Blog Tour Guest Post: Innocence Lost by Sherilyn Decter

Please join me in welcoming Sherilyn Decter to Let Them Read Books! Sherilyn is touring the blogosphere with her debut historical novel, Innocence Lost, first book in the Bootleggers' Chronicles! I'm thrilled to have her here today with an insightful post about how she used research to shape her characters, weave her story around historical events, and bring the Roaring Twenties to colorful life. Read on and enter to win a prize pack!

In a city of bootleggers and crime, one woman must rely on a long-dead lawman to hunt down justice…

Philadelphia, 1924. Maggie Barnes doesn’t have much left. After the death of her husband, she finds herself all alone to care for her young son and look after their rundown house. As if that weren’t bad enough, Prohibition has turned her neighborhood into a bootlegger’s playground. To keep the shoddy roof over their heads, she has no choice but to take on boarders with questionable ties…

When her son’s friend disappears, Maggie suspects the worst. And local politicians and police don’t seem to have any interest in an investigation. With a child’s life on the line, Maggie takes the case and risks angering the enemy living right under her nose…

Maggie’s one advantage may be her new found friend: the ghost of a Victorian-era cop. With his help, can she find justice in a lawless city?

Innocence Lost is the first novel in the Bootleggers’ Chronicles, a series of historical fiction tales. If you like headstrong heroines, Prohibition-era criminal underworlds, and just a touch of the paranormal, then you’ll love Sherilyn Decter’s gripping tale.

Which Comes First: The Research or the Story?

by Sherilyn Decter

In every author of historical fiction lies the beating heart of a passionate researcher. It’s one of my favorite parts of writing. While I include real people, real events, and real settings into the Bootleggers’ Chronicles series, they are fictionalized to help drive the story further.

There are numerous books, articles, and online resources available for researchers looking to learn more about the 1920s in America. It was a tumultuous time. The destruction and brutality of World War One and the entrepreneurial opportunities created through Prohibition set the stage for significant change.

I try to have the characters in my novels be ‘of their time.’ Often I have to wrestle with timing--a great event won’t fit neatly into the timeline of the plot. There is the recurring question of how to incorporate authentic attitudes toward people who are different, toward women, that sometimes grate on our modern ear. And don’t get me started on the different standards of personal hygiene!

Maggie Barnes, the main character of Innocence Lost, is a woman of her time. She’s mistrustful of the immigrants that have poured into Philadelphia because of the Great War, families from other countries that are there because of the economic opportunities or fear of what’s happening back in their home countries. She struggles as she learns to share her city and her neighborhood with these strangers.

I found the sections where Maggie battles often and loudly with her mother--a woman born in a different century--about hair length, skirt length, women’s independence, and language amusing to write. Ah, the ‘younger generation’ is always with us.

Keeping Innocence Lost as authentic as possible, I had great fun poking my nose into how people lived in the 1920s. It’s the beginning of the modern era, so familiar to us from stories told around our own dinner tables by older family members, and yet a hundred years ago. What would Maggie’s laundry day look like? How and where would she buy groceries? What did flappers wear under all that fringe?

Blog Tour Guest Post: Ain't Misbehavin' by Jennifer Lamont Leo

Please join me in welcoming Jennifer Lamont Leo to Let Them Read Books! Jennifer is touring the blogosphere with Ain't Misbehavin', the second book in her Roaring Twenties series! I'm happy to have her here today with a guest post about the wealth of information available on the Roaring Twenties and the very real possibility of becoming addicted to research! Read on and enter to win a copy of Ain't Misbehavin'!

In Jazz Age Chicago, Dot Rodgers sells hats at Marshall Field while struggling to get her singing career off the ground. Independent and feisty, she’s the life of the party. But underneath the glitter, she doesn’t believe she’s worth the love of a good man. Why would a strong, upstanding man want to build a future with a shallow, good-time girl like her?

Small-town businessman Charlie Corrigan carries scars from the Great War. After all he’s been through, he wants nothing more than to marry and start a family. But the woman he loves is a flamboyant flapper with no intention of settling down. She’s used to a more glamorous life than he can offer. As his fortunes climb with the stock market, it seems he’s finally going to win her love. But what happens when it all comes crashing down?

On Research and Rabbit Trails

by Jennifer Lamont Leo

I, like many historical fiction authors, love the research process. I love it so much, in fact, that it can threaten to derail me from the task at hand—more on that in a moment. But it’s a fact that our thirst for the stories of yesteryear is what drew many of us to write historical fiction in the first place.

When it comes to source materials, we authors who set our stories after, say, 1910 have an advantage over those writing about earlier eras, in that we have so many different types of media available to us. We can access not only books and newspapers, but also radio, movies (both silent and “talkies”), and voice and music recordings. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, we can listen to the songs, learn the dance steps, and study the lingo and voice inflections. Scattering these details throughout our stories helps paint a richer picture of the time period.

The early twentieth century also saw an explosion of advertising in popular magazines like Woman’s Home Companion and Ladies’ Home Journal. Consumer ads tell us a surprising amount of information about people’s everyday lives and concerns (“What will the neighbors think?” was—and continues to be—a big one) as well as a wealth of detail about clothing, hairstyles, color schemes, prices, home décor, automobiles, and recipes.

The downside to this cascade of information is that those of us addicted to research risk following every fascinating breadcrumb and rabbit trail, losing hours and even whole days in pursuit of some arcane fact. At some point we need to stop the research and start writing the darn story!

Blog Tour Guest Post: The Babe Ruth Deception by David O. Stewart

Please join me in welcoming David O. Stewart to Let Them Read Books! David is touring the blogosphere with his latest historical mystery, The Babe Ruth Deception, and he's here today with a guest post about the tools he uses when writing a historical novel. Read on and enter to win a copy of The Babe Ruth Deception!

As the Roaring Twenties get under way, corruption seems everywhere–from the bootleggers flouting Prohibition to the cherished heroes of the American Pastime now tarnished by scandal. Swept up in the maelstrom are Dr. Jamie Fraser and Speed Cook…

Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, is having a record-breaking season in his first year as a New York Yankee. In 1920, he will hit more home runs than any other team in the American League. Larger than life on the ball field and off, Ruth is about to discover what the Chicago White Sox players accused of throwing the 1919 World Series are learning–baseball heroes are not invulnerable to scandal. With suspicion in the air, Ruth’s 1918 World Series win for the Boston Red Sox is now being questioned. Under scrutiny by the new baseball commissioner and enmeshed with gambling kingpin Arnold Rothstein, Ruth turns for help to Speed Cook–a former professional ballplayer himself before the game was segregated and now a promoter of Negro baseball–who’s familiar with the dirty underside of the sport.

Cook in turn enlists the help of Dr. Jamie Fraser, whose wife Eliza is coproducing a silent film starring the Yankee outfielder. Restraint does not come easily to the reckless Ruth, but the Frasers try to keep him in line while Cook digs around.

As all this plays out, Cook’s son Joshua and Fraser’s daughter Violet are brought together by a shocking tragedy. But an interracial relationship in 1920 feels as dangerous as a public scandal–even more so because Joshua is heavily involved in bootlegging. Trying to protect Ruth and their own children, Fraser and Cook find themselves playing a dangerous game.

Once again masterfully blending fact and fiction, David O. Stewart delivers a nail-biting historical mystery that captures an era unlike any America has seen before or since in all its moral complexity and dizzying excitement.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | IndieBound

Tools of Historical Fiction

By David O. Stewart

Through the three historical mysteries in my “Deception” series – # 3, The Babe Ruth Deception emerged in paperback last month – I’ve turned to some unexpected tools for grounding each story in the proper time-and-place.  

Because the books range from 1900 (The Lincoln Deception) to 1921 (Babe Ruth), and take place variously in small-town Ohio, Washington, Paris, and New York, each one has involved different challenges.  If readers don’t believe the book’s version of the era and the location, the story doesn’t have a chance.  Happily, some tools work in any situation.

Photographs

These are invaluable guides to personal clothing (how uncomfortable were they?), hair styles, and deportment (how formal did people wish to appear?).  Photos of cities reveal how they looked a century ago:  the traffic, the buildings, the commercial offerings.  Photos of Manhattan streetscapes in the early 1900s showed a surprising (to me) lack of women who were out and about.  All were escorted by men.  

When it comes to landscapes and vistas, even current photos may be helpful.

Finally, photographs are essential for any real historical figures who appear in the story (say, Babe Ruth or President Woodrow Wilson in The Wilson Deception).  The Babe’s disarming grin, Wilson’s triumphantly erect posture – these come through powerfully in photos.  The story has to portray historical figures as they were, and as they’re known.  I have distilled this inarguable point: you can make up a lot, but Abe Lincoln HAS to be tall.

Blog Tour Review: The Illusionist's Apprentice by Kristy Cambron

From the Back Cover:

Harry Houdini’s one-time apprentice holds fantastic secrets about the greatest illusionist in the world. But someone wants to claim them . . . or silence her before she can reveal them on her own.

Boston, 1926. Jenny “Wren” Lockhart is a bold eccentric—even for a female vaudevillian. As notorious for her inherited wealth and gentleman’s dress as she is for her unsavory upbringing in the back halls of a vaudeville theater, Wren lives in a world that challenges all manner of conventions.

In the months following Houdini’s death, Wren is drawn into a web of mystery surrounding a spiritualist by the name of Horace Stapleton, a man defamed by Houdini’s ardent debunking of fraudulent mystics in the years leading up to his death. But in a public illusion that goes terribly wrong, one man is dead and another stands charged with his murder. Though he’s known as one of her teacher’s greatest critics, Wren must decide to become the one thing she never wanted to be: Stapleton’s defender.

Forced to team up with the newly formed FBI, Wren races against time and an unknown enemy, all to prove the innocence of a hated man. In a world of illusion, of the vaudeville halls that showcase the flamboyant and the strange, Wren’s carefully constructed world threatens to collapse around her. Layered with mystery, illusion, and the artistry of the Jazz Age’s bygone vaudeville era, The Illusionist’s Apprentice is a journey through love and loss and the underpinnings of faith on each life’s stage.

My Thoughts:

I have long been wanting to read one of Kristy Cambron's novels, and I even have The Butterfly and the Violin on my tablet, I just haven't had time to catch up on the thousands of ebooks I've acquired. (Maybe because I keep acquiring more? But that's a topic for another post!) So I jumped at the chance to review The Illusionist's Apprentice. And I have very mixed feelings about it. I'm going to skip the plot recap since this is a mystery and I don't want to risk giving anything away. And the blurb does a good job of telling you what the story is about. So I'm just going to tell you what I think. And what I think is that this story had a lot of potential, but it just didn't take full advantage of all it had to offer.

Blog Tour Review: The Worthington Wife by Sharon Page

From the Back Cover:

Sharon Page sparkles in this poignant and irresistibly entertaining follow-up to her breakout novel, An American Duchess.

Lady Julia Hazelton is the most dazzling among 1920s England’s bright young things. But rather than choosing the thrill of wanton adventure like so many of her contemporaries, Julia shocks society with her bold business aspirations. Determined to usher the cursed Worthington estate into a prosperous, modern new era, and thus preserve her beloved late fiancé’s legacy, the willful Julia tackles her wildest, most unexpected adventure in Cal Carstairs, the reluctant new Earl of Worthington.

The unconventional American artist threatens everything Julia seeks to protect while stirring desires she thought had died in the war. For reasons of his own, Cal has designed the ultimate revenge. Rather than see the estate prosper, he intends to destroy it. But their impulsive marriage—one that secures Julia’s plans as well as Cal’s secrets—proves that passion is ambition’s greatest rival. Unless Cal ends his quest to satisfy his darkest vendetta, he stands to ruin his Worthington wife and all her glittering dreams.

My Thoughts:

Lady Julia Hazelton is feeling somewhat adrift. Having lost her first love to the Great War and her second love to the chasm between their social standings, she needs a sense of purpose. Her family is pressuring her to marry, but she's seen what a marriage without love can do to people, and she's vowed to marry for love or not at all. So she throws herself into a startup charity to help destitute war widows and their children. She also spends much of her time tending to the tenants on her family's estate and on the neighboring estate, Worthington, which she would have been mistress of had her fiance not been killed in the war. But Worthington is in a state of chaos. The new heir to the estate is a long-lost relative, a bohemian American whose arrival disrupts the staid order of English nobility. With her best friend, Diana, in the scandalous position of being pregnant with a married man's child, and terrified that the new earl is going to throw them all out on the street, Julia vows to do all she can to see the estate maintained. Getting close to the new earl is no hardship--he's gorgeous, progressive, and enigmatic--but getting to the heart of him and convincing him he has a place in her world is going to take some work.