Marian Stanley--Secrets

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am an instant fan of anyone who quotes the wonderful Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Add in Boston AND Ireland and you really have a treat. Most crime novels are driven by secrets of one sort or another, and I'd hazard a guess that the Irish have more than their fair share. I've become fascinated in the last few years with the Troubles, so am always keen to read anything that sheds light on turbulent Irish history. Here's author Marian Stanley to tell us how this ties into her latest Rosaria O'Reilly mystery. This is so intriguing!

SECRETS
Marian Stanley

“You’re only as sick as your secrets.”       

Alcoholics Anonymous

Psychologists tell us that keeping a secret can hold us in a developmental deep freeze. Life can be frozen at the point in which we learn of or even see something that can’t be shared – ever.

The emotional strain and ethics of keeping long-held secrets drive much of the narrative in the second Rosaria O’Reilly mystery BURIED TROUBLES. Set in Boston and the stunning landscape of western Ireland, the story follows a search for answers after the body of young Irish journalism student is found floating in Boston Harbor.

In BURIED TROUBLES, a man does penance his entire life in service of the secret he is keeping – not able to live authentically because he is always conscious of what he witnessed and can never talk about. This particular secret is special and unique to his home country, one wrapped in old grievances and crimes. Never far from his mind, it exerts a gravitational pull that he can’t escape.

Add a layer of Irish history with all its turmoil, complications and oppression and you have the famous Irish adage, which followed the immigrant community to Boston’s Charlestown, Southie and elsewhere. “Whatever you say, say nothin’.”  Don’t be a snitch. Don’t be a tout. Don’t tell. A code of honor which would be familiar in any inner city neighborhood today.

“You know them by their eyes, and hold your tongue”, said the beloved Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Or, as the songwriter Colum Sands from County Down, put it – “Whatever you say, say nothin’ when you talk about you know what . . . For they’ll take you off to you know where for you wouldn’t know how long.” And who is the they? It could be the oppressor or it could be your own ones.

There is a great freedom in the releasing of secrets, but releasing a secret is disruptive. There is always a price to be paid and life is never the same, both for those involved and for those who might go digging for answers. There are repercussions and sometimes great danger, as there is for Rosaria O’Reilly in this story. Danger from those who won’t let go of the past and its secrets, danger of a different sort in an old flame from her University of Galway days who threatens Rosaria’s relationship with Boston Police Detective Solly Belkin, and even an unexpected danger to her own family history.

In this book, families move through life keeping old secrets from each other. Families have always done this. The secrets differ from family to family and don’t necessarily involve a crime, as we have in BURIED TROUBLES. Perhaps it’s an old affair, perhaps it’s sexual orientation, or maybe it’s an older sister who is really the mother of the youngest child. Perhaps something as sweet as when our longtime and well-loved Irish babysitter was somehow able to put an altered birth date on her citizenship papers so that she was eternally younger than her husband – at least in the US.

What’s your viewpoint on or experience with secrets and their impact on lives? I’m happy to send a copy of Buried Troubles to a selected commentator.

Marian McMahon Stanley is the author of two Rosaria O’Reilly mysteries from Barking Rain Press - The Immaculate (May 2016) and Buried Troubles (June 2018) as well as a recent short story “Career Transitions” in the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.  Marian enjoyed a long international corporate career and, most recently, a senior position at a large urban university. She writes in a small town outside Boston.

www.marianmcmahonstanley.com

DEBS: And here's more about BURIED TROUBLES--

Rosaria O’Reilly finds herself in grave danger from those who won’t let go of the past in this thrilling sequel to The Immaculate.

Still recovering from injuries sustained during her last effort in solving a murder, Rosaria is dragged into a new case with ties to the Irish community on both sides of the Atlantic. The victim is an Irish journalism student working on a research paper in Boston. His aunt, a friend of Rosaria’s, reaches out to her for help in solving the case.

This does not go over well with Rosaria’s significant other, Boston Police Detective Solly Belkin, who wants Rosaria to leave the case in his capable hands. Determined to help her friend and assert her independence to Solly, Rosaria travels to Ireland for the funeral and continues her investigation there. Soon, she is caught up in a dark web of ancient grievances, old crimes, and secrets that powerful people are determined to keep hidden forever.

Can Rosaria unearth these buried troubles and solve the murder before the killer buries her instead?

DEBS: Be sure to comment for your chance to win a copy of BURIED TROUBLES!

And I want to know more from Marian about her own connection with Ireland.

Connie Johnson Hambley: Inspired by The Troubles & therapeutic riding

HALLIE EPHRON: Today I'm delighted to welcome Connie Johnson Hambley back to Jungle Red. She's a horsewoman, well versed in thoroughbred racing and steeplechase, and in her books the horses are as real as the people. Her trilogy features world-class equestrian, Jessica Wyeth, entangled by her lover into a world of international crime. The final book, The Wake! was published in September. 

Connie, catch us up on what you've been up to since you visited us last.

CONNIE JOHNSON HAMBLEY:  My two sons have graduated from college and my “baby” daughter has begun her college years. I’m still waiting for the empty nest blues to hit, but my hubby and I like a quiet house! 

I think that’s because the rooms are always filled with my characters. Our conversation during cocktail hour starts with, “Have you heard from the kids today?” and ends with, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to Jessica Wyeth!” 

I did a lot of soul searching while padding around my empty house thinking of the threads I needed to knit together for a satisfying, gripping, and emotionally true conclusion to the final novel in The Jessica Trilogy.  My characters are real to me. I talk out loud to them, pantomime their movements or reactions, rejoice and cry with them. 

The trilogy follows historical milestones involving riots in Belfast, called the Troubles, but American history shaped the story as well. My character-driven thrillers feature Jessica, a world-class equestrian The characters, born with The Charity and who grew in The Troubles, have their life woes resolved in The Wake. 

I’ve written them so each book can stand on their own merits as a novel that encapsulates a moment of history involving American involvement in Northern Ireland’s struggle for unification and peace. 

Jessica received the Wyeth family fortune from a couple who had raised her since birth, but died without formally adopting her. As a lawyer, this situation nagged at me because it raised questions of family loyalties, citizenship, and inheritance. As an author, I wondered who would be the most motivated to avenge a wrongful inheritance? 

Ha! Enter “Uncle” William Wyeth, a bankrupt Boston Brahmin adept at Machiavellian plotting. Jessica’s biological family secrets have international political consequences too, and I worried about the men in her life. Were they good people at their core? Could they be corrupted? I fretted that her lover could exploit her secrets for his financial gain. 

I worried about who my characters loved as much as how they were loved. I put all of these threads to good use and made some hard, tough-love decisions to answer the question of whether terrorists are born evil or if circumstance could rot their hearts.

To me, Jessica is a rose. Beautiful, but not without thorns. Some of my character-based decisions were complicated by historical events. Folks who know their Irish history may recall that English law forbade direct references to an independent Ireland, so protests against English rule referred to Ireland in code as the “Black Rose.” 

When The Wake begins, Jessica has returned to the States after a harrowing time in the Irelands. Her arrival places her in the South three weeks prior to the Atlanta-based Summer Olympic Games. Jungle Red readers may recall the horrific bombing that happened in Centennial Park during the Games. Weave into this chaos a desperate uncle and a selfish lover along with the threads of international terrorism, and hey, I’m a thriller author, so my mind goes there.

My first two books bring the reader to thoroughbred racing and steeplechase, but the third bookdemanded a different edge. I use The Wake as a platform to bring attention to an amazing healing tool--therapeutic riding, an equestrian discipline for which I have a tremendous passion. 

I volunteer as a horse handler at Windrush Farm located near my home in Massachusetts. Windrush provides hippotherapy, a horse-based physical and emotional therapy conducted by licensed therapists. I work with clientele with a variety of challenges. Some challenges existed from birth – like Cerebral Palsy or Down Syndrome – and others are the result of a catastrophic injury or event–like stroke, PTSD, or accident.

For physical therapy, riding a horse has a rhythm and engages muscles similar to our natural walking stride. Deep core muscles required for balance may not be triggered by traditional therapies, but riding can speed recovery for certain individuals. Emotional therapies leverage horses’ primal instincts. They are herd and prey animals, meaning they have a keen sense of the emotional state of those around them–horses and humans alike–and react to emotions often before we are aware of feeling them.

I’ve been an equestrian my whole life, and continue to be amazed at the power of healing horses provide to people who are not able-bodied or who carry emotional scars.

  

CONNIE JOHNSON HAMBLEY grew up on a dairy farm in New York and had plenty of space to ride one of her six horses. All would have been idyllic if an arsonist hadn’t torched her family’s barn. Bucolic bubble burst, she began to steadfastly plot her revenge against all bad guys, real and imagined. After receiving her law degree, she moved to Boston and wrote for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Nature, and other wonky outlets as she honed her skills of reaching readers at a deep emotional level. Connie embraces the changes in the publishing world by being both traditionally and independently published. Her high-concept thrillers feature remarkable women entangled in modern-day crimes and walk the reader on the razor’s edge between good and evil. Connie delights in creating worlds where the good guys win–eventually. Her short story, Giving Voice, won acceptance in New England’s Best Crime Stories: Windward, published by Level Best Books and will be joined by Black Ice in the 2017 Level Best release of Snowbound. The third book in The Jessica Trilogy, The Wake, joins The Charity and The Troubles, which was the 2016 Best Fiction winner at the EQUUS Film Festival in New York City. She keeps horses in her life by volunteering as a horse handler at a therapeutic riding center. Connie is a board member and Featured Speaker of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime.

Ireland, horses, and a senseless fire fuel Connie Johnson Hambley's thrillers

HALLIE EPHRON: Talk about a circuitous path. Connie Johnson Hambley grew up on a dairy farm. She went on to have a successful career in law and banking. Now she’s about to release her second thriller featuring Jessica Wyeth, a New England horse trainer forced to come to terms with her own experiences in the war for reunification of Northern Ireland. Connie’s first book, The Charity, explores the impact of the business of terrorism on Jessica’s life in the States and its sequel, The Troubles, due out at the end of this year, picks up the story in Ireland.

Connie, were you drawing on dairy farming or law and banking when you wrote these books?

CONNIE HAMBLEY: Every family has its stories, and some of the best fiction begins with the nuggets of lore and truth picked up along the way. I grew up in New York State on a sprawling, picture-perfect farm filled with cows and horses. My grandparents were Irish immigrants who lived the American dream by starting a dairy delivering milk in a horse drawn wagon and growing it big enough to employ many men who worked hard to support their own families.

That bubble burst when the barn was burned down by one of those men. You can imagine the tizzy my parents went through trying to make sense of that! It was my first real glimpse of the darker side of life.

The arsonist who threw the lit matches into our hayloft didn’t look like he could do such a thing. As I played with my Chatty Cathy doll in the middle of the kitchen floor, I listened to men in uniforms and suits ask my parents a lot of questions.

There was so much more going on than I could comprehend at the time, and it all has become fodder for different themes I incorporate into my books.

I learned he confessed, but was set free at trial because of procedural issues. Years later, he showed up on our back porch and knocked on our door. My mom didn’t recognize him at first, if she had she might have reached for a shotgun, but he introduced himself as the guy who burned down her daddy’s barn!

I think the injustice of that drew me into becoming a lawyer, and the incongruities of a bucolic life tinged with arson jarred the mental wheels into motion. The stories didn’t stop when I went into banking. The same type of gall that prompts someone to torch a cow barn ripples through all sorts of money laundering schemes. I really don’t have to dig that far to find a lot of great stuff for stories!

I’ve witnessed some incomprehensible things in real life, so why not have some fun with it by tweaking them in fiction?

HALLIE: Have you trained horses? Jumped? Competed? Or watched it mostly from the stands?

CONNIE: I’ve trained and competed on both hunters and jumpers, so I know the grit needed to get a half ton animal to respond to a pipsqueak kid on its back.

Don’t let their big brown eyes fool you. There’s a big, independent brain clicking away that’s trying to figure out a way around that obstacle, not over it. It’s an incredible feeling to sail over a fence astride a horse. I bring that essence of strength and awe into my character and it’s something my readers respond to.

I’ve been lucky enough to have owned six horses, but I’m currently a horse lover without a horse. I get my equine fix by volunteering to help folks with special needs learn how to ride at Windush Farms in North Andover, MA.

HALLIE: What’s your Irish connection?

CONNIE: Growing up, I was surrounded by brogues, pale skin and clergy. My ancestors hail from County Cork in the south and Drumshanbo in northwest Ireland, about twenty miles from the border of Northern Ireland.

HALLIE: I hope you had to travel to Ireland to research this book.

CONNIE: I traveled there a few years ago and can’t wait to go back. Everything you hear about the natural beauty and wonderful people in Ireland is true.

The most amazing experience I had was traveling down a narrow road near Kinsale on the southwestern coast and coming across a stone circle, like Stonehenge, but this one was only about thirty feet in diameter. It was too small to be noted on any tourist map, and the locals didn’t want to talk about it.

Whoo, boy! That got me thinking! The boulders were lichen covered and mossy, just the way you’d want them to be! Maybe it was my writer’s imagination gone wild, but I could feel the difference in energy there.

The delicious tingling feeling of that discovery has stayed with me and is something I hope to impart to my readers.

HALLIE: We were in Ireland this summer and I felt that magic visiting a stone circle, too. 

Tell us what you’re working on next, and where our readers can meet you in person.

CONNIE: After The Troubles is launched, I’ll be able to focus on a memoir exploring the impact of the barn fire on my family. Then it’s back to work on the third book of the series.

September 26 will find me roaming the halls of my law school alma mater and Barrister’s Book Shop at Vermont Law School. October 19 – 21 I’ll be at the New England Library Association Conference in Boxborough, Massachusetts and on October 25 I’ll be at the Boston Book Festival. At BBF, for one special reader of this blog who mentions this post to me and the secret passphrase “Jungle Red Writers Rock,” I’ll have a signed copy of my book as a gift for him or her!

HALLIE: Connie will be checking in today and answering questions and comments. My question: How does travel fuel your imagination?

Coming Soon! The Troubles

    Jessica Wyeth is no longer a fugitive hiding under assumed identities. Through sheer grit, she has reclaimed her life only to find out that what she fought for was an illusion. She is not the child of a picture-perfect New England family, but an unwanted castaway.
    Broken, she tries to move forward by traveling to a remote town in northwest Ireland to train horses for a harrowing private jump race. Michael Conant, the rightful successor to his father’s dubious empire and the man she owes her life to, has set her up with everything she needs–world class horses, connections, and bodyguards.

    Michael and Jessica struggle with their pasts and wonder if they are collateral damage in the war for the reunification of Northern Ireland or an integral part of its troubles. Jessica immerses herself in learning about her mother, only to find betrayal in her mother’s truths. Michael rejects the legacy of his father and is tested on how far he will go to keep her.

    When attempts are made on her life, Jessica questions if it is her past that is catching up with her, or Michael's. Leaving the past buried could expose her to becoming another casualty of war.

   “The Troubles,” sequel to “The Charity” and second in a series, continues the story of Jessica Wyeth.