Sarah Stewart Taylor--Agony Hill

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Sarah Stewart Taylor's Maggie D'Arcy novels, set in Ireland and Long Island, have been huge favorites of all of us here at JRW, and now we have a brand new series to look forward to from Sarah, this one set in small town Vermont! Here she introduces us to fictional Bethany, Vermont, in the 1960s, and contemplates the contradictions of small town life. Welcome, Sarah!

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR:  Small towns loom large in crime fiction — and indeed in literature. I think it’s because they are such ripe territory for exploration of the human condition. When everyone around you has known you since the day you were born, it’s hard to hide, well, anything. And it’s all the more transgressive when you do. The idea of a murderer hiding in plain sight in a small town is fascinating to us as readers because we think of small towns as versions of the many kinds of communities we build in our lives.

St. Mary Mead, Three Pines, Cabot Cove, Midsomer, Miller’s Kill — these places feel real despite being fictional because they contain all of the colorful personalities and hidden and not-so-hidden histories of their inhabitants. And, they provide a special pleasure for crime fiction series readers, a chance to return home to a place you’ve come to know and love every time you open the book.

We have lots of positive associations with small towns. When everyone knows you, it’s hard to fall through the cracks or escape notice when you’re in crisis. There’s a comfort to a place that never seems to change.

But small towns can be suffocating too and that never changing thing can be dangerous for marginalized people. Small towns can make newcomers feel unwelcome or scrutinized to an uncomfortable degree. Vermont, like the other New England states, is engaged in a statewide discussion right now about how  to be more welcoming to the new Vermonters we need to prop up our schools and town governments and help provide more tax dollars to fix our roads and bridges. It’s sparked sometimes difficult but very important conversations about how we may need to change and adapt to attract these new residents.

My own small town (pop. 3,483) is experiencing all of these growing pains. Our town listserv contains daily postings about loose cows in the road, runaway dogs, items for sale, reminders that the food shelf is open, library programs, offers of help with stacking firewood, or free items that might be useful to someone in need. But it also contains arguments over land use and development and, though we’re not supposed to post about political subjects, sometimes bitter debates about hot button topics like book banning, the presidential election, and school funding. Raising my kids in our town, where my husband grew up but I did not, I feel so good about providing them with a community that truly cares about them and will always be there for them. I also really, really hope they’ll go off and explore other parts of the world (and then, yes, move in down the street from us. A mother can hope . . .) 

In so many ways, the small towns near where I live in Vermont, each with their own history and particular makeup and personality, were the inspiration for my novel, Agony Hill, the first in a new series set in Vermont in the 1960s. The fictional Bethany, Vermont has a town green, a general store, a library, two churches, four lawyers, and a widow named Alice Bellows who in many ways keeps the town running. Alice grew up in Bethany and has returned after the death of her husband, who, as they say, “worked in intelligence.” She spent years living abroad and even helped out with some intelligence gathering from time to time. Now she’s back in Bethany and makes it her business to know everything that’s going on, not only because she’s nosy, but because she can help out anyone who might need it. I love Alice and I love the way that she cares for those in her community (even if she sometimes has an ulterior motive!)

She’s committed to her work with the Ladies Aid Society and the town’s library but perhaps feeling a bit bored when a young homicide detective from Boston named Franklin Warren moves in next door. He’s there to take a job with the Vermont State Police and, after a tragedy that Alice will learn more about, is ready to start over in Vermont. He’s barely unpacked when he’s called out to his first case and as he investigates the death of a farmer who no one in town seemed to like, Warren realizes that his new neighbor is an asset in more ways than one.

I’ve loved exploring the experiences of a newcomer to a small town alongside a longtime resident who knows everyone’s secrets. And as I write the second Bethany mystery, I’ve loved revisiting the personalities and places and rituals that make up my fictional small town. I tried to capture this feeling in Agony Hill. Standing in line at Coller’s Store on the Green in Bethany, Alice thinks, “When she’d been away and returned home, she never felt she’d really landed until she’d been in to get the papers and hear the news.”

What are your favorite small towns, real or fictional?

DEBS: What a great question from Sarah! Readers, tell us about your favorite small towns!

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR is the author of the Sweeney St. George series, set in New England, the Maggie D’arcy mysteries, set in Ireland and on Long Island, and Agony Hill, the first in a new series set in rural Vermont in the 1960s.

 

Sarah has been nominated for an Agatha Award, the Dashiell Hammett Prize, and the MWA Sue Grafton Memorial Award and her mysteries have appeared on numerous Best of the Year lists. A former journalist and teacher, she writes and lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries. 

Set in rural Vermont in the volatile 1960s, Agony Hill is the first novel in a new historical series full of vivid New England atmosphere and the deeply drawn characters that are Sarah Stewart Taylor's trademark.

In the hot summer of 1965, Bostonian Franklin Warren arrives in Bethany, Vermont, to take a position as a detective with the state police. Warren's new home is on the verge of monumental change; the interstates under construction will bring new people, new opportunities, and new problems to Vermont, and the Cold War and protests against the war in Vietnam have finally reached the dirt roads and rolling pastures of Bethany.

Warren has barely unpacked when he's called up to a remote farm on Agony Hill. Former New Yorker and Back-to-the-Lander Hugh Weber seems to have set fire to his barn and himself, with the door barred from the inside, but things aren’t adding up for Warren. The people of Bethany—from Weber’s enigmatic wife to Warren's neighbor, widow and amateur detective Alice Bellows — clearly have secrets they’d like to keep, but Warren can’t tell if the truth about Weber’s death is one of them. As he gets to know his new home and grapples with the tragedy that brought him there, Warren is drawn to the people and traditions of small town Vermont, even as he finds darkness amidst the beauty.

Sarah Stewart Taylor--Be Fearless

DEBORAH CROMBIE: One of the perks of being an author is getting to read advance copies of upcoming books. Another is following the careers of other authors who have become friends. Such is the case today, with the publication of Sarah Stewart Taylor's THE MOUNTAINS WILD. I loved Sarah's Sweeney St. George books, and missed her writing in the years she was doing other things. So I'm thrilled to bring you Sarah today, with a wonderful new novel, THE MOUNTAINS WILD.

Twenty-three years ago, Maggie D'arcy's family received a call from the Dublin police. Her cousin Erin has been missing for several days. Maggie herself spent weeks in Ireland, trying to track Erin's movements, working beside the police. But it was to no avail: no trace of her was ever found.

The experience inspired Maggie to become a cop. Now, back on Long Island, more than 20 years have passed. Maggie is a detective and a divorced mother of a teenager. When the Gardaí call to say that Erin's scarf has been found and another young woman has gone missing, Maggie returns to Ireland, awakening all the complicated feelings from the first trip. The despair and frustration of not knowing what happened to Erin. Her attraction to Erin's coworker, now a professor, who never fully explained their relationship. And her determination to solve the case, once and for all.

  
Here's what I said about it: 
"With its evocative Dublin setting, lyrical prose, tough but sympathetic heroine, and a killer twist in the plot, Sarah Stewart Taylor's The Mountains Wild should top everyone's must-read lists this year!" ― New York Times bestselling author Deborah Crombie

Julia liked it, too:

"Lyrical, moody, THE MOUNTAINS WILD unfolds like an Irish ballad, at turns stirring, tender and tragic. Sarah Stewart Taylor has written a book as much about the mysteries of the human heart as the questions surrounding the long-missing woman at the silent center of the tale. A triumphant return to the genre." ― New York Times bestselling author Julia Spencer Fleming

So this one comes highly recommended indeed! Here's Sarah to share her inspiration--

BE FEARLESS

I am not a slogan-y sort of person. I have never made an inspirational collage. I don’t have any “Success” posters hanging in my writing room. I am generally of the mind that a single motivational sentence or word could never contain enough nuance to be actually useful.  

And yet, a few years ago, when I embarked on a writing project that would become my new mystery novel, THE MOUNTAINS WILD, I found myself turning over and over again to two short sentences: Do Your Work. Be Fearless. Finally, I typed them up and pinned them above my desk. 

I needed a bit of fearlessness. The heart of the novel -- about a Long island homicide detective named Maggie D’arcy who returns to Ireland twenty three years after she first went there looking for her beloved cousin Erin -- had been lodged in my head since the night in 1993 that I drove with a group of friends up into the mountains outside Dublin, Ireland, and someone said to me, “This is where the American woman disappeared. She was from Long Island, like you.” 

Over the next six years, a string of disappearances in and around those mountains would baffle Irish investigators. Most of the disappearances -- including that of the young American woman from Long Island who, like me, had recently moved to Ireland  -- were never solved. During the years I lived in Ireland, I traveled all over the country, visiting many of the places near Dublin and Wicklow where the women had lived or gone missing. It wasn’t until I returned home to the States though that, thanks to the advent of online news, I learned about all of the cases. I started writing crime novels set in New England, and then I had three babies in five years and for a while, I didn’t write much of anything. I could chase a toddler across a busy road while eight months pregnant and with another toddler strapped to my body and go three weeks in a row without sleeping more than two hours at a stretch, but could I still construct a mystery plot? I wasn’t sure. I was afraid I’d never be able to do it again. When I started finding the time to tell stories again, I wrote kids’ adventure novels and the Irish cases receded in my mind, but never went away.

And then a few years ago, a plot began to crystalize. I started to think about the families of crime victims, in particular the families of crime victims who have disappeared, of whom no trace is ever found. I wondered what choices those family members might make, how it might affect their choice of careers, their relationships, the rest of their lives. I thought about the ripple effects of disappearances, of how everyone in the victim’s orbit is changed. 

Glendalough Valley

I was afraid to write the book though. A story inspired by those disappearances in Ireland somehow felt like it wasn’t mine to tell. Ireland was my favorite place in the world. The years I spent there, working and going to graduate school, were among the happiest of my life. I became myself there. I felt funny writing about something terrible happening there. I didn’t feel confident even trying until I sat down with an Irish friend in a pub in Dublin and told her my idea. You have to write it!” she exclaimed. 

 I started to do my work. I started traveling back to Ireland as much as I could to research locations, reconnecting with old and new friends and revisiting places that had been important to me. I interviewed experts and read accounts of the cases written by former investigators. I tried to figure out how to write the book. Irish crime writers I admire had written some terrific novels inspired by the disappearances and I knew I didn’t want to attempt to write the novel from the point of view of the Irish investigators or families. I decided to write it from the point of view of an American in Ireland. I wanted to capture the feeling of being a foreigner in a country you may think you understand, but really don’t. I wanted to capture the excitement and intense focus of getting to know a new place, the sense of everything being just slightly different: the words for things, the electrical outlets, the understanding of historical events and social dynamics. And I settled on the first person, present tense, because I wanted to narrow my character’s viewpoint to her own limited knowledge, to show her experiencing Ireland moment by moment, rather than thinking she -- or I -- had anything like a bird’s eye view. 

Glendalough Valley Boardwalk

My main character, Maggie D’arcy, appeared in my head one day. She would have grown up in an Irish American enclave on Long Island, she would have a complicated relationship with her missing cousin. She would go to look for her and be surprised by what she learned of Erin’s life. She would fall in love with Dublin, and with one of the men in Erin’s life there. She would realize how little she actually understood about Irish history and politics. Despite some promising leads, she would fail to find any trace of Erin, but she would become a homicide detective and years later, when new evidence was found and a new woman had gone missing, she would have to return to Ireland to face the man she’d loved for all those years and to try and solve the case once and for all. 

I’d done my work, but I was still terrified. I’d been out of the mystery community and that part of the publishing world for so long. Could I even do this? Would anyone want to read what I had to write? Doubt swamped me. 

And that’s when that phrase came to me. Do Your Work. Be Fearless. There was something about those words that centered me, that showed me the way. Put your head down. Do the work. Then put it out there, knowing that a book is always a risk, that not everyone is going to like it. Staying in Maggie’s head helped me. What was she experiencing? What was she missing? Where had she misunderstood? Maggie, it turned out, needed a dose of bravery too. 

THE MOUNTAINS WILD comes out today. My husband and my kids, now 15, 11 and 10, are helping me celebrate. I have been welcomed back so warmly -- as you can see from the quotes from both Julia and Debs on the cover of my book -- and I am so excited for the day that I get to see everyone in person once again. 

When have you had to talk yourself into being fearless? What resulted? And what slogans or phrases have been meaningful to you at various points in your life? 

Sarah Stewart Taylor is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D'arcy series. She grew up on Long Island, and was educated at Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College, Dublin, where she studied Irish Literature. She has worked as a journalist and writing teacher and now lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries.

DEBS: I love Sarah's questions! Stop in to chat and chime in!