Touring Rose Carroll's Haunts, a Guest Post by Edith Maxwell

 RHYS BOWEN: Today we have a visit from a writer who needs no introduction at Jungle Reds. Edith Maxwell is one of our most loyal contributors and commenters and we all celebrate every time she has a new book out.  This one is different from her series. It's a collection of short stories featuring her Quaker midwife. So tell us about them, Edith.

EDITH MAXWELL:  Thank you for hosting me today, Rhys, to celebrate the recent release of my collection of midwife Rose Carroll short stories. Almost all the short tales in A Questionable Death and Other Historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries take place in Amesbury in northeastern Massachusetts where I live. All the Quaker Midwife Mystery novels except one are set in Amesbury, too.

 

I'm excited about the publication of this collection and delighted to keep Rose in front of readers' eyes. I’ll give away a copy of the book to a commenter (paper to US residents or ebook to others).

 

I’ve loved being able to walk around town and research the setting for the books and the stories. I thought I’d give the wonderful Reds community a photographic tour of some of the places in the stories that comprise the collection.

 

The first story in the book, “In Pursuit of Justice,” is new for this collection. It begins with apprentice-midwife Rose in 1886 reading a note from John Greenleaf Whittier asking for her help with a matter involving the previous day’s violent death of a fellow Quaker, the father of a baby Rose recently helped deliver. Rose meets in John’s parlor with him and police detective Kevin Donovan, and soon enough she finds herself in her first sleuthing adventure. The Whittier Home Museum is a short walk from my (which is also Rose’s) house and from the Friends Meetinghouse.

 

 Whittier, the rock-star-level Quaker poet, had a custom-made writing chair in his parlor that traveled with him wherever he went.]

 

In “An Ominous Silence,” Rose and her apprentice Annie Beaumont are on a winter train to Montreal. After it becomes mired in deep snow, a woman goes into labor and a man is found murdered.

 

Rose and Annie would have embarked from the train depot, which now houses Crave Bistro, a popular restaurant.]

“The Unfortunate Death of Mrs. Edna Fogg” takes place during the 1888 Presidential election. Voting took place at the new town Armory, now Amesbury City Hall, and the Amesbury Women Suffrage Association demonstrated across the street demanding the right to vote. This story sparked Called to Justice, the third novel in the series.

 

I wrote “Murder in the Summer Kitchen” for an anthology called Murder Among Friends, to benefit the Whittier Birthplace in nearby Haverhill. Like many 19th century homes, the Whittier home featured a kitchen removed from the main abode that was used in the summer to keep fire and heat separate from the living quarters.

“The Mayor and the Midwife” features several characters originally from New Orleans, as well as the pleasure steamboats that plied the wide Merrimack River that runs through Amesbury. The steamboats are no longer, but the river, still partly tidal, runs fast and true. This story was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story, thanks in part to dialect help from the late (and dear, and great) Ramona DeFelice Long.

 

 

Rose’s good friend Postmistress Bertie Winslow narrates “Adam and Eva.” I wish I could show you a picture of the 1888 post office, but it burned down in the Great Fire. This historic post office downtown wasn’t built until 1905 and is now an office building, but it still uses the same old boxes Bertie’s PO would have had.

 

“A Fire in Carriagetown” was what kicked off the whole series of novels. I hadn’t even invented Rose yet, so her mill worker niece Faith Baily tells the story of the Great Fire of 1888 and a misguided person who also tries to burn down the Friends Meetinghouse while Quakers are inside in silent worship.

 

 Amesbury Friends Meetinghouse, built 1855, is to this day essentially the same inside and out, and is where I sit in silent expectant waiting on Sunday mornings.]

 

In “The Case of the Missing Bicycle, we see Bertie’s back garden and the home of an impoverished family Rose is assisting. The family lives in a small, run-down house like this one.

 

The collection’s title story, “A Questionable Death,” was also nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Short Story. Lake Gardner, which was formed by the town damming the rushing Powow River in the eighteen-sixties, is featured several times in this story. I’m so lucky the lake and its swimming beach is only a ten-minute walk from my home.

 

 I took this picture on a blustery day at the end of March. It’s much prettier in the summer when the story takes place!]

 

“The Management of Secrets” takes place ten years later, in January of 1900. Rose still works as a midwife but had retired from sleuthing until police chief Kevin begs her to help with another case involving Quakers. Rose, her husband David Dodge, and their four children live in the home David had built for them the year they married. Rose and her eldest daughter attend Quaker worship on a snowy day.

 

 The house a mile from my house that I chose to be Rose and David’s home]

 

The limited release, signed and numbered hardcover edition includes a chapbook with yet another new story, “Labor’s Peril.” Narrated by both Rose and Faith, it tells parallel stories of labor. One kind of labor ended in childbirth. The other ended in a strike by the Hamilton Mill workers, with an assist by George Edwin McNeill, an Amesbury native called the “Father of the Eight-Hour Work Day.” Both Faith and Rose become involved in solving a murder on the rushing waters of the Powow River falls.

 

This Hamilton Mills building (one of nine) is now home to the Industrial History Center, our wonderful historical museum.]

 

Can you see why I love living in the middle of all this history? As I wander through Amesbury on my walking errands and plotting strolls, these extant buildings and centuries-old natural features spark my imagination and keeps me connected to the past.

 

You are all warmly welcome to join me at the Industrial History Center on May 6 at 5 pm as I launch A Questionable Death at in-person party. I hope to see you there!

Readers: What’s your favorite historical building or landmark? What old haunts do you like to tour?

 

A Questionable Death and Other Historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries is a collection of Edith Maxwell’s previously published short stories featuring nineteenth-century midwife Rose Carroll. Since 2013, they've been published in juried anthologies and magazines, and only the most dedicated of fans would have sought them all out. In this collection, reader can find them all in one place. “Apprentice to Murder,” a new story, serves as a prequel to the other books and the stories and opens the collection. The limited edition hardbound version includes a chapbook with another new story, “Labor’s Peril.”

Buy links:

Crippen &Landru

Amazon

B&N

Edith’s local indy (order from Jabberwocky and ask for a signed copy)

 

Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell writes the historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries and Agatha-nominated short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she pens the contemporary Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries. A long-time member of Amesbury Friends Meeting (Quaker), Maxwell lives in Amesbury where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com.

National Cereal Day!

Jenn McKinlay: It's National Cereal Day! Now I'm not saying you have to have cereal for dinner, but I'm not not saying it either.

When I saw this day on the national day calendar, I realized I had no idea about the origin of breakfast cereal. The librarian in me could not let this stand. So here's what I learned from a fabulous article in the New York Times by Kim Severson: A Short History of Cereal.

"In 1863, James Caleb Jackson, a religiously conservative vegetarian who ran a medical sanitarium in western New York, created a breakfast cereal from graham flour dough that was dried and broken into shapes so hard they needed to be soaked in milk overnight. He called it granula. John Harvey Kellogg, a surgeon who ran a health spa in Michigan, later made a version and named it granola. Using the same idea, a former Kellogg patient, C.­W. Post, created Grape-Nuts, which would become the first popular product to offer a discount coupon."

The 1920's heralded the invention of Wheaties, and its slogan "Breakfast of Champions" followed in the 1930's. Frosted Flakes and Tony the Tiger debuted in the 1950's. And in the 1960's there was very popular space inspired cereal called Quisp. Kind of sorry I missed that one. 

Then cereal went all to heck in the 1970's with sugar overload and the Federal Trade Commission had to take a look at how cereal was being marketed to kids. By the 1990's organic was all the rage and remains a hot ticket to this day.

Okay, true confession, time, my favorite cereal of all time is...

Raisin Bran. Not even kidding. It's the only cereal besides oatmeal that my mom let us have as kids, so it's my comfort cereal. I like it even better when the bran flakes get a little mushy. My favorite bad for you cereal? Lucky Charms, natch!

So, Reds and Readers, chime in, what's your favorite cereal? 

EVENTS OF 1888 by Edith Maxwell.

RHYS BOWEN: Edith Maxwell is one of our favorite and loyal Reds, so I was delighted when she

asked me to read this book, several months before it came out. And what it treat it was to have a chance to experience a small New England town seen through the eyes of a Quaker midwife, as told by another Quaker in the same town over one hundred years later.

So when the book came out, I asked Edith to become a Red instead of a commenter and tell us about it. Welcome Edith!

EDITH MAXWELL:

I’m delighted to be back on the front side of Jungle Reds. Thanks for inviting me, Rhys!

You did a post recently about the real events that happened while fictional Molly is alive, and I 

thought I’d echo that.

My Quaker Midwife Mysteries are set in 1888, which came about from a simple news story 

I read in our local paper in 2013. It described the Great Fire of 1888 in the mill town of 

Amesbury, Massachusetts, where I live. The fire, on the night before Good Friday, burned down 

many of the carriage factories – and Amesbury was world famous for producing graceful well- 

built carriages

 The town and neighboring Salisbury had been tussling about who was going to 

annex whom, so the municipal fire-fighting equipment hadn’t been updated. The fire raged,

spreading to the telegraph and post offices, so they couldn’t send for help to other larger towns.

Only an overnight rain helped reduce some of the damage.

I was walking to Quaker Meeting one Sunday morning after reading that article and a short 

story about a Quaker mill girl who solves the mystery of the Carriage Fire arson popped into my 

head. Poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier had a bit part in the story, too. And now I 

have a three-book contract for a series featuring Whittier, that mill girl, and her aunt Rose 

Carroll, our midwife-sleuth protagonist (ooh, and an Agatha-nominated story with the same 

setting and characters!).

It turns out 1888 is a really interesting time in which to set stories, even though I came upon 

it by accident. The germ theory of infection was beginning to be known, so Rose washes her 

hands a lot, and most babies were still born at home with midwives. There’s a recently built 

hospital across the river where Rose’s beau David Dodge practices medicine, and it even has the 

new chain-pull toilets.

Electricity was around, although it wouldn’t have been used in my midwife’s modest home. 

The first successful electric street railway was opened in Richmond, Virginia in 1888 by Frank 

Sprague, but the horse-drawn trolley in Amesbury didn’t get electrified until 1890.

Similarly, some of Rose’s more well-off clients had telephones in their homes – but not

Rose. She relies on the twice-daily mail service to communicate, or pays a passing boy to deliver 

a note for her.

George Eastman perfected the Kodak box camera in 1888, the first camera designed to use 

roll film. I wonder if George might not pay a visit to Amesbury in my next book! And speaking 

of pictures, Thomas Edison filed a patent for the first motion picture camera that same year. 

It’s been interesting researching police procedure of the era. Fingerprinting wasn’t yet used, 

nor was the technology to identify the exact weapon a bullet had been fired from. They didn’t 

know about blood typing yet, either.

The International Council of Women met for the first time in Washington, DC in 1888. 

Women leaders representing 53 women's organizations from 9 countries gathered to advocate for 

human rights for women. Susan B. Anthony presided over half the sessions, and Rose Carroll’s 

mother, a women’s suffrage activist, attended.

The Great Blizzard of 1888 had raged just a few weeks before Delivering the Truth opens in 

early April. The storm paralyzed the east coast from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine, shut down 

the railroads, and kept people confined to their homes for a week. Rose needed to strap on 

snowshoes to attend a birth after the storm ebbed.

What else happened in 1888? Jack the Ripper was leaving bodies around London, and 

Brazil abolished the last remnants of slavery. In America, the National Geographic Society was 

founded, the Washington Monument was opened to the public, a 91-centimeter telescope was 

first used at Lick Observatory in California, and Grover Cleveland won the popular vote for 

President but lost the electoral college vote to Benjamin Harrison. Of those events, the last is the 

only one that would have affected Rose’s life. Her irreverent friend, postmistress Bertie 

Winslow, rides a horse named Grover around town, and I’m sure Bertie’s not going rename him 

Benjamin.

Readers: What do you know about the late-1800s? Do you have a favorite historic event of 

the era, or invention? I’ll give away a copy of  Delivering the Truth to one commenter!

Delivering the Truth, Quaker midwife Rose Carroll becomes a suspect when a difficult 

carriage factory manager is killed after the factory itself is hit by an arsonist. Struggling with 

being less than a perfect Friend, Rose delivers the baby of the factory owner’s mistress even 

while the owner’s wife is also seven months pregnant. After another murder, Rose calls on her 

strengths as a counselor and problem solver to help bring the killers to justice before they destroy 

the town’s carriage industry and the people who run it.

Bio:

Agatha-nominated and Amazon best-selling author Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker 

Midwife Mysteries and the Local Foods Mysteries, the Country Store Mysteries (as Maddie 

Day), and the Lauren Rousseau Mysteries (as Tace Baker), as well as award-winning short crime 

fiction. Her story, “A Questionable Death,” which features the same 1888 setting and characters 

as Delivering the Truth, is nominated for a 2016 Agatha Award for Best Short Story. 

Edith is Vice-President of Sisters in Crime New England and Clerk of Amesbury Friends 

Meeting. She lives north of Boston with her beau and three cats, and blogs with the other Wicked 

Cozy Authors. You can find her on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, and at her web site, 

www.edithmaxwell.com.