HANK: Think of a farmer. Got a picture?
Okay. And because this is our dear Jungle Red, the image in
your brain may not be a man. But—it
might be.
My wonderfully talented pal Wendy Tyson has been thinking
about this.
And of course, this is the perfect week for it. Then again, every
week is the perfect week. Until the most perfect week, sometime which I hope is
soon, when we never have to discuss it again.
Fighting
Farmers and Other Ladies Who Launch
I just launched my second Greenhouse novel, BITTER HARVEST.
The series, which lives on the cozier side of mystery, features
environmental-lawyer-turned-organic-farmer Megan Sawyer.
Megan returns to her roots in the small, historic Eastern
Pennsylvania town of Winsome to revive her family’s organic farm and turn an
abandoned storefront into a natural foods shop and café. She’s joined in her
quest by a motley crew of friends and family, including her spirited
eighty-four-year-old grandmother, Bonnie “Bibi” Birch, who knows how to knead
dough and shoot a gun. Farming is
hard work, and getting not one but two businesses going takes all of Megan’s
resources. She hits headwinds, of course—not the least of which involve murder.
Megan has pulled herself up by the bootstraps. She’s an
Everywoman of sorts, a modern-day food warrior bent on showing the world what
regenerative farming can do. To that end, she fights the good fight every day,
struggling to keep the sign up and the doors open. Battling injustice? Simply
part of the gig.
I recently engaged in a heated conversation with a man who
was touting the attributes of “self-made men.” “They’re all across the
country,” he said. “They started businesses, often from nothing. They’re what makes America great.”
His statements, made with the fervor of a true believer,
gave me pause. Not because of the political nature of his responses (and no
surprises, this was in the context of a political discussion), but because he
made it quite clear by tone and intonation that he wasn’t using “men” as a
gender catch-all. He meant Men.
“I agree that self-made men and women deserve recognition,” I said. “There are plenty of women
who have sacrificed all to start a business or champion a cause.”
Crickets.
I was working on my third Greenhouse Mystery at the time,
and the conversation stayed with me long after it should have. Perhaps because
I’d seen some of this guy’s easy dismissal occur in my own books, in the
townsfolk of Winsome: the zoning commissioner who refused Megan’s permits (he
was bludgeoned to death in chapter three, by the way), long-time family friends
who characterized Megan’s efforts as sweet or cute, and the young Chief of
Police who felt Megan had set herself up to fail. But for Megan, as with so
many real-life women, the threat of failure was never an excuse not to commit.
Eventually I realized that the conversation hit a nerve
because the fictional backlash Megan encountered isn’t so fictional. I heard it
in my counterpart’s condescending tone. I read it in the articles and opinion
pieces condemning the peaceful women’s marches. I see it in the faces of people
whose contempt for the opposite sex is thinly veiled beneath colloquial
attitudes and old-fashioned platitudes. I, a lawyer and author who never saw
gender as an impediment to success, was suddenly reminded of sexism’s insidious
nature.
In many ways, Megan is fashioned after the strong women in
my own life. Women who launched themselves at the world, often quietly
succeeding in the face of great adversity. My great-grandmother was such a
woman. She arrived in America from Italy at age eleven and found herself
married to a practical stranger five years later. She didn’t speak English, was
not wealthy, didn’t wear the right clothes, didn’t practice the right religion—and
she had to feed a family of eight during the Great Depression.
Nevertheless,
she persisted in learning the language, understanding the culture well enough
to buy and sell houses for a profit. She was a house “flipper” before it became
fashionable. Self-made? Absolutely. Unsung? That, too.
Of course, strength is not confined to one gender. Nor is perseverance.
Nor is the term “self-made.” There are amazing men out there doing amazing
things.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize and celebrate the women
who’ve sacrificed to better our world. Megan’s a fighter. She fights proudly
alongside the other female sleuths of our time, outsmarting bad people and
seeing to it that justice prevails. But like many of her fictional
counterparts, she’s fashioned after real-life heroes.
HANK: I think of all
the new babies being born—my little nephew Silvio, just two weeks old. Debs and
Hallie and Roberta have new members of their families.
Dear Reds, who is the
newest member of your family? Or the youngest person you know? What would you
wish for them? What advice would you give them?
And a copy of BITTER HARVEST to one lucky commenter!
 Wendy Tyson is an author, lawyer and former therapist whose background has inspired her mysteries and thrillers.
Wendy has written four published crime novels, including Dying Brand, the third novel in the Allison Campbell Mystery Series,which was released on May 5, 2015. The first in the Campbell series, Killer Image, was named a best mystery for book clubs in 2014 by Examiner.com. Wendy is also the author of the Greenhouse Mystery Series, the first of which, A Muddied Murder, is due to be released in spring 2016. Wendy is a member of Sisters in Crime and International Thriller Writers, and she is a contributing editor for The Big Thrill, International Thriller Writers’ online magazine. Wendy lives with her husband, three sons and three dogs on a micro-farm just outside of Philadelphia.
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