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.
Thatโs why my husband Bill Albert and I teamed up to write a dozen
Victorian/Edwardian mysteries, under the pen name of
Robin Paige.
Thatโs why, when we finished that series, I turned to the life of childrenโs
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, thereโs no doubt about it. But the ladies of Darling, Alabama,
reflect the best of those shadowed years. They belong to a garden club called
โThe Dahlias,โ which (next to Beulahโs Beauty Bower, the Darling Diner, and the
party line) is the townโs 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 doโcheerfully. 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 canโt
be spent anywhere but Darling. And the merchants arenโt crazy about it,
eitherโthey canโt 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, itโs 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, โthe
fastest woman in the world.โ 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 itโuntil 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 whatโs 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 โaeronautical 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 dreamโbut
they made it happen, and the whole world now recognizes the contributions of
these pioneer women fliers.
When I created Lilyโs 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
didnโt 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, Californiaโand the first civilian
flier to carry a two-way radio. In June, 1937, Earhart and her navigator began
their flight around the worldโand 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 Cityโs 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 womenโs endurance records, speed
records, mid-air refueling records, and altitude records. She married in 1933,
had children, and didnโt 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 Shipโthe 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 Barnesโ
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 menโs 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 Iโm working
in a library or taking notes from a book or looking things up online. For the
Dahlias series, Iโve 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 Sueโs
mustard is a good example. Moonshine was also used to flavor cakes (especially
holiday fruitcakes), cookies, pies, and meat dishes.
Twyla Sueโs Moonshine Mustard
1/2 cup yellow mustard seeds
1/2 cup black mustard seeds
4 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons flour
1/2โ1 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 2โ3 weeks. Refrigerate after opening.
As you read the Dahliasโ adventures, I hope youโll think back on what would have
been the worst of times if it hadnโt 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.
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