Five minute history - The Coal and Iron Police by Jennifer M. Lane

Five minute history - The Coal and Iron Police

By Jennifer M. Lane

My favorite thing about reading historical fiction is being inspired by little pieces of history that leap off the page. Quite often, I find myself launched into an unexpected, adjacent realm of research, like the time I was a teenage girl and found myself researching Napoleon's days in exile after reading about Waterloo.

As a historical fiction writer, I often find myself in an eddy of research that informs the work but doesn't end up on the page. Such was the case in Downriver - with the Coal and Iron Police.

Though the facts and town of Downriver are fictional, the circumstances and background that shape the story are rooted in fact. Safety and worker conditions and the history of worker uprisings are central to the plot of Downriver, and none of those things can be studied without mention of the Coal and Iron Police.

In 1868, Pennsylvania granted companies the right to create their own law enforcement to uphold their own rules. It seems strange by today's standard, that a state would allow a company to run its own law enforcement, but at the time, there were no state-level police efforts. Only counties and towns managed law enforcement. As coal patch towns popped up in the wilderness, it made sense to both the coal company and the state to allow for privatized law enforcement to protect company interests. But it was deadly for many workers. What emerged was the Coal and Iron Police (C&IP).

What looked good on paper was put to sinister use. Underpaid workers who faced horrible working conditions, whose livelihoods that were essentially indentured servitude, engaged in strikes. Coal bosses used the Coal and Iron Police for strike-breaking and to evict striking families from their homes. For example, in 1910, the C&IP were used as strikebreakers in Westmoreland, evicting workers from their houses and forcing them to live in tents for a winter. During the long strike, 16 people - miners and their wives - were shot and killed, some while sleeping in their tents while others were trampled by horses.

This endless fight for safety, workers rights, and fair pay would have framed much of Charlotte’s father’s life. 

Twenty-three years before Downriver takes place, the Molly Maguires were tried for a years-long string of violence and murder in their actions against the coal bosses. Frank Morris would have been in his twenties when Jack Kehoe was hanged after being found guilty of leading the Molly Maguires on a deadly retribution spree.

And only three years before our story takes place, in 1897, the Lattimer Massacre occurred. An estimated 15,000 mine workers from coal companies throughout Luzerne, Carbon, and Schuylkill Counties protested dangerous working conditions, unpaid overtime, and high prices at the company store by marching, which led to a strike.

The Luzerne County sheriff declared a state of civil disorder and deputized 87 men - mostly managers in coal companies - and armed them with rifles and bullets. He warned the unarmed, striking workers of the Pardee Company not to march toward Lattimer - just west of modern-day Hazelton - but they did anyway.

When the 400 striking men arrived, they encountered a band of about 150 Coal & Iron Police and volunteers. After a brief scuffle, shots were fired. History disagrees about who fired first, but the 400 unarmed striking workers scattered while the sheriff's men shot them in their backs. Nineteen men were murdered, 38 severely wounded, and the massacre made headlines around the country. 

It was this landscape into which I painted Frank Morris, a quiet man who stood on a soapbox and asked peacefully for workers’ rights in a time after violence failed. But we follow his firebrand of a daughter, part of the first generation after an era of violence, as she seeks to put right the wrongs in her path.

Downriver
By Jennifer M. Lane

Publication Date: May 28, 2024

Publisher: Pen & Key Publishing

Pages: 344 pages

Genre: Historical

A sulfur sky poisoned her family and her heart. Now revenge tastes sweeter than justice.

It’s 1900. In a Pennsylvania coal town tainted by corruption and pollution, Charlotte's world collapses when her parents meet a tragic end. Sent to a foster family in a Maryland fishing village, she’s fueled by grief and embarks on a relentless quest for justice against the ruthless coal boss, Nels Pritchard.

But Charlotte is no ordinary girl. She shares the fiery spirit of her father, whose powerful speeches inspired worker riots. With a burning desire for vengeance, she sets out to uncover the truth behind Pritchard's crimes, unearthing a shocking connection between the town's toxic air and the lifeless fish washing up on the shore of her Chesapeake Bay foster town.

To expose the truth, Charlotte builds a network of unexpected allies. There are gutsy suffragists, a literary society of teenage girls willing to print the truth… and Weylan. The captivating young man lost his own family to Pritchard’s poison. He offers support, but Charlotte questions his true motives when he lures her to break the law. Could she be falling into a dangerous trap, leading her to a fate worse than poison?

With her unwavering spirit and determination, Charlotte must forge alliances and navigate a web of treachery before Pritchard seeks his own ruthless revenge.

The newest book by award-winning author Jennifer M. Lane is perfect for fans of Jeannette Walls’ Hang the Moon and the fiery protagonist in The Hunger Games. Join Charlotte in this small town, coming-of-age dystopian historical saga as she finds resilience, courage, and triumph in her search for identity, independence, and her true home.

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Jennifer M. Lane

A Maryland native and Pennsylvanian at heart, Jennifer M. Lane holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Barton College and a master’s in liberal arts with a focus on museum studies from the University of Delaware, where she wrote her thesis on the material culture of roadside memorials.

Jennifer is a member of the Authors Guild and the Historical Novel Society. Her first book, Of Metal and Earth, won the 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel and was a Finalist in the 2018 IAN Book of the Year Awards in the category of Literary / General Fiction. She is also the author of Stick Figures from Rockport, and the six book series, The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt.

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Five minute history - Kingdom of Hungary (15th Century) by Katerina Dunne

 

Five minute history - Kingdom of Hungary (15th Century) by Katerina Dunne

Return to the Eyrie is a personal story with fictional main characters but is set against the complex historical background of the late 15th century Kingdom of Hungary. Medieval Hungary was a powerful multi-ethnic and multi-lingual kingdom, which covered a large part of Central Europe. 

15th-century Europe map copied from

https://www.gifex.com/detail-en/2009-09-17-811/Europe-during-the-15th-Century.html

During most of the 15th century, the main danger for Hungary came from the Ottoman Empire, which was rapidly expanding towards the west and north. Smaller kingdoms and principalities, such as Serbia, Bulgaria or Wallachia, had already become vassals of the Ottomans while Constantinople fell to them in 1453. All this meant that Hungary was now the last frontier holding back the Sultan’s advance towards Central Europe.

The years between 1458 and 1490 were dominated by the figure of Mátyás (Matthias) Hunyadi, who became king aged fifteen in January 1458. Although his family’s origins are a little obscure and subject to many theories, it seems that Mátyás was the first king of Hungary who was elected despite not being of royal blood. Therefore, this caused problems to his rule right from the start. Powerful barons and prelates within Hungary as well as the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Poland disputed his legitimacy. So, Mátyás had to secure his throne first and foremost before dealing with the Ottoman threat. In fact, he spent more time at war with his Christian neighbours than fighting the Ottomans. He also spent much effort trying to influence politics in Bosnia, Wallachia and Moldavia, by supporting his favourite candidates as rulers there. The most famous example was Vlad Dracul III (also known as Vlad the Impaler) whom Mátyás initially supported, then arrested and imprisoned for many years until he finally released him in 1475 and sent him back to Wallachia to reclaim his throne. However, Vlad’s rule was short-lived as he was killed at the end of 1476. Similarly, Mátyás fought against the Moldavian Prince, Stefan III (later known as Stefan the Great), during the early years of his rule; however, he later supported Stefan in his efforts to repel the Ottoman attacks on Moldavia.

Some historians believe that Mátyás probably realised that the only way for him to be successful against the Sultan’s armies was to unite the neighbouring countries under his rule and thus increase his military strength. Others believe that he was more interested in becoming the Holy Roman Emperor himself.

But apart from his political and military achievements, Mátyás was also well-known for bringing the Italian Renaissance and Humanism to Hungary, becoming the patron of many scholars and artists and establishing the famous Corvina Library in his Buda palace.

All these elements of the historical background of the time are woven through the storyline of Return to the Eyrie. The main characters participate in the King’s military campaigns, while they also witness the devastation of the Ottoman attacks on the border areas of Hungary. The different battle tactics—from cannons, siege machines and gunboats to armoured cavalry and mounted archers—are depicted in the novel, showing the size and variety of the military forces Mátyás had at his disposal. As the characters travel across the kingdom, they meet people of different ethnic origins who speak a variety of languages, accentuating the multi-cultural nature of medieval Hungary. In addition, the splendour of the royal palace and the King’s legendary fair judgement (which became the subject of popular folk tales after his death) are also demonstrated when he deals with the heroine of the novel.

Bust of King Mátyás Hunyadi at the Royal Palace in Visegrád (author photograph)

Return to the Eyrie 
By Katerina Dunne

Publication Date: 30th April 2024

Publisher: Historium Press

Page Length: 404 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction (Medieval) / Historical Romance

Honour, revenge, and the quest for justice.

Belgrade, Kingdom of Hungary, 1470.

Raised in exile, adolescent noblewoman Margit Szilágyi dreams of returning to her homeland of Transylvania to avenge her father's murder and reclaim her stolen legacy. To achieve this, she must break the constraints of her gender and social status and secretly train in combat. When the king offers her a chance at justice, she seizes it—even if it means disguising herself as a man to infiltrate the vultures' nest that now occupies her ancestral ‘eyrie’.

Plagued by childhood trauma and torn between two passionate loves, Margit faces brutal battles, her murderous kin's traps and inner demons on her quest for vengeance. Only by confronting the past can she reclaim her honour—if she can survive long enough to see it through.

Return to the Eyrie is an epic coming-of-age tale of a young woman's unwavering pursuit of justice and destiny in 15th century Hungary.

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Katerina Dunne

Katerina Dunne is the pen-name of Katerina Vavoulidou. Originally from Athens, Greece, Katerina has been living in Ireland since 1999. She has a degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Athens, an MA in Film Studies from University College Dublin and an MPhil in Medieval History from Trinity College Dublin.

Katerina is passionate about history, especially medieval history, and her main area of interest is 13th to 15th century Hungary. Although the main characters of her stories are fictional, Katerina uses real events and personalities as part of her narrative in order to bring to life the fascinating history of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, a location and time period not so well-known to English-speaking readers.

Return to the Eyrie (published April 2024) is the second book in the Medieval Hungary series, a sequel to Lord of the Eyrie (published in February 2022).

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The Mask in 17th Century Venice by Deborah Swift

The Mask in 17th Century Venice by Deborah Swift

When I decided to set The Fortune Keeper in Venice in the 17th century, I was aware of the carnival season and the revels and disguises in my novel, and knew that the timeline would fit neatly with the two previous books. The plot of the novel features an assassin, and I realised the masked celebrations of Carnival would be an ideal place for this character to hide in plain sight.

Every day mask-wearing seemed to begin as a form of politeness in business or at the gaming table. Large amounts of money passed through Venice in the golden age of sail, as it was a centre for trade between east and west. Talk of money, and negotiations over assets, were often easier when the face could assume a neutral appearance. Soon mask wearing in Venice became widely understood to be indicative of high status; a maintainer of propriety, a device used by the nobility which, rather than aiming to deceive, was designed to preserve the status quo. When rich people adopt something, they soon have imitators, and the mask quickly became common attire. The exception being that masks were still forbidden in churches and convents, probably because these were the repositories of wealth, as well as holy places.

In the early 17tth century after several incidents of murders by masked men, the Council of Ten banned carrying a weapon when masked. Town guards were asked to frisk maskers for weapons, but these searches became so common they soon became cursory, and there was no guarantee a masked man would not be armed.

In the late Renaissance, women were often masked for modesty, and this led to a law that forbade prostitutes from wearing the mask. In 1608 any ‘woman of ill-repute’ found wearing one would be chained between the columns in the Piazetta at San Marco, whipped, and banned from the city for four years. Yet only a hundred years later, when masking had become de rigueur, prostitutes were actually required by law to wear masks in public.

By the 1770’s and 80’s the laws on mask wearing were so unclear that compliance to the law became almost impossible to enforce. There were laws, but no-one took any notice of them. In that respect, it was like the recent Covid mask-wearing; there was guidance and advice, or soft laws, which were widely interpreted in different ways. People rebelled as they saw the enforcing of mask-wearing laws as an attempt to control the population at a time of the city’s rapid expansion. 

For the authorities, controlling mask-wearing was an attempt to make sure people knew who was in charge – and an example of this is the State Inquisitors who passed a law saying, ‘no patrician may enter the theatre or the orchestra seats unless masked.’ The key here is the word ‘patrician’— as it was clearly an attempt through masking, and the sumptuary (clothing) laws, to define and reinforce the upper classes.

 

As well as the difficulties for a novelist of when a person should be masked, and what the penalties might be for murder, the other difficulty was technical. Most masks worn by nobles were the bauta, the full mask and tricorn. For women, the moretta mask which covered the whole face, and was held between the teeth by a button, was common. It struck me that the lack of facial expression must mean reliance on gesture must have been mandatory for most maskers. In certain situations, my protagonist wouldn’t be able to ‘raise an eyebrow’, ‘blush’ or ‘smile’.

Nevertheless, the mask phenomenon in Venice, and its connection to crime, is absolutely fascinating. I can heartily recommend the book, ‘Venice Incognito – Masks in the Serene Republic’ by James H Johnson for anyone who wants to know more about masks and the class hierarchies in Venice.

Bibliography

Venice Incognito – Masks in the Serene Republic James H Johnson  

Working Women of Early Modern Venice  Monica Chojnacka

Law and Punishment in Early Renaissance Venice – Guido Ruggiero

The Fortune Keeper 
By Deborah Swift

Publication Date: 24th November 2022

Publisher: Quire Books

Pages: 412 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction 

Count your nights by stars, not shadows ~ Italian Proverb

Winter in Renaissance Venice

Mia Caiozzi is determined to discover her destiny by studying the science of astronomy. But her stepmother Giulia forbids her to engage in this occupation, fearing it will lead her into danger. The ideas of Galileo are banned by the Inquisition, so Mia must study in secret.

Giulia's real name is Giulia Tofana, renowned for her poison Aqua Tofana, and she is in hiding from the Duke de Verdi's family who are intent on revenge for the death of their brother. Giulia insists Mia should live quietly out of public view. If not, it could threaten them all. But Mia doesn't understand this, and rebels against Giulia, determined to go her own way.

When the two secret lives collide, it has far-reaching and fatal consequences that will change Mia's life forever.

Set amongst opulent palazzos and shimmering canals, The Fortune Keeper is the third novel of adventure and romance based on the life and legend of Giulia Tofana, the famous poisoner.

'Her characters are so real they linger in the mind long after the book is back on the shelf'

~ Historical Novel Society

NB This is the third in a series but can stand alone as it features a new protagonist. Other two books are available if reviewers want them.

Trigger Warnings:

Murder and violence in keeping with the era.

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Deborah Swift

Deborah Swift is a USA TODAY bestselling author who is passionate about the past. Deborah used to be a costume designer for the BBC, before becoming a writer. Now she lives in an old English school house in a village full of 17th Century houses, near the glorious Lake District. Deborah has an award-winning historical fiction blog at her website www.deborahswift.com.

Deborah loves to write about how extraordinary events in history have transformed the lives of ordinary people, and how the events of the past can live on in her books and still resonate today. 

The first in her series about the Renaissance poisoner Giulia Tofana, The Poison Keeper, was a winner of the Wishing Shelf Book of the Decade, and a Coffee Pot Book Club Gold Medal, and the latest in her WW2 Secret Agent series, Operation Tulip, is coming soon.

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Researching Their Castilian Orphan by Anna Belfrage

 

Researching Their Castilian Orphan
By Anna Belfrage

When you’re researching a new book, very often you end up in what us historical fiction authors fondly call the rabbit hole. This is when you become so interested in one aspect of your research you spend way too much time on it—at least in relation to how relevant it is to your narrative.

When researching Their Castilian Orphan, I obviously spent a lot of time reading up on Edward I, who is the constant, looming presence in the story, no matter he isn’t really the protagonist. Now, I know Edward I suffered from a twitchy eyelid—a heretic thing, inherited from his father—and as he got older, he was also afflicted by gout. I read up on gout. I read up even more on gout, and just like that, I was stuck in the proverbial rabbit hole. 

Gout has been around for a long, long time. For about as long as humans have lived in civilisations—complex structures that allow some to become top dogs while the others remain as bottom feeders, gout has been a recurring affliction among the top dogs. Why? Because it is essentially a life-style disease. 

To me—and many others—gout is a disease associated with overweight men who overindulge in wine, specifically sweet wines like Madeira or Port. This is not correct: gout is a form of inflammatory arthritis, and many gout sufferers have never imbibed or are overweight. However, there is a correlation between diet and gout—too much red meat, too much wine, too much salty food, and hey ho, you may wake up one day with the excruciating pain caused by gout—effectively due to the needle-like crystals of uric acid that have descended on the afflicted joint.

It is an excess of said uric acid in the blood that causes gout leading to, swelling, acute pain and redness. Sometimes, gout is chronic, causing permanent damage to the joints. These days, there is medication available that can alleviate the symptoms. Not so back in the foggy days of distant history.

Already the old Egyptians were familiar with the disease, and a couple of millennia later, in the 5th century BC or so, Hippocrates called it the “unwalkable disease”. Anyone who has experienced the burning pain of a gouty toe would likely agree with him.

By then, gout was known as podraga, and that name would stick. Romans had it—Seneca even commented on the fact that even women could get it, adding a rather snarky comment that it was no wonder, given just how lecherous these modern women could be. Mostly, though, gout has been a male affliction.

Alexander the Great apparently had gout. Seeing as this splendorous dude died in his thirties, one wonders just how much meat and wine he consumed on a daily basis—or how bad his genes were. 

Charlemagne was another fellow sufferer, and now we are approaching the medieval period, when everyone knew podraga was the consequence of an imbalance in your humours. If the four humours governing your health (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm) weren’t adequately balanced, a drop or two of the humour in excess could slither down your veins and settle in your joint, hence the inflammation. This theory is also the background to the term gout, as Latin for “drop” is “gutta”, and in the late twelfth century a Dominican monk named Randolphus of Bocking working for the Bishop of Chichester is credited with having shortened the rather cumbersome “gutta quam podagram vel artiticam vocant” (the drop that causes podraga or arthritis) into “gutta” which became gout.

This brings me to Edward I and his gouty toe. In Their Castilian Orphan his aching toe causes his mood to blacken frequently—and it doesn’t help that on top of his toe he has to handle that deceitful bastard, the king of France, and a Welsh rebellion. However, by 1294 the physicians of the time had discovered a substance that helped with gout, namely colchicine, the toxin in autumn crocuses.

This is where I just have to go a bit tangential: How did they discover it helped with gout? And did they first try to ingest it (bad, bad idea as it is very poisonous)? Or was it just a case of a desperate physician rushing outside to escape the raging of his angry, hurting patient and stumbled upon a stand of autumn crocuses, thinking “well, at least they’re pretty to look at”, before grabbing a bunch and pulverising them into a salve that, lo and behold, helped? Well, we will never know, will we?

King Eward, however, benefited from this leading edge medicinal knowledge, and one of his pages regularly doctored his aching toe.  By medieval times, physicians were also quite convinced it helped to change your diet to minimise the discomfort caused by gout. Not that the advice was always well-received, as illustrated in the below excerpt: 

Once in London, Lionel and his fellow pages saw little of the king—the man was in one meeting after the other, most of them ensconced with trusted men like St John or his brother. But every evening, Lionel was ordered to minister to the king’s foot, and at present it was a raw and hurting thing that even, on occasion, required the physician himself to attend on the king.

“Less wine, less meat, my liege,” the physician suggested.

“Less wine?” With a truculent look that reminded Lionel of Issy at her most stubborn, the king sloshed more wine into his goblet. “And how, pray, do you think I will hold on to my sanity in these trying times without this comfort?”

The physician held up his hands. “I am merely offering medical advice, my liege.”

“Pah!”

Moments later, the goblet went flying, crashing against the distant wall. “Fine, less wine,” the king growled, heaved himself upright and stalked off towards his bed. “Clean that up before you leave,” he barked at Lionel, who ducked his head to hide the angry tears filling his eyes. He had no notion what he had done, but of late the king was always taking out his anger on him.

“Here, lad.” The physician crouched beside him and handed him a cloth. “It’s the pain,” he added in a whisper. “For a man so used to being nigh on invincible, it is as crippling mentally as physically.”

Lionel nodded as if he understood, but truth be, he did not.

Another English king who suffered from gout is Henry VIII. No wonder, I say, seeing as the man ended up almost as broad as he was tall (and he was very tall) 

A contemporary to Henry VIII was Charles, the Hapsburg emperor. Not exactly Henry’s favourite person, what with Charles exerting his considerable influence at the papal court to stop Henry’s much desired divorce from Katherine of Aragon to go through. Katherine was Charles’ aunt, and blood is always very, very thick when we’re talking Hapsburgs—so thick, in fact, that for centuries they preferred to marry close relatives. 

Anyway: Emperor Charles was also a fellow gout sufferer—confirmed by examining his finger in 2006—and on one occasion, his affliction was to cost him an entire city. Already in the 1500s, France and the Hapsburg Empire were at constant loggerheads. In 1554, the French attacked Metz—and managed to take it. Charles gnashed his teeth, enraged, but was almost paralysed with pain on account of his gout, so he had no choice but to retreat and leave Metz in French hands. Instead, Charles decided it was time to abdicate and leave the ruling to someone as yet unafflicted by gout—and age in general. 

Leaping forward, I just have to mention that Isaac Newton suffered from gout. So did Benjamin Franklin—and Thomas Jefferson. Franklin had a personal relationship with “his” gout, as illustrated by this rather sweet conversation between Mr Franklin and Madame Gout. https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/the-oxford-book-of-american-essays/iii-dialogue-between-franklin-and-the-gout/

Other famous goutees are Christofer Columbus, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, Queen Victoria and Karl Marx—to mention a few. Even my favourite Swedish king, Gustav II Adolf had gout, so badly at times he was carried in a litter from one battlefield to the other. 

In this day and age, gout is still a thriving disease—in fact, the number of people afflicted is increasing, partly due to there simply being more people on this planet of ours, partly due to the fact that more and more of us can afford to eat like the kings of old. Not a smart thing to do, IMO, as those kings of old rarely bothered with kale and salads and low-fat dairy products. 

An acquaintance of mine was recently flying across the Atlantic when he was suddenly afflicted by the pains of all pains in his toe. Unbearable. Agonising. 

“Huh,” I was tempted to say. “You’ve never given birth, have you?” 

Still, his vivid description of his pain made me wince. Once back home, he contacted a doctor who told him it was. . . wait for it . . . gout. My acquaintance ended up on a strict diet. No meat of any sort, no white bread, veggies, veggies, veggies. A couple of weeks later, there was no pain. But gout is a nefarious disease, which means the moment you skip the diet, it may very well pop up and bite you—hard! 

What I found of particular interest, though, was when my acquaintance also informed me that he had been prescribed colchicine to treat his gout. It made me smile—turns out those medieval physicians got it right, doesn’t it? 

Next time you see a stand of autumn crocuses maybe you too will consider its healing qualities for those afflicted by gout. Me, I see the pale purple blooms and I immediately think of Edward I, his aching, swollen toe, and the young (albeit fictional) boy ordered to somehow alleviate the king’s suffering. 

Their Castilian Orphan
By Anna Belfrage

Publication Date: 23rd March 2024

Publisher: Timelight Press

Page Count: approx. 400 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction, Romantic Historical Fiction, Historical Romance

It is 1294 and Eustace de Lamont is back in England after five years in exile. He will stop at nothing to ruin Robert FitzStephan and his wife, Noor d’Outremer.

Robert’s half brother, Eustace de Lamont, has not mellowed during his absence. He is more ruthless than ever, and this time he targets Robert’s and Noor’s foster son, Lionel.

Lionel is serving King Edward as a page when Eustace appears at court. Not only does Lionel become the horrified witness to Eustace’s violent streak, Eustace also starts voicing his suspicions about Lionel’s parentage. The truth about Lionel’s heritage is explosive—should King Edward find out, all would be lost for Robert and Noor.

In October of 1294, Wales rises in rebellion. Robert must leave his family unprotected to fight the Welsh rebels on the king’s behalf, comforted only by the fact that Eustace too is called to fight.

Except that Eustace has no intention of allowing his duty to his king—or a mere rebellion—come between him and his desire to destroy Robert FitzStephan . . .

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Anna Belfrage

Had Anna been allowed to choose, she’d have become a time-traveller. As this was impossible, she became a financial professional with three absorbing interests: history, romance and writing. Anna has authored the acclaimed time travelling series The Graham Saga, set in 17th century Scotland and Maryland, as well as the equally acclaimed medieval series The King’s Greatest Enemy which is set in 14th century England. Anna has just released the final instalment, Their Castilian Orphan, in her other medieval series, The Castilian Saga,which is set against the conquest of Wales. She has recently released Times of Turmoil, a sequel to her time travel romance, The Whirlpools of Time, and is now considering just how to wiggle out of setting the next book in that series in Peter the Great’s Russia, as her characters are demanding. . .

All of Anna’s books have been awarded the IndieBRAG Medallion, she has several Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choices, and one of her books won the HNS Indie Award in 2015. She is also the proud recipient of various Reader’s Favorite medals as well as having won various Gold, Silver and Bronze Coffee Pot Book Club awards.

“A master storyteller” 

“This is what all historical fiction should be like. Superb.”

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Researching Alice Heppenheimer and this Period in History by Bonnie Suchman

 Researching Alice Heppenheimer and this Period in History 

By Bonnie Suchman

My research into the life of Alice Heppenheimer and her family actually began as a genealogical exploration of my husband Bruce’s family, who lived in Germany before World War II. After three years of researching, I published a non-fiction book that traced the family back to around 1700. But after the book was published, I decided I was not finished telling Alice’s story. To provide a fuller and richer story, I chose to write a novel.

In doing genealogical research, most people start with Ancestry.com, and that is where my search began. But that was only the beginning for me, and my search led to the archives of a number of German states, as well as the archives of relevant museums and organizations. Finding one document often led me to another source, and this is where my background as a lawyer proved extremely useful to be able to follow the trail.

In terms of researching Alice’s life, one of the most useful sets of documents related specifically to her efforts to escape Nazi Germany. In order to receive permission to leave, a German Jew was required to receive a tax clearance certificate from the Finance Office. In Alice’s file, I found hundreds of pages of documents describing the many issues she was experiencing in clearing her tax obligation. Alice’s business records also contained numerous documents describing her life and the problems she and her husband were experiencing as Jews working in Nazi Germany. At times, I could almost hear her voice in reading the various documents, pleading for a chance to escape.

I was fortunate in having family members who shared with me photographs of family from the period, or stories they were told from parents or grandparents. Among the photos shared was the following, showing Alice (holding the umbrella) at the Norderney beach resort with her family in 1923:

Records created after the war also proved extremely helpful to my research in painting a picture of Alice and her family. For example, family members who filed for reparations were required to include detailed information regarding their lives, their professions, even their possessions. I learned much of about the Heppenheimer family through these reparations requests and other relevant records.

I was able to take advantage of the extensive records preserved by German universities and organizations, as well as international Holocaust organizations. For example, Germany’s Goethe University in Frankfurt has created a searchable digital collection that contains all of the Address Books in Frankfurt (an annotated telephone book that included occupational information), as well as most of the Jewish newspapers published before World War II. I found a wealth of family information in those archives. I also discovered family records in the archives of the Leo Baeck Institute (both at the Center for Jewish History in New York and on their website).

But researching Alice’s life also presented an emotional challenge I wasn’t expecting. In researching the family, I was to discover that many of the records I was reviewing were actually preserved by the Nazis, to be used in order to prove who was a Jew. Some records were lost only because they had been in buildings bombed by the Allies during the war.

As an English language speaker, one significant challenge I had was the language barrier. While I took German classes at the Goethe Institute, Google translator became my constant companion. And when that tool proved inadequate, I retained the services of translators. One translator was located in Germany and was able to locate records hidden in dusty archives and could translate records that were written in old German script.

I wrote Stumbling Stones as a novel, but tried to make sure that everything in the book was factual. For example, in Frankfurt in the summer of 1937, Jews were only permitted to visit one of the Frankfurt bath resorts. Since Jews were limited in places they could go in that summer for relief, I assumed that Alice and her family would have visited this bath, although we will never know for sure. Frankfurt’s Institute for Urban History has created an extensive archives of the history of the Holocaust period, including a detailed description of the one Frankfurt bath resort Jews were permitted to use in 1937. I relied upon that research for that section of my novel. In addition, I read extensively of the period, so that I could understand why Alice made the decisions that she made through the 1930s. This was particularly important in understanding why Alice, like so many other German Jews, did not leave when the Nazis first came to power, and why it was a challenge to leave when Alice finally realized that she needed to leave.

 

Stumbling Stones
By Bonnie Suchman

Publication Date: 9th May 2024

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

Page Length: 282 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

"Alice knew that Selma sometimes felt judged by their mother and didn't always like it when Alice was praised and Selma was not. Alice glanced over at her sister, but Selma was smiling at Alice. In what Alice understood might be Selma's last act of generosity towards her sister, Selma was going to let Alice bask in the glow of Emma's pride toward her elder daughter. Then the three shared a hug, a hug that seemed to last forever."

Alice Heppenheimer, born into a prosperous German Jewish family around the turn of the twentieth century, comes of age at a time of growing opportunities for women.

So, when she turns 21 years old, she convinces her strict family to allow her to attend art school, and then pursues a career in women's fashion. Alice prospers in her career and settles into married life, but she could not anticipate a Nazi Germany, where simply being Jewish has become an existential threat. Stumbling Stones is a novel based on the true story of a woman driven to achieve at a time of persecution and hatred, and who is reluctant to leave the only home she has ever known.

But as strong and resilient as Alice is, she now faces the ultimate challenge - will she and her husband be able to escape Nazi Germany or have they waited too long to leave?

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Bonnie Suchman

Bonnie Suchman is an attorney who has been practicing law for forty years. Using her legal skills, she researched her husband's family's 250-year history in Germany, and published a non-fiction book about the family, Broken Promises: The Story of a Jewish Family in Germany. Bonnie found one member of the family, Alice Heppenheimer, particularly compelling. Stumbling Stones tells Alice's story. Bonnie has two adult children and lives in Maryland with her husband, Bruce.

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Researching the Lost Mill Women of Roswell, Georgia, by Kinley Bryan

Researching the Lost Mill Women of Roswell, Georgia

By Kinley Bryan

I love writing stories with themes that resonate with me, and I especially love setting them in the past so I can explore those themes in ways not possible in my own life. At its heart, The Lost Women of Mill Street is the story of a young woman beginning to learn what she is capable of. On the surface, however, it’s a refugee story—about the arrest and deportation of hundreds of Georgia mill workers during the final year of the American Civil War.

 

The story begins in Roswell, Georgia, a picturesque town overlooking the Chattahoochee River about twenty miles north of Atlanta. Established as a textile manufacturing village in 1839, Roswell was home to prominent families living in stately mansions on one side of the town square, and mill workers in small cottages on the other. I used to live in Roswell, and so I’ve been to the place where the mills stood, and I’ve seen the waterfall where Vickery Creek was dammed to provide waterpower for them. Being in that physical space and thinking about the women who worked at the mills is what inspired me to write a novel about them.

There’s plenty of information on the owners of the Roswell Manufacturing Company and what they did before, during, and after Federal troops burned the mills. And while a few of the mill workers returned to Roswell, most did not: their fates remain a mystery. This left me free to imagine what might become of Clara and Kitty Douglas, my fictional sisters who worked in the weave room the day the mills burned. Though they are fictional, I needed their fates to be within the realm of what was possible, and that meant researching all kinds of interesting things, such as:

What was Louisville, Kentucky like in 1864?

When the mill workers were deported from Georgia, they were sent to a refugee prison hospital in Louisville. To render those scenes, I consulted old maps online and found a military map depicting the railroad my characters would have traveled, and the refugee prison hospital where they would have stayed. I even found online a graduate student’s 1938 master’s thesis on the social and economic history of Louisville during the Civil War years, 1860-1865. It provided some great details.

What was it like to travel by steamboat on the Ohio River?

A fascinating history of steamboating on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, Come Hell or High Water by Michael Gillespie helped me understand what it was like to travel by steamboat (on a low budget). For example, when a steamboat stopped at a woodyard for wood to fuel the engine, deck passengers, who had purchased their ride for reduced fare, helped load the wood by hand. The book contained first-hand accounts that helped me understand how my characters might react to something, like one passenger’s description of a steamboat engine’s sound: “like the grunt of a sleeping pig that is dreaming.”

What was it like to live in Cincinnati during the Civil War?

The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border by Christopher Phillips taught me how deep the political division ran among the white citizenry in border cities like Cincinnati, so much so that at one point the Cincinnati mayor issued a proclamation requesting residents to refrain from the discussion of “exciting topics” in public and to discourage all congregation of crowds in the streets. 

How did American milliners operate their businesses?

Millinery plays an important role in the story, and an invaluable resource on the subject was The Female Economy by Wendy Gamber, which covered both the millinery and dressmaking trades from 1860-1930 in the United States. The Hand-Book of Millinery, published in 1847, was an excellent primer on mid-1800s millinery.

These are just four of the countless questions that arose while I was writing The Lost Women of Mill Street. Of course, most of what I learned didn’t make it into the novel—the best facts that didn’t suit the story I shared with my

The Lost Women of Mill Street
By Kinley Bryan

Publication Date: 7th May 2024

Publisher: Blue Mug Press

Page Count: 300 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

1864: As Sherman’s army marches toward Atlanta, a cotton mill commandeered by the Confederacy lies in its path. Inside the mill, Clara Douglas weaves cloth and watches over her sister Kitty, waiting for the day her fiancé returns from the West.

When Sherman’s troops destroy the mill, Clara’s plans to start a new life in Nebraska are threatened. Branded as traitors by the Federals, Clara, Kitty, and countless others are exiled to a desolate refugee prison hundreds of miles from home.

Cut off from all they've ever known, Clara clings to hope while grappling with doubts about her fiancé’s ambitions and the unsettling truths surrounding his absence. As the days pass, the sisters find themselves thrust onto the foreign streets of Cincinnati, a city teeming with uncertainty and hostility. She must summon reserves of courage, ingenuity, and strength she didn’t know she had if they are to survive in an unfamiliar, unwelcoming land.

Inspired by true events of the Civil War, The Lost Women of Mill Street is a vividly drawn novel about the bonds of sisterhood, the strength of women, and the repercussions of war on individual lives.

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Kinley Bryan

Kinley Bryan's debut novel, Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury, inspired by the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 and her own family history, won the 2022 Publishers Weekly Selfies Award for adult fiction. An Ohio native, she lives in South Carolina with her husband and three children. The Lost Women of Mill Street is her second novel.

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