photographs at the New York historical society and amassed a collection of books, menus, timetables etc etc. The one trouble with research is knowing when to stop. I find a fascinating fact that leads to another fascinating fact and before I know it I’m off somewhere quite different and a whole morning gone. 

 When I write the Molly Murphy books (and now Clare writes with me) I always check the NY Times to see what really happened on those dates. If there was an event, a catastrophe, an election at that time, Molly would know about it, react to it. Sometimes what I find becomes an important part of the story: when I was writing THE EDGE OF DREAMS I discovered that there had been a horrific crash of the elevated railroad. A train had been routed onto the wrong track, come around a bend too quickly and plunged into the street below, killing 42 people. So I thought that Molly should mention this. Then I thought…. What if Molly was on that train? And it became an important development in the story. In my book it wasn’t an accident. 

 These days it’s Clare who does all the early research reading and comes across wonderful things. For our upcoming ALL THAT IS HIDDEN she got all the facts on William Randolph Hearst and his run for mayor of New York. Also on the corruption at the docks at that time. Our current book is set in the Catskills, at a fledgling bungalow community. Thanks to Clare I can tell you the railroad and steamship timetables, all the most popular Yiddish songs of the time, The history of the Jews in Poland. So the story is a murder at a small resort in the Catskills. Thus the suspects are all staying in the resort. However… Clare discovered that there was a bluestone mine right there–open pit mining with loud blasts disturbing the tranquility of the mountains. Not good if you want to build a hotel nearby. Also there was a brand new state park next to the mine and a clash between environmentalists and miners when they wanted to transport stone from the quarry to the boats down the Hudson through state park land. So we now have outsiders and more complex motives for murder. 

Here is part of a scene of the protest against the mine, using our serendipitous research:

Almost an hour had passed when we heard two horses cantering back along the road. They rode past the mine carts and drew themselves up in front of our protest. Two men swung down from the saddle. One was dressed in denim pants and a blue denim shirt. The other wore a brown suit and a derby hat. He spoke first.

                “Hello little ladies,” he took off his hat and gave a little bow. He sounded like a Scottsman. “I hear we have a bit of a misunderstanding, so I have come to clear it up. “I’m Ronnie Fitch and this is my foreman, Mitch Doherty.”

                “ And I’m Alice Haskin,” Miss Haskin said stepping forward. “You have illegally felled trees to create this road on state land. We are here to protest your actions.”

                “Now Mrs.,” he said with what he thought was a charming smile. “These matters are best decided by the business men. I suggest you let your husbands handle the political matters. You are all far too lovely to trouble yourselves.”

                “Do you see these chestnut trees that your men felled to make this road?” Miss Haskin continued. “You have cut right through a grove, destroying the infrastructure and spreading the blight. You must know that chestnut trees up and down the east coast are being destroyed by this blight. Do you wish a world with no more chestnut trees? Everywhere your men’s axes cut you will spread it more.”

                Doherty stepped forward. “I think we know a bit more about trees than you, little lady. Who do you think you are anyway, come out of the city with your do-gooding?”

                “I’m a researcher at Department of Agriculture studying plant pathogens,” Miss Haskins said coldly. “And I’m including your illegal behavior in our report to Congress.”

               

               

Whodunit? You’ll have to wait until March to find out. So who has a serendipitous research story? 

 And sharing a tidbit of good news. My new stand alone WHERE THE SKY BEGINS was #7 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list of ebooks last week!

Where Did Summer Go?

 RHYS BOWEN:  Clare and I are working on our next Molly Murphy book. It’s going to be set in the Catskills in a fledgling bungalow colony and we are now deep into our research. At the time we write about, 1907, there were no big resorts in the Catskills and it was just beginning to emerge as a place where Jewish families spent their summers. Jewish farmers who had settled in the area outside New York and were growing fruits and vegetables for the city took in guests for the steamy summer months where city living with the risk of disease became unbearable. Then they built primitive cottages (bungalows) for guests to rent. The bungalows had their own small kitchen (hence the name Kochalayn in Yiddish–cook for yourself).  Families came up for the whole summer. Wives and children stayed. Fathers worked during the week and came up by train at weekends. It was a perfect arrangement. Children had a carefree exposure to country living. They helped collect eggs and pick berries while their mothers played cards (and later mahjong).

Gradually hotels were built, and then resorts until the heyday of Grossingers and the magnificent resorts that attracted the comedians and crooners of the day. All of this fell into decline when plane travel made vacations abroad easier and presumably when women had to enter the workforce and thus did not have summers free. 

And why only Jewish families, may you ask? The horrible truth is that Jews were not welcome elsewhere, so they created their own summer escape.

Older people I know had similar childhoods growing up in San Francisco, where it’s foggy and cold all summer. San Francisco families had cabins on the Russian River or at Clearlake and came up for the summer, leaving the husbands to work all week. It sounded ideal, especially today when we read that most people do not take the vacation days they are owed. A week on a beach is not enough to recharge!

I remember my own summers–we lived in a rambling old house in the country with an acre of orchard. I remember building tree houses, a trapeze, playing with feral kittens in the old shed (occasionally trying to smuggle one into the house), or going off on my bike, only to return when it got dark. It seemed that summers were endless and carefree.   Now I look up and it’s September!

So Reds, do you have fond summer memories? Did your family have a cabin somewhere? Do you make the most of summer now?

JENN McKINLAY: Growing up, we always camped or traveled for weeks during the summer and then my mom bought a cottage on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia and that’s where my Hooligans learned to run wild. Mom was a teacher so she made sure we milked every drop of summer freedom for what it was worth. After she bought the cottage, she  left for Canada the day after graduation and came back the day before school started. Now the Hooligans are in college and not free to take off to Canada with me, so it’ll be me and mom and my sis-in-law, which is its own kind of lovely summer break. 

LUCY BURDETTE: Oh yes I have great summer memories too. Early on, my parents rented a really tiny house at the Jersey shore. We’d all jam in there with my mother’s sisters and their kids, and my father would take the train down on weekends. Later on, the whole family group moved to Hatteras Island, and stayed in a giant Coast Guard house that fit everyone. We played lots of board games and spent hours and hours roasting in the sun. Nobody had anywhere to be or anything else to do, so we enjoyed the beach and the family! When we got a little older, we put a surfboard in my cousin's convertible and drove around acting cool and trying to attract boys. That’s where I got my famous  sex education tip: “never lie down on a blanket with a boy.“

HANK PHILLIPI RYAN: Ahhh….we didn’t have a routine summer thing.  We had ponies, so mostly we went to the local pool and listened to transistor radios, or rode along the trails and fields.  LOTS of reading. One summer, all five kids and two parents and another family of four took a tour of the west on Frontier AiIrlines–they had a deal where you could go on however many flights you wanted in three weeks for a flat rate. (CAN YOU IMAGINE??) No reservations, you just showed up and crossed your fingers.  We hopped on and off–in Denver, Colorado Springs, Jackson Hole, Helena, Sun Valley, Phoenix,  Tucson, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City Durango, on and on. It was incredible, and I think we bankrupted the airline company.

HALLIE EPHRON: My parents sent us to camp, pretty much all summer. Day camp (I loved being a junior counselor) and a month of overnight camp (in Arizona) which I also loved. 

I do not remember a single family “trip.” Not one! Though we did rent a house for a week on Malibu beach a couple of seasons running. A rambling house with hundreds of feet of sandy beach between it and the water. Spectacular. 

Tracking the house, Dick Van Dyke ended up owning it years later.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We traveled every summer. My parents loved to pile in the car and go and we covered a lot of territory over the years. There were many trips to Mexico, including terrifying drives on the old Pan American Highway to Mexico City. Lots of trips in the US, too, including one that took us from Dallas to LA to Vancouver, and back down through the Rockies. Otherwise, I ran wild in the summers, playing outside and roaming the neighborhood, swimming at the rec center pool, and hanging out at the country club pool while my parents played golf. Fun times.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My teen summers in the Finger Lakes were wonderful, in a kind of 1970's retro movie way. Crammed into a car with friends to see movies at the Lakeshore Drive- In (my friend Shaun always hid in the trunk to keep the cost down.) My bff Tracy and I would take the bus into Syracuse, which was then a thriving, successful city with glamorous department stores, cute places to eat, and a magnificent Carnegie library right next to where my boyfriend worked as a lifeguard at the YMCA. (See what I mean about a retro movie?)

My folks sailed on Lake Onondaga every weekend on The Tailwind, and we would take dad’s vacation on the same 38-foot boat, dropping mast to go through the lock system of New York’s canals and then out onto Lake Ontario.

Today, Lake Onondaga is considerably cleaner and safer, but everything else is gone - the Drive In flattened, the library renovated beyond recognition, and the city hollowed out when its major industries moved out of the US. Good thing I checked out À la recherche du temps perdu when I had the chance.

RHYS: Ah, the good old days!  Next week we're going down to San Diego where I have rented a house on the beach for a week with the whole family. I'm really looking forward to it, but a week is too short. A month would have been perfect but everyone is too busy to stay longer.

So what are your favorite childhood memories and do you still take long vacations?

What We're Writing: Rhys Researches

RHYS BOWEN:  For once I am actually not writing. Earlier this month I sent off my latest stand-alone, ISLAND OF LOST BOYS, to my editor, did the copy edits on my next Georgie called PERIL IN PARIS, and the page proofs on ALL THAT IS HIDDEN, the next Molly book, written with daughter Clare.

Clare should have been here now, staying with me in California while we work on the next Molly book, but alas she is stuck at home with Covid. After being so careful all this time her husband had to take a group of students to El Salvador where they promptly all got Covid. He waited until he tested negative to fly home but then still gave it to Clare.

So we are both working remotely but we’re still in the hunter/gatherer stage: this is the part of the writing process that I love—searching the internet, finding out new and exciting things that can be part of our story and deciding how to weave them in. The new book is set in the Catskills—in the fledgling bungalow colonies. At that time the exodus of Jews from the city to escape the summer heat and disease was still new. There were as yet no resorts. Enterprising Jewish  farmers offered rooms or built primitive outbuildings at reasonable rents and quickly saw the possibilities.  Anyone who could escaped from the packed conditions of city life, where typhoid and other diseases ran rampant during the steamy summer.

And so we decided that Molly’s neighbors Sid and Gus would have to visit Sid’s grandparents who live in the Catskills. That was the starting point: and then we discovered the artist’s colony to which they would obviously be drawn. A theater director Clare knows is putting on summer stock in a theater in the Catskills, AND the theater was in existence in those days. Perhaps Sid wants to be in the show.

When I was in New York for the Edgars I met up with an old friend who is well-connected in the New York Jewish community. We’ve had fun adventures over the years, once being locked in Gramercy Park and having to be rescued. She’s offered to help with research and vet what we write. “Well of course I know Grossinger’s grandson if that helps,” she said. She will also be invaluable in getting the tone right—Sid’s family coming from Germany two generations ago , educated, worldly and well-established yet other characters new immigrants and much more conservative in their religion and habits.

Clare’s research has turned up other gems. A newly formed state park near where we want to set the story. Also near was a bluestone mine—an early form of cement vital for New York street building. An environmental theme, we ask ourselves?

And so the pieces of the story come together from the research. We already knew what the main thread of plot would be (not going to tell you). But this is how environment will enrich and twist the plot. Such fun.  I start out knowing where I want to set a book, who might be murdered and why. Then I do my detailed research. Usually it involves going to the place, walking the streets my heroine will walk and noticing what I see. Sometimes I spot something that will come into the story, maybe change it.  But just soaking in details makes it a richer story: for THE VENICE SKETCHBOOK the basket being lowered from an upstairs window into a boat below and being raised again with the morning newspaper. Little gems you can’t make up. 

For my upcoming WHERE THE SKY BEGINS I visited the old air bases in Lincolnshire, climbed inside a Lancaster Bomber, looked at flight suits, parachutes, read letters home from pilots.

I’m not going to be able to visit the Catskills before we write this which is annoying. I have driven through the area before so I know what it looks like and thank you to Google Earth—I shall be visiting in often, I suspect. Also I have Clare to do the lion’s share of research now. We know about the bungalows and the kochalayn (the bungalows that had their own kitchen!) But would they have played mahjong in those days? Would there have been entertainers? Maybe a family’s entertainment is so good that others come to watch and a tent is set up and…

A challenge will be how we bring Molly, good Irish girl, into this Jewish setting.

So we get ready to start writing. And dear Reds and readers—if any of you have bungalow memories or heard your grandparents talking about their time in the Borscht Belt, please do share.