Rhys Celebrates Pub Day of MRS. ENDICOTT'S SPLENDID ADVENTURE.

 RHYS BOWEN: Hello friends. Please raise a glass with me to drink a toast to Mrs. Endicott! She is a woman who has been ignored and unappreciated for all of her married life. She has lived HIS life. And when she is cast aside in favor of a younger woman she does not go quietly. Instead she escapes with two other women whom society has ignored, in her husband's Bentley to the south of France and finds a whole new and exciting life there.

I hope this book will be encouragement to all middle-aged women who think that life has passed them by. You are never too old for adventures, new challenges, a new life.  My daughter's close friend went to medical school at 55. My own daughter became a psycho-therapist after she turned 50. 

But this story has me thinking about invisible women. After a certain age women become invisible. That's why Miss Marple is such a good sleuth. She sits doing her knitting, observing everything, overhearing everything and nobody knows she is there!

It can be bloody annoying at times. I have certainly experienced it myself. I was waiting in line at a car rental counter. A man in front of me and one behind me. The first man was being served. Another employee came on and said to the man behind me, "Can I help you, sir?"

I (being me) spoke up, "Is a woman not allowed to rent a car in this state? I wasn't aware of such a rule."

She said hastily, 'I'm sorry madam. I thought you were with that gentleman."

That's always it. They think you should only be out in the presence of a male protector. How archaic. When I'm on book tour I have to eat in hotels a lot. So either I can order room service and get cold meals and a limited menu or I can face the restaurant. When I appear they aask, "Are you waiting for somebody?" And when I say no, a table for one, they escort me to a table in a far corner, behind the potted palm and usually close to the loo. I have learned to counter this. As we cross the dining room I say,"I'd prefer to sit near the window, thank you" and take a prime location. I then ask for the wine list and order an expensive wine that I know they can't pronounce. "I'd like the Schattsheimer-Gewurztrauminer, please."

They then know that they can't ignore me.  

And when it's not being ignored it's being patronized. They call you dear with a silly smile on their faces. "What medications are you taking, dear?" at the doctor's office, as if I've suddenly become simple in the head.  I had one young medical person suggest I give up typing and take up another hobby if it was affecting my neck and shoulders.

"Would you give up typing if you sold a million copies?" I asked sweetly. Small victories.

And so the fight goes on. For my three women in the book they do establish themselves in a place where they become a respected part of the community. When they are given the chance they blossom. For the rest of us the struggle continues.

I know this is resonating with a lot of our Reddies. Have you had to endure similar patronizing put downs? What do you do about it? A signed copy of the new book to my favorite comment!

And for friends in the Bay Area, I'll be hosting a launch party at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Saturday August 9, at 4 pm. See you there!

James Ziskin--Bombay Monsoon

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm a huge fan of James Ziskin's award-winning Ellie Stone novels, featuring 1960s New York reporter Ellie Stone, but his upcoming BOMBAY MONSOON, out December 6th, is something completely different. I absolutely cannot wait to read this book, and I asked Jim to tell us what inspired such a departure.

JAMES W. ZISKIN: Bombay Monsoon is a new direction for me. I’ve had a lot of fun writing the seven Ellie Stone books, and I intend to write more, but I was overdue to try something else. The idea of a thriller set in India had been simmering in my mind for a long time. I’ve made fifty-six separate trips to India over the past twenty-five years and, all told, have spent nearly four years there. I even got married in India. It’s a second home to me.

The Ellie Stone books feature a twenty-something female first-person narrator. If you look at my photo above, you may understand why I wanted to try a male narrator for a change. Write something involving my own experience. And so India naturally came to mind. After all, I was an expat living a wonderfully rich life in Bangalore, Mumbai (Bombay), and Pune (Poona). Surely there was a story I could tell about that.

 SYNOPSIS

 Bombay Monsoon

The year is 1975. Danny Jacobs is an ambitious, young American journalist who’s just arrived in Bombay for a new assignment. He’s soon caught up in the chaos of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s domestic “Emergency.”

Willy Smets is Danny’s enigmatic expat neighbor. He’s a charming man, but with suspicious connections. As a monsoon drenches Bombay, Danny falls hard for Sushmita, Smets’s beguiling and clever lover—and the infatuation is mutual.

“The Emergency,” a virtual coup by the prime minister, is only the first twist in the high-stakes drama of Danny’s new life in India. The assassination of a police officer by a Marxist extremist, as well as Danny’s obsession with the inscrutable Sushmita, conspire to put his career—and life—in jeopardy. And, of course, the temptations of Willy Smets’s seductive personality sit squarely at the heart of the matter.

THE EMERGENCY

I love historical fiction. I love reading it and writing it. And while many people might not think a book set in 1975 qualifies as historical, I say it is. And I’ll fight you. If readers can ding you for anachronisms and historical errors, it’s a historical novel.

Article 352 of the Indian Constitution provides for broad powers in the event of a domestic emergency. On June 25, 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi invoked Article 352 and did precisely that. After the courts had ruled her 1971 election to parliament invalid (you can’t be PM if you’re not an MP), she declared an emergency and immediately started throwing her political opponents in jail, canceling elections, censoring the press, and suspending due process and civil liberties. Twenty-one months of rule by decree followed. The world’s largest democracy was anything but.

 What better time to set a thriller than during an existential threat to democracy? That’s what I asked myself when considering the book I wanted to write. I was fascinated by this period in history. The world was still engaged in its Cold War chess match. India was a non-aligned nation and, as such, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union courted Mrs. Gandhi. She was a powerful figure in the geopolitical landscape of 1975. So when she declared the Emergency, the world took notice. Here’s a scene from Bombay Monsoon where Danny meets an American businessman in a hotel.

 

“Mrs. Gandhi has taken over,” he said in a low voice. “Might as well be a coup. Mark my words, no court is going to throw her out of office. That conviction of hers will disappear faster than shit goes through a goose. World’s largest democracy, my ass. This country’s no better than a tinpot dictatorship.”

I considered his words. He might well have been right. One thing was for sure, though. He was an asshole. The ugly American. I wished I hadn’t sat down, but I wanted information, and he seemed to have some.

 

 WILLY SMETS

I’m a great admirer of Graham Greene’s and his “entertainments” involving strangers in foreign lands. I think my character Willy Smets would be right at home in a Greene story. He’s the charming, avuncular neighbor who takes Danny under his wing. But is he who he seems to be?

 

The first time I met Willy Smets, he told me I could think of Indians either as the obstacles to my happiness or the means to achieve it. Having materialized from the smoke and chatter behind me, he spoke directly into my ear and scared the hell out of me. I reeled around to see who belonged to the voice with an accent I couldn’t quite place. A European man of about forty-five or fifty.

“My name is Willy Smets,” he said. His thin lips stretched into a smile, baring a line of long teeth. “This is my place. And you, young man, have only recently arrived in Bombay.”

I blushed. “Is it so obvious?”

 

 

I also wanted to write something that echoed Greene’s themes and settings. India was the perfect locale for such a story, and the 1970s couldn’t have been more suitable. The novel I had in mind reminded me a bit of Gatsby, so the elevator pitch became: “Graham Greene meets Gatsby on the Subcontinent.” Catchy, no?

DANNY

Danny Jacobs is a young journalist looking to make a name for himself. He’s reported from Chile, from Africa, and from Vietnam. Now he arrives in Bombay just as Mrs. Gandhi clamps down on freedom of the press. What’s a reporter to do? Maybe embark on a dangerous, ill-advised romance with his expat neighbor’s lover? Sure. Why not? What could go wrong?

 

Her name was Sushmita. Easily half Smets’s age, she was a couple of years younger than I was, too. An extremely attractive girl, she was sexy, but hardly perfect. There was that one slightly crooked incisor, for example, and a small scar at the side of her right eye, caused perhaps by a childhood fall. And those matrimonial classifieds in Indian newspapers might have described her complexion as dusky. Shameful, I thought.

 

Look, I told myself, I had no intention of betraying my friend with his girl. But then, how well did I know him? And even if I allowed myself wild fantasies of what might happen with Sushmita, I certainly didn’t have the guts to act on my baser instincts. It was a game. Get as close as I dared to crossing the very desirable point of no return, then step back with honor intact. The only problem was determining where the point of no return began and where honor ended.

 

 SUSHMITA

The object of Danny’s obsession is the inscrutable Sushmita, who lives with Willy Smets in the penthouse apartment. Quite unexpectedly, she emerged as the driving force in my story. (That happens more often than you’d think. Characters take on a larger role that we had originally planned for them. It usually works out for the best.) Danny is never sure of where he stands with this Cambridge-educated woman who seems to return his affections. Until she doesn’t. She’s damaged, somehow, but Danny can’t possibly know why. Sushmita is perhaps the most complex character I’ve ever dreamt up.

  

PREJUDICE AND COLORISM

Through Danny’s eyes, I explored two important social themes in Indian society: the treatment of the plight of the servant class and the ever-present scourge of colorism, prejudice based on skin color. Upon his arrival in Bombay, Danny suffers major culture shock, particularly when confronted with the treatment of domestic help. He’s horrified by the indifferent and callous attitudes inherent in the rigid class system. Then there’s the obsession over fair skin. Sushmita clearly has experienced deep trauma over the darkness of her own complexion. Through her tears, she tells Danny how a matron at school had tormented her over the color of her skin.

 

“For seven years she made me feel ugly. Called me a black jungli. She stole my soap and replaced it with a jar of Afghan Snow. Then she invited the other girls to laugh at me.”

“Afghan Snow?”

She glowered. “Skin cream. It makes your skin lighter. Until you wash it off. Then you’re just as ugly as before.”

 

HORN OK PLEASE

 Anyone who’s ever traveled by road in India has seen the exhaust-belching trucks with their brightly painted signs proclaiming “HORN OK PLEASE.” This means it’s okay to sound your horn as a warning that you’re going to overtake (pass). In Bombay Monsoon, I went to great pains to describe the terror of driving in India, especially outside the city. Especially on dangerous mountain roads. I experienced this terror first hand when scaling the Western Ghats of Maharashtra more than twenty-five years ago. The Ghats are the mountains that rise from the coastal plain to the Deccan plateau. Today you climb the Ghats via a safe, modern highway, but my first trip up and down was on a two-lane, pockmarked road that hugged the side of the mountain. There were few, if any, guardrails. And if you think the drivers slowed down and took extra care due to the cliffs and the certain death awaiting a missed turn, think again. It was a rollercoaster ride without seatbelts or safety bars. It was and has remained the most terrifying ride of my life. And I wrote it into Bombay Monsoon. Happy reading!

 

THE FRAIL FOOTHOLD OF DEMOCRACY

 As I researched and began to write Bombay Monsoon, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between Mrs. Gandhi’s attempts to retain power and the failed insurrection of January 6, 2021 in our own country. In both cases, democracy was under siege. In June 1975, Mrs. Gandhi prevailed. In January 2021, our democracy did. As Danny reflects on the Emergency in Bombay Monsoon, he observes—somewhat sardonically—that only one year before, in 1974, Richard Nixon had resigned the presidency and set a higher ethical standard than did the Indian prime minister. Nixon did not attempt a coup to retain power. Whether he saw the writing on the wall or was forced to go, he did. No attacks on the Capitol. And, believe it or not, I am grateful to Richard Nixon for that.

Bombay Monsoon (Oceanview Publishing) will be available in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook versions on December 6, 2022.

 

BIO

James W. Ziskin (Jim) is the author of the Anthony, Barry, and Macavity Award-winning Ellie Stone Mysteries. His books have been finalists multiple times for the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and Macavity awards. His short story, “The Twenty-Five-Year Engagement,” was a finalist for the 2021 Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards for Best Short Story. His latest novel, Turn to Stone, won the Barry Award for Best Paperback Original, and the Macavity for Best Historical Mystery. Turn to Stone was also a finalist for the 2021 Sue Grafton Memorial Award and the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery. His next novel, Bombay Monsoon (Oceanview Publishing), is coming in December 2022.

His international experience includes two years working and studying in France, extensive time in Italy, and nearly four years in India. He speaks Italian and French.

James lives near Boston. He is represented by Kimberley Cameron of Kimberley Cameron and Associates,  https://www.kimberleycameron.com/

DEBS: Jim, your story about climbing the Western Ghats reminded me so much of trips on the old Pan American Highway to Mexico City when I was a child. That road was absolutely terrifying and I suspect those no-guardrail drop offs inspired my adult fear of heights.

Readers, have you visited India, and if not, is it on your bucket list?

Jim, I also want to know what Indian languages you speak! 

REDS ALERT: Pamela Priest is the winner of Maya Corrigan's BAKED OFF! Pamela, email me your address at deb at deborahcrombie dot com and I will forward it to Maya!

 

 

 

 

It's launch Day for WHERE THE SKY BEGINS - Rhy's Wonderful New WWII Novel!

RHYS BOWEN: Today I am celebrating my new stand-alone novel called WHERE THE SKY BEGINS.

 

This was not my first title. Nor my tenth. It was a compromise between the marketing gurus at Amazon (who I suspect are all twenty-year old male computer geeks) and my editors, agents and me.

 

I wanted to call it THE TEASHOP AT THE EDGE OF ETERNITY.   I still love that title but…

 

I was told it’s too many words. Hard to read on an Amazon thumbnail.  Also teashop is not a word that would attract male readers. Put them off.  So, we tried other directions:

 

We know that these days titles with WOMAN, GIRL, DAUGHTER, WIFE seem to work well.

 

The Woman from London? The Woman from the Rubble? The Soldier’s Wife? The woman who got bombed and moved out into the country and met a pilot? None of them sounded right. And heaven knows we don’t need any more books with daughter, wife, girl in the title, do we?

 

 So it takes place beside an RAF base. Night flight? Flight into danger?  They sounded too male oriented war stories. At the End of the Runway?  That sounded too fashion oriented.

 

 

Enigmatic titles seem to be the thing these days: Where the Crawdad’s Sing, All the Light we Cannot See…. So we played with the setting—the flat, wide expanse of Lincolnshire after the narrowness of London streets. The House on the Marsh. The House at the Edge of… again too many words. Bombed? Buried? Reborn? 

 

And I realize that what strikes my heroine most as she is transported out of London is that she sees the sky for the first time. At home, between narrow streets, there is often smog from coal fires, rarely a clear blue sky, and here the sky seems to go on forever. It’s an important image and the word BEGINS indicates the character having a chance to start a new life. 

 

It’s funny how certain titles come into fashion, almost for no reason. I have a new Lady Georgie book coming out in November called PERIL IN PARIS. And I see that there are so many books called PERIL IN… this year. Should I be flattered that they are all jumping on this bandwagon?  Or is it just coincidence?  There certainly were enough variants on the Twelve Clues of Christmas after that book came out!

What do you think of the title? What sort of titles attract you and make you pick up a book?  

 

WHERE THE SKY BEGINS  London, 1940. Bombs fall and Josie Banks’s world crumbles around her. Her overbearing husband, Stan, is unreachable, called to service. Her home, a ruin of rubble and ash. Josie’s beloved tearoom boss has been killed, and Josie herself is injured, with nothing left and nowhere to go.

Evacuated to the English countryside, Josie ends up at the estate of the aristocratic Miss Harcourt, a reluctant host to the survivors of the Blitz. Awed as she is by the magnificent landscape, Josie sees opportunity. Josie convinces Miss Harcourt to let her open a humble tea shop, seeing it as a chance for everyone to begin again. When Josie meets Mike Johnson, a handsome Canadian pilot stationed at a neighboring bomber base, a growing intimacy brings her an inner peace she’s never felt before. Then Stan returns from the war.

Now a threat looms larger than anyone imagined. And a dangerous secret is about to upend Josie’s life again. Her newfound courage will be put to the test if she is to emerge, like a survivor, triumphant.

Fair Game?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: A million years ago, I did a TV story about the supermarket tabloids. The following is, as best as I recollect, a conversation I had with the executive editor of the publication called The World.

Hank (holding up an issue of the paper): The headline of this issue says: “Woman Gives Birth To A Baby Who Looks like a Chimp.” But, um, this is a chimpanzee in a diaper.

Editor: And so?

Hank: It’s not a baby. It’s a chimp.

Editor: Well, the woman said she gave birth to it, and she says this is a picture of it, and that it looks like this.

Hank: Maybe so. But clearly, it’s actually a baby human. It’s a chimp in a diaper.

Editor: Who are we to say?

SO reds and readers, it continued, but you can see where this was going. Nowhere. In the end, we just ran the whole thing.

But as the wonderful Barbara Monajem, (a dear pal from Sisters in Crime Guppies, yay) says—this is not a new phenomenon.

(And I might ask: Is “political cartoon” redundant? But that might be pushing it.)


 
It’s How You Look At It
   By Barbara Monajem


Do you read the tabloids at the supermarket? (Assuming you even go to the supermarket now. But if you do. Or used to.) I don’t, or at least not usually. I’m more likely to roll my eyes at the absurdity of the headlines, or get outraged at what seems like obnoxious, even disgusting, intrusion into the private lives of famous people.

In contrast, I enjoy the English caricaturists of two or three hundred years ago. 

Imagine a combination of political cartoonist and tabloid photographer, add some moral commentary and/or sexual titillation, mix well, et voilà! Caricatures were printed from etchings or engravings and distributed all over England. 


Wealthy patrons might have subscriptions, while others purchased copies at stationers or printshops, and even illiterates benefitted from the artists’ spin on current affairs (double meaning intended), as the prints were displayed in shop windows, and a literate onlooker might helpfully read the captions aloud.

I couldn’t resist putting a caricaturist in a story. Years ago, I was writing short, sexy Regency novellas for Harlequin. In To Rescue or Ravish, a wealthy, well-bred lady being forced to marry against her will is rescued in a timely and dashing fashion by her first and only love, who whisks her to safety in a nearby tavern. 

Amongst the convivial crowd is a caricaturist named Bird. The heroine drinks too much mulled wine and is tipsily indiscreet about her escape. Bird seizes on this—such a coup will make his fortune—but the hero is his friend. Together, they spin the story so the resulting caricature will show her in the best possible light, and her persecutors in the worst. Tabloid journalism at its purest!

I delighted in the character of Bird, so when my new Regency mystery series needed a caricaturist, I wondered about resurrecting him. But he wasn’t right for the story, so I cooked up someone new and dubbed him Corvus, which is Latin for crow, so he’s my darling Bird but not really. His caricatures mock the British ruling classes—their capriciousness, their immorality, their mistreatment of the lower classes, etc.

Corvus is not his real name, of course. He must remain anonymous, because if his cover is blown, most of his opportunities to dig up unique dirt on the rich will vanish. If he’s a gentleman, he’ll be shunned, and if he’s a servant, he’ll be sacked (or flogged and then sacked. Or worse… Hmm… Please forgive this author’s imagination, which has a tendency to wander).

I admit it, I’m totally in love with Corvus, and to me, he’s mostly a good guy. What surprises me is that I find modern tabloid journalism anything from despicable to just plain dumb, but go back two hundred years, and the same sort of thing seems admirable. Maybe it’s because much of Corvus’ mockery is valid, or because his victims are imaginary. Maybe it’s because he needs the money (as Bird did). Or maybe I should have him satirize me or someone I care about, and see whether I still adore him. ;)

So…what do you think of tabloid journalists and paparazzi? Are celebrities fair game, simply by virtue of being public figures, or should their private lives be allowed to remain private? Do some celebs consider the tabloids useful publicity? Does utter nonsense qualify as free speech? Are there any novels that portray modern-day tabloid journalists or paparazzi in a positive light? (Since I read mostly historicals, I truly don’t know.)


HANK: Ah. I’ll just say one thing, and then sit back and let you talk. Hasn’t covid made it clear how silly the fascination with “celebrity” is?

What do you think, Reds and readers?

LADY ROSAMUND AND THE POISONED PEN

Lady Rosamund Phipps, daughter of an earl, has a secret. Well, more than one. Such as the fact that she’s so uninterested in sex that she married a man who promised to leave her alone and stick to his mistress. And a secret only her family knows—the mortifying compulsion to check things over and over. Society condemns people like her to asylums. But when she discovers the dead body of a footman on the stairs, everything she’s tried to hide for years may be spilled out in broad daylight.

First the anonymous caricaturist, Corvus, implicates Lady Rosamund in a series of scandalous prints. Worse, though, are the poison pen letters that indicate someone knows the shameful secret of her compulsions. She cannot do detective work on her own without seeming odder than she already is, but she has no choice if she is to unmask both Corvus and the poison pen.

Will Corvus prove to be an ally or an enemy? With the anonymous poison pen still out there, her sanity—and her life—are at stake.

BARBARA MONAJEM

Rumor has it that Barbara Monajem is descended from English aristocrats. If one keeps to verifiable claims, however, her ancestors include London shopkeepers and hardy Canadian pioneers. As far as personal attributes go, she suffers from an annoying tendency to check and recheck anything and everything, usually for no good reason. Hopefully all this helps to explain her decision to write from the point of view of a compulsive English lady with a lot to learn about how the other ninety-nine percent lived in 1811 or so.

As for qualifications, Barbara is the author of over twenty historical romances and a few mysteries, for which she has won several awards. On the other hand, she has no artistic talent and therefore is really stretching it to write about an artist who draws wickedly good caricatures. But she’s doing it anyway, because he’s irresistible. To her, anyway. Not so much to the aristocratic lady. Or at least not yet.


Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087BBLLNL/

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B087BBLLNL/

Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B087BBLLNL/

Amazon Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B087BBLLNL/

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lady-rosamund-and-the-poison-pen-barbara-monajem/1136829963

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/lady-rosamund-and-the-poison-pen

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/lady-rosamund-and-the-poison-pen/id1507264864



Social media links:

Website: http://www.BarbaraMonajem.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/barbara.monajem

Twitter: http://twitter.com/BarbaraMonajem

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3270624.Barbara_Monajem

When Word Smithing Turns into Coppersmithing: A visit with Sara Dahmen

JENN McKINLAY: What do you do when your Today Show appearance is canceled because of a pandemic, well, you do the next best thing. You come and visit Jungle Red Writers and share your amazing, glorious, and beautiful book with us! 

Seriously, I was thrilled when Jungle Red friend and author Ellen Byron reached out to me to host Sara Dahmen. I absolutely fell in love with her story and her book -- Copper, Iron, and Clay: A Smith's Journey -- and I know you will, too!

Sara Dahmen: My kids watch Mysteries of the Abandoned with abandon when I let them. One time they even highlighted a lighthouse near Wisconsin, in the middle of Lake Michigan, which brought the whole show closer to home. Mysteries are everywhere when we start to look, even in the mundane every day. Some of those mysteries get started only because we ask the question “why?” and there’s no real answer.

I asked “why?” one too many times five years ago, and it started me down a rabbit hole of metal which was full of mysterious chemistry, vocabulary words like “nanostructures” or “tool & die” (which is an actual aluminum plate, not a new murder term), and the desire to answer questions that didn’t seem to have answers anymore. It was like being a detective, looking at the past and realizing the past bled into the present, but in real life, not a book. What had started as passionate research on pioneer kitchens for my historical novels (TINSMITH 1865 and WIDOW 1881) became a new kind of passion about cookware.

Questions quickly developed, and they weren’t very grammatically correct. Questions such as: “What are you cooking on? What’s it made out of? Who made it? Where is it made? How exactly does it work and why was it used for hundreds of years and yet not anymore?”

These mysteries weren’t easily answered in a Google search, or even looking to libraries. The last book on coppersmithing was published in 1894! Most of the information was locked in the mind of hobbyists, elderly gents who aren’t easy to find. 

Answering these questions meant going so deep into a subject that I turned into a coppersmith – as far as I can tell, the only woman coppersmith building copper cookware in America! Creating a cookware line based on early American cookware, finding an apprenticeship with a retired tinsmith, and taking over my garage with vintage and modern tools to restore and make cookware finally offered information. Turns out, half of the answers were in getting my hands (literally) dirty.

Did you know the term “breaking the mold” comes from blacksmithing? Or that we have changed our cookware and in turn our very stoves in the past 50-ish years based on what metal was left over from WW2? Did you know that until very recently, copper cookware was always lined with tin? How many people do you know who know how to season a cast iron skillet? All this lost information had left our kitchens for myriad reasons, and suddenly I was in possession of it all.

These discoveries to the lost trades and missing links in our kitchens developed into COPPER IRON AND CLAY: A SMITH’S JOURNEY – a full-color, hardcover published by William Morrow/Harper Collins and just hot off the press during the pandemic – that yes, outlines this crazy journey to answer the mysteries of our cookware but also talks about the history of our three basic cooking utinsels, why it works, how it’s built, and what the proper care is for each. Filled with interviews with the major cookware makers – Lodge, Mauviel, Ruffoni – and recipes from me and chefs of all walks, it’s a culmination of cooking, history, and all things copper, iron and clay. Who knew asking “why” about abandoned cookware would result in a book and a career as a coppersmith? Good thing mysteries are everywhere, eh? 

Jenn: Please note, Sara's book received a fabulous review from Publisher's Weekly!

So, Reds and Readers, what's your preferred cookware? And did you ever fall so deeply into research that it fundamentally changed your life?

To celebrate the release of her book, Sara is offering two giveaways! One commenter will win a signed copy of this fabulous book! And another will win copper straws! So cool!




Sara Dahmen is an award-winning writer and entrepreneur, as well as the only female coppersmith in America, manufacturing, restoring, and building copper cookware in her Wisconsin copper shop. 

Sara’s non-fiction book on the history, science, use, and care of cookware, Copper, Iron, and Clay: A Smith’s Journey, (William Morrow/Harper Collins) features her story, recipes, and interviews from the biggest cookware makers in the world, from Lodge to Ruffoni to Mauviel and more. She single-handedly runs her company, House Copper & Cookware, using tools from the 1800s as well as current power tools, and bases all her new designs on lost American cookware shapes, sourcing all materials from the USA. 

Sara has published over 100 articles as a contributing editor for various trade magazines, has written for Edible and Root + Bone, among others, and spoke at TEDx Rapid City on how women should enter the trades in order to save the trades themselves from disappearing. Her historical fiction Flats Junction series (Promontory Press, Inc.), including Tinsmith 1865and Widow 1881, has been critically recognized as well.

In her spare time, Sara sews her family authentic clothing for their 1830’s reenactment camping. Sara lives in the country outside Port Washington, Wisconsin with her three young children (ages 9, 7. And 5) and John, her husband of 14 years.

THE WIDOWS: A Visit to a 1920s Appalachia Mystery with Jess Montgomery

LUCY BURDETTE: We're so excited to be hosting Jess Montgomery and her brand new release, THE WIDOWS. You might know Jess as Sharon Short, who's written a wonderful novel MY ONE SQUARE INCH OF ALASKA, along with several mystery series and many essays and humor columns. But this month she's here to talk about her new historical mystery, written as Jess Montgomery. Welcome Jess!

JESS MONTGOMERY: I’m a child of Appalachia—both sides of my family of origin go back generation after generation after generation deep in the hills and hollers (as we pronounced ‘hollows’) in Eastern Kentucky. However, I grew up in a region of Ohio that’s geographically outside the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio—a first-generation “Buckeye,” as I was often teased as a child.

Yet, the dynamics of growing up in an Appalachian family shaped me far more than actual location of birth. I grew up steeped in Appalachian lore, dialect, food, attitudes, customs, crafts, music. When I was in high school, I wrote a musical, “Just an Old Ballad,” inspired by the Appalachian ballads I’d grown up learning—ballads that often centered around heartache and sorrow and, yes, murder. “Pearl Bryant,” a variation of the ballad more commonly known as “Pearl Bryan” was one of the songs my Mamaw taught me. The opening verse as I learned it from my Mamaw:

Down, down in yonder valley

Where flowers fade and bloom

Lies our own Pearl Bryant

A-mouldering in her tomb…

Probably not the lyrics an eight-year-old girl ought to learn from her grandmother, but though I couldn’t have described it this way as a young kid, I was enchanted by the ballad’s intrigue, the striking imagery and lovely though dramatic words, the haunting melody and mournful rhythms.

I loved singing it while helping Mamaw wind skeins of thread or yarn for her crocheting projects. Such songs—along with quilts, and soup beans and corn pone for supper, and observing aunts and uncles barter tomatoes and canned goods back and forth at the end of each summer, and trips ‘back home’ (as my parents called it even decades after moving north for factory work) to the land where my family members were tobacco and subsistence farmers—formed the backdrop of my childhood.

So perhaps, knowing I wanted to be a writer, and being fairly proficient as a pianist and guitarist, it’s not all that amazing that I wrote a musical play inspired by this backdrop and the ballads I’d learned: “Just an Old Ballad.”

What was amazing is that my school’s drama teacher allowed me to produce and direct it. Even more amazing—I cast in the lead male role a young man who I’d later date and marry. Thirty-plus years later, we’re still happily married—a pretty great outcome for a self-penned and produced high school musical!

But in the middle-class, suburban high school I attended, the audience of my peers was a bit less than, well, receptive. It wasn’t just that the tunes I wrote were pretty amateurish. (I was 17, after all.) I think the dialect and subject matter and characters were odd and jarring to them.

As years went by, I never wrote directly about Appalachian characters. Looking back, I was probably somewhat burned by the reception of my murder-mystery/love-story musical. I’ve always felt a bit at odds with where I fit—not geographically born into Appalachia, and yet formed by the region more deeply than where I actually was born and grew up.

Then, a few years ago, we were planning our first trip to visit our younger daughter for her birthday weekend at Ohio University, in Athens County, Ohio—the Appalachian foothills. I ran across a tourism website for Vinton County (just southwest of Athens County), which featured Maude Collins, Ohio’s true first female sheriff in 1925 after her husband was killed in the line of duty while writing a speeding ticket. Maude worked as her husband’s jail matron in the small jail attached to the county-owned sheriff’s house, where they lived with their five children. The story goes that Maude was packing up to go back to her parents in West Virginia when the county commissioners came by and asked, “Where you goin’, Maude,” and then further inquired as to whether she’d fill out her husband’s term. She would and did, and in 1926, was elected in her own right as sheriff—in a landslide.

My imagination immediately went to work: what if great mystery surrounded the murder of the sheriff? What if he was allegedly killed by a prisoner he was transporting—and that prisoner supposedly ran off? What if his widow didn’t accept that easy explanation, but did accept the role of sheriff—just so she could investigate his murder?

And so, Lily Ross came into being. Along with an unlikely ally—Marvena Whitcomb, herself a widow after her common law husband dies in a coal mining cave in, a union organizer, and a childhood friend of Lily’s husband—Lily sets to investigating the murder. Their sleuthing plays out against a backdrop of women’s rights, worker’s rights, union miners sparring with management, coal mining, and prohibition.

But the setting—1920s Appalachia—is as much a character in the story as Lily and Marvena.

So at last, I could come full circle and embrace my Appalachian roots in my writing—lore, dialect, food, attitudes, customs, crafts, music. More importantly, as I shaped the strong female cast of THE WIDOWS, I particularly drew on the paternal side of my family of origin—my grandmother, aunts, great aunts, and a cousin—and memories of their quiet strength, their traditions. I thought about travelling with my parents down winding roads, deep in the night, to finally come to my grandma’s tiny house, set on a sloped lawn that bloomed with purple phlox in the spring. In any season, she always had some treat waiting for me—a slice of pie, or of her delicious dried-apple stack cake, or sorghum cookies, and a big glass of fresh cold milk. I didn’t live with her, but somehow, each visit with her deep in the heart of Appalachia felt like coming home.

Though THE WIDOWS is fully a story of my imagination, its threads include not just the inspiration of Maude, but the inspiration of these deep roots. Writing it, in many ways, feels like finally coming home.


For Jess, that dried-apple stack cake evoked a sense of "home." What food, person, or activity most evokes home for you?

About the Book: Set in the coal-mining town of Kinship, Ohio in 1925, The Widows is about two women from different worlds, whose lives collide when the man they both love is found murdered. When Lily Ross learns that her husband, Daniel Ross, Kinship’s widely respected sheriff, has been killed while transporting a prisoner, she is devastated and vows to avenge his death.  Hours after his funeral, a stranger appears at her door.  Marvena Whitcomb, a hardscrabble coal miner’s widow, is unaware that Daniel has been killed, and begs to speak with him about her missing daughter. In the course of their encounter, these two women—who live only miles apart but come from entirely different worlds—realize that Daniel was not the man they believed him to be—and that his murder is far more complex than either of them could have imagined. In order to uncover the truth, Lily and Marvena must work together and eventually learn to trust one another if they are going to find Daniel’s killer—and save their community.  While The Widows is a work of fiction, the plot was inspired by the true stories of two women: Maude Collins, the first female sheriff in the state of Ohio, whose husband died in the line of duty under mysterious circumstances in 1925, and by Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, the prominent labor and community organizer. The Widows explores the dangers of coal mining, the history of unionization, and the struggle for women’s rights.

THE WIDOWS (writing as Jess Montgomery), published by Minotaur Books, January 8, 2019
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