Susan Wittig Albert | Step Back in Time with the Darling Dahlias

I love historical mysteries! As I look back over my list of favorites, I see that most of them are historicals that take me to a different time and place, introduce me to different cultures, and show me different ways of seeing the world.

That’s why my husband Bill Albert and I teamed up to write a dozen Victorian/Edwardian mysteries, under the pen name of Robin Paige. That’s why, when we finished that series, I turned to the life of children’s author and illustrator Beatrix Potter for eight books in the series: The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter. And why my latest historical mystery project has been THE DARLING DAHLIAS, a Depression-era series featuring a garden club in a small Alabama town in the challenging decade of the 1930s.

Most of us think of the Depression as a dark time, with businesses out of customers, people out of work, and families out of luck. And yes, it was a dreadful time, there’s no doubt about it. But the ladies of Darling, Alabama, reflect the best of those shadowed years. They belong to a garden club called “The Dahlias,” which (next to Beulah’s Beauty Bower, the Darling Diner, and the party line) is the town’s most important social center. To a woman, the Dahlias are determined to keep their spirits up, their families fed, and their town looking beautiful, no matter what happens. And like many women of their time, they are experts in gardening, cooking, sewing, and making do—cheerfully. As it turns out, they are also experts in meeting catastrophes, which is a very good thing, because there seem to be plenty of those around!

In THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE SILVER DOLLAR BUSH (Book 5), for instance, the Darling Savings and Trust has been closed and the town is faced with the prospect of running out of money. Like many real American towns confronting this very real situation, the town council decides to print their own currency: Darling Dollars! Not everybody likes the idea, of course: Darling Dollars can’t be spent anywhere but Darling. And the merchants aren’t crazy about it, either—they can’t use Darling Dollars to pay their suppliers. But all these objections become moot when the newly printed Darling Dollars disappear, on the same night that the Feds raid the local moonshine still and shoot one of the moonshiners. Is there a connection? If there is, it’s up to the Dahlias to find it.

In my historical mystery, THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE TEXAS STAR, the real star of the show is Lily Dare, the Texas Star, “the fastest woman in the world.” Lily is a stunt and speed pilot who flies a Travel Air Speedwing (until it is repossessed), and in an effort to look like Amelia Earhart, wears a white leather helmet, goggles, and white flying suit with a long, flowing red scarf looped around her neck. She can fly rings around any man and is ready to prove it—until somebody sabotages her airplane and threatens her life. Then the Darling Dahlias (the local garden club, hosting a party for the Texas Star) will have to dig down and find out what’s going on.

Lily Dare is a fictional member of an important club of real flying ladies of her era, women who dared to challenge the skies in their own airplanes. In October of 1929, 99 of these women met at Curtiss Field on Long Island and created the Ninety-Nines, to coordinate the efforts of women in aviation. The new organization pledged to do what it could to help in “aeronautical research, air racing events, acquisition of aerial experience, maintenance of an economic status in the aviation industry, administering through the air in times of emergency arising from fire, famine, flood and war, or any other interest that will be for their benefit and/or that of aviation in general." A big dream—but they made it happen, and the whole world now recognizes the contributions of these pioneer women fliers.

When I created Lily’s character, I borrowed a bit from the lives and experience of several of these important women. The most familiar is Amelia Earhart, who, just months before Lily Dare flew into Darling, became the first woman and the second person (after Lucky Lindy) to fly the Atlantic alone. The flight proved, Earhart said, that men and women were equal in "jobs requiring intelligence, coordination, speed, coolness, and willpower." But she didn’t stop there. Later that same summer, she became the first woman to fly coast-to-coast In 1935, she became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific, 2,408 miles from Honolulu to Oakland, California—and the first civilian flier to carry a two-way radio. In June, 1937, Earhart and her navigator began their flight around the world—and disappeared somewhere in the Pacific.

While Amelia Earhart was setting long-distance records, Elinor Smith was stunting: she was the only person ever to fly (in October 1928) under all four of New York City’s East River bridges. She was 17 years old, and the feat earned her the nickname, the Flying Flapper. Over the next few years (and still in her teens), she set women’s endurance records, speed records, mid-air refueling records, and altitude records. She married in 1933, had children, and didn’t return to flying until the late 1950s, when she piloted jet trainers and flew C-119s for parachute drops. At the age of 89, she flew an experimental C33 Beech Bonanza at Langley Air Force Base, VA.

Pancho (Florence Lowe) Barnes was born to wealthy California parents and began flying in 1928, at the age of 27. She quickly began barnstorming and competing in air races. She crashed in the 1929 Women's Air Derby, but won in 1930. She also broke Amelia Earhart's world women's speed record in a Travel Air Mystery Ship—the same ship Lily Dare flies when her barnstorming troupe arrives in Darling. A flamboyant flier, Barnes began working as a stunt pilot for Hollywood movies in 1930, flying in several movies for Howard Hughes. In 1931, she founded the Associated Motion Picture Pilots. She was especially concerned about flying safety and payment standards for aerial stunts. Most of her wealth vanished in the Depression, but in 1935, she bought 180 acres of Mojave Desert land, where she established the Happy Bottom Riding Club, a restaurant and dude ranch that became famous as a haven for Barnes’ Hollywood friends, flyers, and early test pilots.

Historical fiction can sometimes whet our appetites to dig deeper and learn more. I hope that THE DARLING DAHLIAS AND THE TEXAS STAR will inspire you to look a little further into the lives of these remarkable women flyers, who demonstrated over and over again that women were men’s equals in the air.

One of the things I like best about writing historical mysteries is the opportunity for learning new things. I love doing research, whether I’m working in a library or taking notes from a book or looking things up online. For the Dahlias series, I’ve done research on 1930s Alabama, the music and movies of the era, popular books, clothing, automobiles, habits of speech, and more. I post many of my research findings on my Pinterest Dahlias board, and refer to it for ideas as I write. Here, for instance, is the way I imagine the kitchen of one of my characters.

And here is the way they might be doing their laundry. Times were certainly different then!

But the topic that really interests me is the food that the Dahlias cooked and served to their families, which tells us so much about the time and place. The recipes that I include at the end of the book are usually Southern dishes that contain some ingredient of local Southern interest (and are connected to the story in some way). In a time and place where moonshine was locally produced, for instance, many cooks made use of whiskey in everyday cooking. Twyla Sue’s mustard is a good example. Moonshine was also used to flavor cakes (especially holiday fruitcakes), cookies, pies, and meat dishes.

Twyla Sue’s Moonshine Mustard

1/2 cup yellow mustard seeds

1/2 cup black mustard seeds

4 tablespoons water

3 tablespoons flour

1/2–1 teaspoon chili powder or cayenne (optional)

2/3 cup cider vinegar

2/3 cup whiskey

1/2 cup honey

1 tablespoon nutmeg

1 tablespoon salt

Grind mustard seeds to a powder, using a coffee grinder or a mortar and pestle. In a nonreactive bowl, mix mustard powder with water and leave for half an hour. Add flour with cayenne or chili powder (choose how much heat you want) and mix well. Add vinegar, whiskey, honey, nutmeg, and salt and mix until well blended. Cover and let stand overnight. The next day, check for consistency: if dry, add more honey, if thin, add a teaspoon of flour. The mustard will continue to thicken. Pour into sterilized jars and seal. Put in a cool, dark place to mature for 2–3 weeks. Refrigerate after opening.

As you read the Dahlias’ adventures, I hope you’ll think back on what would have been the worst of times if it hadn’t called out the best in people: a can-do spirit, a sense of compassion for those who had less, and a willingness to work together to get things done.