As a fifth generation Chicagoan with roots in the city’s
political world as well as long-time newspaperman who grew up or spent time in
such neighborhoods as Ravenswood, Lake View, Uptown and Edgewater, Patrick
Butler always knew that at some time in his life he would explore the what he
terms “a kind of curio shop of people and places that time forgot,”
“Many of the stories I heard growing up in the neighborhoods,” says Butler, a natural born storyteller and author of both Hidden History of Uptown and Edgewater and Hidden History of Ravenswood and Lakeview both published by History Press. “Some I reported on and some I discovered as I was researching other stories.”
Illustrated with vivid black and white vintage photos,
Butler takes us deep into the neighborhoods, telling us stories of the denizens
of these streets and the buildings out of which they operated.
A favorite he says is Sunnyside, which began first as a
stage coach stop and then a resort where the likes of Abraham Lincoln and xxx
Douglas could relax and discuss politics. But by the 1860s, under the ownership
of Cap Hyman, a Chicago gangster who liked to wave his gun around and wasn’t averse
to shooting it either, and his wife Annie Stafford, known as the fattest
brothel keeper in Chicago.
“They called her Gentle Annie,” says Butler noting the term
was sarcastic because Annie carried a bullwhip which she used to keep the girls
and their customers in line.
“If there’s any place in Chicago that’s been all things to
all men, it has to be the corner of the city that is occupied by Edgewater and
Uptown,” writes Butler in the Introduction to the Hidden History of Uptown and Edgewater. “Babe Ruth and Mahatma Gandhi found a place
of refuge at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, but the locale has also been a
sanctuary for Appalachian coal miners and Japanese Americans released from
internment camps.”
Al Capone makes an appearance here as well, reportedly
moving booze via underground tunnels (there really are tunnels and it’s not
that much of a stretch to imagine Al using them) including one connecting the
Aragon Ballroom and the Green Mill which now is an upscale cocktail lounge with
live jazz and blues. The tunnels are now used for storage, but the booth at the
Green Mill where Al and his gang used to hang out still remains.
Butler’s raconteur style makes it even more of a pleasure to
read about this slice of Chicago history.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden return to solving crimes in Hope Rides Again: An Obama Biden Mystery, the second in the series written by Andrew Shaffer and starring the former president and vice president.
“It’s a totally separate mystery from the first book,” says Shaffer while sitting at a table where a long line had formed waiting for him to autograph copies of his novel at a two-day book fair in Lexington, Kentucky. “The first was set in Wilmington, Delaware and this one is set in Chicago on Obama’s turf and takes place in the spring around St. Patrick’s Day which is certainly a holiday they take seriously there.”
Indeed, Shaffer,
who at one time lived in Chicago, says he revisited old haunts and new places for
background as the two BFFs hunt for Obama’s Blackberry and the murderer of the their
who originally stole it.
Though
the premise of the two joining together as detectives is somewhat zany, Shaffer
describes his book as dealing with serious topics as well.
“But I try to do it in a lighthearted way,” he says. Also, fun are the covers for both books including the first in the series, Hope Never Dies. Harkening back to the vivid colors of 1960s, the first shows Biden driving a convertible while Obama stands in the front seat pointing out the way as they chase their quarry. In the latest, Obama leans down from a swaying rope ladder tethered to a helicopter, his arm outstretched to help Biden up.
One person who thinks the mysteries
are fun is the former vice president. When Biden was campaigning in Kentucky
(Shaffer and his wife, a romance writer, live in Louisville), he was contacted
by the campaign who set up a meeting.
“I didn’t
know whether he liked the book or not or what he was going to say,” says Shaffer
adding that the Biden hadn’t read either book but signed his copies. “It was really
kind of different to have a character in your book sign your book. I found out later
that people have been bringing my books to his campaign stops and asking him to
sign them, so he was probably thinking who’s the guy who wrote this?”
It’s
tricky writing about people we know publicly but not in person says Shaffer.
“I think
in ways I know them too well because I know their history and what I think they
would do and say, because I’ve written about them and I’ve seen and read about
them for eight years,” he says. “When I heard Biden speak in Kentucky, I was
like my Biden wouldn’t say that.”
Shaffer’s
book might have garnered a few votes for the vice president.
“I met
one person who said I can’t wait to vote for them again because now they’re
detectives,” he says.
Cost: This event is free and open to the public. To join the
signing line, please purchase the author’s latest book, Hope Rides Again,
from Anderson’s Bookshop. To purchase, stop in or call Anderson’s Bookshop
Naperville.
For more
than 40 years, Joe Marlin, author of the just released Fading Ads of Chicago,
photographed ghost signs, those fading advertisements painted on the sides of
brick buildings, a onetime popular way to advertise in the U.S.
“I’d take
notes when I was driving to and from work on the west side of Chicago or when I
was going to business meetings,” says Marlin, a retired clinical social worker
and director of hospital social work services at Mt. Sinai Hospital. “Then I’d
organize the notes by neighborhood and go back and take photos.”
These
signs, some more than a century old, often advertised businesses, products,
stores and services long gone. These include the Boston Store which opened shortly
after the Chicago Fire in 1871 and was then replaced with a new building in
1906, closing for good in the late 1940s. One of Marlin’s favorites is an ad
for Marigold Margarine, which was likely painted in the 1890s.
“I like
that one because its colors were still so vivid,” says Marlin, whose book
contains more than 150 color photos of ads painted, for the most part, between
1890 to 1940s. “It wasn’t as faded because another building was built right
next to it.”
Fading advertisements
are sometimes called ghost ads because they were painted with lead based paints
that overtime begin to fade into the soft brick of the sides of buildings. When
it rains, the colors, longer lasting than non-lead paint, sometimes begin to
reappear or are easier to see. Marigold Margarine is one such ad. Concealed
over for decades it came into the light again for a brief period when the
building hiding it was demolished.
Then it vanished again with the construction
of a new building next door, concealed again for who knows how long. So many of
the ads Martin took are also gone, making them even more poignant as lost
reminders of forgotten times.
“I regret that I didn’t take more photos,”
he says. “More and more are disappearing when they tear down old buildings to
put up new one or their removed when the exteriors are renovated.
Even now,
Marlin, who also collects vintage cameras particularly those from Chicago’s
photographic industry such as still, movie, and street cameras as well as Art
Deco items, pursues these disappearing works of art.
“I just took
a photo of one recently, but it was too late to make it into the book,” he
says. “It’s an ad for Wizard Oil and claims that it ‘cures rheumatism, colds,
sores and all other pains.’ It was a patent medicine and they made all sorts of
grandiose claims back then.”
Like
Marigold Margarine and other remnants of the past, this one has a story too,
dating back to 1861 when a former Chicago magician invented it.
“These
old ads take us back to a different time,” says Marlin. “In order to find them,
just look up when you’re walking or driving through the city.”
And take
a photo because they might not be there next time you go by.
What: Joe Marlin talk and book signing
When: Tuesday, June 25; 6:00-7:00pm
Where: 57th Street Books, 1301 E 57th Street,
Chicago, IL
Chicago-based author Renee Rosen
typically writes novels about historic periods and people in Chicago, such as Windy
City Blues; White Collar Girl and Dollface.
But in Park Avenue Summer, her latest novel, which she describes as “Mad Men Meets The Devil Wears Prada,” she takes us to New York City during the era of Helen Gurley Brown, first female editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and the author of the scandalous ’60s best-seller, Sex and the Single Girl.
Like many of us, Rosen read Cosmo when she was young. Rosen remembers quickly flipping to the “Bedside Astrologer” column.
Author Renee Rosen
“I was looking for guidance on my
16-year-old love life,” she says, noting that all the time she spent poring
over the glossy pages of Cosmo essentially shaped her view of female sexuality
and female empowerment. “She changed the face of women’s magazines,” she said
of Brown.
“Park Avenue Summer”
tells the story of Alice (Ali), who moves to New York City after breaking up
with her boyfriend and ends up getting her dream job, working for Cosmo.
Like she does for all her books,
Rosen threw herself into full research mode, wanting to convey the story
through Alice’s eyes.
“I even went down to the Port
Authority to get the feel of what Alice would have seen and felt when she
arrived,” Rosen says.
Because Rosen had lived on the
Upper West side in New York for a year, she knew where Ali, as a single working
girl, would live — an area in the East 60s called “the girl’s ghetto.” She
walked the streets until she found the exact apartment she had envisioned for
Ali.
All in the name of research, she
visited Tavern on the Green, 21 Club, St. Regis and the Russian Tearoom, all
swank places still in business that were popular back then. But best of all, a
friend introduced her to Lois Cahall who had worked for Brown.
“Helen Gurley Brown was like a
second mother to Lois,” Rosen says.
“She and I became good friends, and
she vetted the book for me. It was like a gift from the gods, because she knew
so much about Brown and Cosmo and that time.”
Rosen is very much an admirer of
Brown and what she accomplished.
“She really wanted to help women be
their best,” she says. “She wanted them to know that they could get what they
want even in what was then a man’s world.”
The end
of the world is coming again—just as it was before Y2K and the Mayan Doomsday Calendar
back to the calculations of Bishop Gregory of Tours, showing it would be all
over sometimes between 799 and 806 and Christopher Columbus (yes, that
Christopher Columbus) who it was ending in 1658.
“It’s something that people have believed all through history,” says Tea Krulos author of the just released Apocalypse Any Day Now: Deep Underground with America’s Doomsday Preppers. “There have been different takes on the end times throughout our culture. In 1844, people followed Father Miller and believed so very strongly that the world was going to end that they sold their property, gave away things in preparing for it.”
Curious
and somewhat amused about those who believe in end times and take steps to get
ready, Krulos decided to explore the subject,
“I have a
strong interest in Utopian fiction like such classics as 1984,” says
Krulos, a Milwaukee journalist. “And I’ve always wondered, if there was a huge
disaster, how long I’d be able to survive. Not very long, I think. I also wanted to get some answers about who
these people were and to find out what prepping was about as well as to get out
in the field, to experience some things and learn some things.”
But
Preppers, the term used for those who are preparing for the ultimate catastrophe,
were definitely not interested in talking to Krulos.
“I found
out almost immediately it was going to be a challenge,” he says. “It’s a secretive
group that distrusts media. So, I signed up for a prepper forum and attended a survival
camp where I learned to build a fire, filter water and other simple things that
might be helpful if something happens.”
Prepping,
in turns out, is a billion dollar industry and it’s not only isolated rural
dwellers who are buying into the need to prep. Krulos also talked to preppers
in New York City and says that Chicago has a chapter of the Zombie Squad.
“They
don’t really believe in a zombie apocalypse but think if you learn how to
prepare to survive on, then you can survive hurricanes, mass rioting and other
disasters,” he says.
What apocalyptic
scenario should we fear the most? Krulos says it’s climate change. And he also thinks we need to pay attention
to why the Doomsday Clock is now just three seconds before midnight.
“That’s
the closest it’s been since they invented the hydrogen bomb,” he says.
So, what
sorts of items does Krulos think are important when prepping for the apocalypse?
“A good
water filter is a very good thing to have,” he says. “Food, comfortable gear
for hiking, tools, a renewable food supply like extra seeds and books. I’ve
always wanted to read War and Peace, I just haven’t had time.”
Ifyougo:
What: Tea Krulos book signing
When: Friday, June 21 at 7 p.m.
Where: The Book Cellar, 4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL
When Rosemary Gard was growing up in Gary, Indiana, she asked for and was given a typewriter for her 12th birthday—a Remington portable in a gray hard cover carrying case (in case you’re wondering).
“I’ve been writing ever since,” says Gard who graduated from Lew Wallace
High School in 1956 and credits the patience of one of her high school English
teachers with helping her hone her natural enthusiasm for story telling into a
long lasting ability to convey the unique tales of growing up in Northwest
Indiana, a richly diverse region of the ethnicities and race.
Gard has recently completed Stefan’s Destiny, the tenth and final book in her “Destiny” series. Growing up Croatian in an ethnic enclave, Gard’s books explore the lure of our roots and her own unique childhood.
“I was born in the mid-town
section of Gary at 2625 Van Buren Street in an area known as The Patch back
then,” says Gard. “It was a poor neighborhood and some people even had pigs and
chickens. I spent my school years in the Glen Park
But there was a close knit
solidarity one in which, in Gard’s case, people from the country of origin stuck
together in order not to lose their heritage, sometimes to the point where
intermarriage was frowned upon.
“My parents didn’t want me to
marry anyone who wasn’t Croatian,” she recalls, noting that her boyfriend Robert
Gard was English, German, French and Irish and to avoid the romance from
getting more serious, sent her to live with relatives in a small village near
Zagreb in Croatia.
“I had lots of marriage proposals there, but as my cousin told me, it
wasn’t because I was beautiful but because marrying me guaranteed U.S.
citizenship,” laughs Gard.
She lived the peasant life while there—a straw mattress for sleeping,
dirt floors in living quarters and cooking done on a clay stone—and developed a
deep respect for the devotion people had for their family, land and traditions,
but she remained steadfast in her love for her boyfriend back in Gary.
Of course, there’s a story behind their young romance too. She was only
13 when a friend of a friend introduced them.
“But I lied and said I was 16,” she recalls. “When he found out how old I
was, he was ticked. But I was so darn cute, he came back, and we saw each other
from then on.”
After three months in Croatia, she returned home, her parents relented
and the two married in 1957 and have two children.
“He’s still my boyfriend,” she says. “After we married, he got drafted
and went to Italy and I followed him. We lived at the very top of a hill, the
most expensive gown I owned was an Anne Fogarty dress—you’re too young to know
what that is—and we went away for a few days and when I came back, I noticed
the hem of my gown was ripped. I went across the street to my neighbor and said
to her, now the only one who had a key to our place was your housekeeper so she
must be the one who tore my dress. I found out later that the housekeeper was a
prostitute so when people ask, I tell themI didn’t work in Italy, but my dress
did.”
Ironically, the garrulous Gard says she didn’t speak that much to adults
when growing up.
“The community in which I was raised, the young were not encouraged in
conversation,” she says. “I played
puzzles while the adults talked, but I listened. I knew who was having an
affair with whom. Also, when I was young you could take a child into a tavern,
so I grew up in a tavern and you hear a lot there as well.”
“Rosemary is a natural storyteller,” says Carrie Napoleon, managing
director of the Lake Court House Foundation Inc. which was founded in the 1970s
to save the historic Lake County Courthouse, which is on the Register for
National Historic Places, from being demolished and preserve the 141-year-old
building for future generations to enjoy.
“She keeps me spellbound with all
her stories and she has the ability to carry that over to her books. It’s no
wonder people love them so much.”
Napoleon notes that those attending the book launch/fund raiser will also
have the opportunity to view a display of turn-of-the-century Slovak and Region
history by the Lake County Historical Museum, including one-of-a-kind pieces
from Gard herself. During the event, Gard will share some of her personal
experiences of life as a youngster in both Croatia and Gary that helped form
the characters for her series.
Gard tells me she’s taking a break from writing but then in the next
breath, says she’s planning on calling her next book, I Shop in Dead People’s Closets because of her propensity for
sales.
When I tell her, I need to go as I have an appointment, she says she has one
more story to tell. Who can resist?
It turns out there are two stories, one about how she was the Queen on
the Croatia float in the 1956 Gary’s Golden Jubilee Parade and actor Mark
Harmon’s father, Tom, who grew up in Gary and went on to win the Heisman Trophy
when he played for the University of Michigan, was the grand marshal.
The next has to do with running into a GI at a party.
“The guy starts showing me his scars by pulling up his sleeves and shirt,”
she says. “After he left my husband came up to me and said I’m surprised you
didn’t pull down your pants and show him your new hips.”
After reading Martin Walker’s The Body in the Castle Well, the 14th book in the series about Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges, I Googled real estate listings in the Périgord, known for its castles, caves, gastronomy and lush landscape of rolling hills, woods and vineyards. From Walker’s description, this region in southwestern France seems like an ideal place to live even if you have to deal with the type such skullduggery as truffle fraud, archaeological vandalism, arson, drugs and even terrorists Bruno encounters on a regular basis.
“There’
so much inspiration and history here,” says Walker who, with his wife, splits
his time between Washington D.C. and Le Bugue, a small village in the Périgord
where they own a home. The home came about, says Walker who talks like he
writes, with many wonderful asides, when he was waiting in the Oval Office and
received a phone call from his wife.
“She said
I don’t care what you’re doing, get on the next plane and come here, I just
found our house,” he says, noting he explained to her he was meeting with the
president so it might have to wait just a while. Besides that, he didn’t even
know they were buying a house.
Of course,
they did and now live in an old farmhouse dating back to 1698 with several
newer outbuildings, if you consider the 1700s new and in France they do.
Of course,
there are always obstacles even in paradise.
“One of
the challenges for anyone writing crime stories is finding places for bodies,”
says Walker, who speaks French, Russian, English, Arabic, German and a just enough
of other languages to get himself in trouble. “I drive around with an eagle eye
looking for the perfect spot for a body. I was in Limeuil, a lovely village,
and there it was, the castle well.”
So that’s
where the body of Claudia, a young art student ends up, in what first looks
like an accident and turns out to be much more ominous.
“She’s
studying with Pierre de Bourdeille, one of the greatest art experts in the
world, a hero of the French Resistance,” says Walker. “She told Bruno a little
of her concerns about the attributions de Bourdeille made about his paintings
which drove up prices and then she turns up dead.”
Another suspect is a falconer (so we get to learn about the ancient art of hunting with falcons) who met Claudia the day after her got out of prison. As compelling as the mystery is, so is Bruno’s life. He’s a gourmet chef, has his own blog and a cookbook, written by Walker’s wife, which is a best seller in Germany where it’s sold 100,000 copies. But unless you read the language, don’t bother as it’s not published in English though Walker encourages people to call his publisher and demand that it be.
The Bruno
books are quite a segue for the Oxford educated Walker who served as bureau
chief in Moscow and the U.S. and as European Editor for The Guardian, a British
daily newspaper and wrote lengthy tomes (ponderous and boring he says, though
noting they won awards) like The Iraq War and The Makers of the
American Century.
“The 15th is already
done,” he says. “And I’m thinking of the next. They’re fun to write.”
Asked what his favorite is, he
replies, “my favorite is always the latest or the one I’m working on right now.”
Ifyougo:
What: Martin Walker: The Body in the Castle Well
When: Tuesday, June
Where: The Book Stall, 811 Elm St., Winnetka, IL
Cost: Free and open to the public, but The Book Stall asks
that you buy your books from them if you intend on entering the book-signing
queue.
Kate Mulgrew is just finishing lunch when I call at the pre-arranged time and she asks for a moment so she can order coffee. She’s eating and talking because her schedule is so tight it requires serious multi-tasking. Right now, she is juggling filming a new season of Mr. Mercedes and is also on a multi-city book tour to promote her just released book, How to Forget: A Daughter’s Memoir.
It is a book, she tells me, that she
felt compelled to write as it chronicles “the turbulent, tragic and joyful
“time she spent in Iowa with her dying parents.
Knowing that sometimes expressing raw
and painful emotions can be a psychological relief or catharsis, I ask if that
was true for her.
“It was the opposite of that,” says
Mulgrew. “Instead writing took me into deeper waters. But I told myself you
have to do this; you have to write this.”
Those deeper waters were both
emotional and physical as Mulgrew holed up in a friend’s house on Lough Corrib,
which is, she describes as a desolate, deep and col lake near Cornamonai west
Ireland.
“Writing this book was lonely,” she continues after taking a sip of coffee. Since I’m drinking a cup as well, it’s almost like we’re having coffee together. “It took three years to write because I had to keep leaving to film Orange is the New Black.”
Was it necessary to live on Lough
Corrib to write the book, I ask?
“It is the only way to write a book
about them and how much I loved them,” she tells me, in that husky voice I
remember from her playing Captain Kathryn Janeway of “Star Trek: Voyager.”
Embracing the remoteness and isolation
while writing about death, Mulgrew talks about the Ireland’s short winter days.
“The sun is out for just short time,
from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then the darkness is upon us again,” she says. “I shed many tears I would force myself to
write until four and then light the fire and go for a walk or make dinner.”
In the end, it was worth it.
“These were the people who shaped me,”
she says, as she sets her cup down for the last time, a clinking sound on my
end of the phone signaling an end to the interview. “It’s important, that experience
of saying goodbye, to be present with your parents at their mortal illness, to
take the journey with them. We know that the turn in the road to sickness and
then to death is universal. We know that bend in the road does not go into a
flowering meadow, but into a darkening thicket from which no one will ever
return. I’m one of eight children, each one of us has a different story and
each one of us gets to go their own way in telling it. And this was mine and this is how I decided to
tell it.”
While
other boys his age were reading Hardy Boy mysteries and articles about baseball,
Scott Pelley was riding his bike down to the public library in Lubbock, Texas
and checking out books on faraway places.
Pelley, a definite glass half full kind of guy, is thankful he’s been able to make his living for the last four decades covering stories around the globe.
I ask if
more than 40 years of travel has worn him out. But no, Pelley, an award-winning
60 Minutes correspondent, is always ready for the next assignment.
“I’m 61 and
by God, I still enjoy getting on a plane,” says Pelley though he does admit he gets
a little tired of going to the same place over and over. “But I never tire of
going someplace new, whether it’s nice or not.”
So where
hasn’t Pelley been that he’d like to see.
“Anyplace
that doesn’t have a pin stuck in it on my world map,” he says. “I’ve been to
both the Artic and Antarctica numerous times, but I’ve never made it to poles
though I’ve been just a few miles away, so I’d like to get there. And I’ve
never been to Portugal and I’ve heard it’s very pretty.”
Portugal?
From a man who is a multimillion mile flyer and has covered stories in the remote
jungles of Mexico, reported on the genocides in Darfur, was onsite when the
planes hit the World Trade Center and watched first responders’ stream into the
building, many to never come out, hoping to find survivors, He also was on the
ground during the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990 and the 1991 invasion of Iraq
(indeed, he’s seems to have visited Iraq as many times as most people go to the
grocery store) and joined, with his team, the U.S. Special Forces in
Afghanistan. Getting to Portugal, it would seem, would be a piece of cake.
But then
Pelley may be too busy. He’s won 37 Emmys—of course, he says it’s due to the
many wonderful and capable people who back him up and make him look good—and
despite his passion for action, likes to ponder as well.
“I called
my first chapter ‘Gallantry,’” he says about his book. “I was in Paris several
years ago shortly after ISIS’s terrorist
attack and I watched people holding a memorial on the cobblestone streets with
candles in their hands and it struck me that I had seen that same look before,
at the World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City after the bombing of the Murrah
Federal Building. It’s a look I’d seen it again and again throughout my entire
career, people wondering what the meaning of life is. I got to thinking, don’t
ask the meaning of life. Life is asking: ‘What’s the meaning of you?’ And that’s
what I went looking for in my book, people who have discovered how to get
meaning, people who are heroes.”
Maybe, in
a way, Pelley is a hero as well. He reveals in his book how he lost his long
time job as CBS Evening News anchor after complaining too vociferously about
the way men and, especially women were treated at the network. He took his
complaints all the way up to CBS Corporate Chairman Les Moonves, who spent over
an hour listening to Pelley’s concerns. Obviously, hoping to forestall any more
action on Pelley’s part, his contract wasn’t renewed despite his show’s high
ratings. Ironically, Moonves would be fired in turn, because of sexual
harassment allegations.
Losing
his job is okay now, says Pelley because he’s grateful for the direction CBS is
taking, how they cleaned house and are acting with integrity.
Yes, definitely half-full.
“I think
a sense of optimism is important for a reporter,” he says. “That and empathy. If
you have that empathy for that person you have emotional stake in their lives.”
Ifyougo:
What: Join in a conversation, Q&A, and book signing with
Scott Pelley
When: Monday, June 3 at 7 p.m.
Where: Community Christian Church, 1635 Emerson Lane,
Naperville, IL
Cost: Ticket for one
person costs $37.74 w/service fee and includes one copy of the Pelley’s new
book; the ticket package admits two and costs $42.99 w/service fee and includes
on copy of the book. Tickets can be purchased online at brownpapertickets.com/event/4243153
and entitles the holder to
meet and get a photograph with the author and a personalized
signature.
FYI: The event is hosted by Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville, 630-355-2665; andersonsbookshop.com
There was a real sense of relief for Michael Koryta fans when the bestselling author finally killed off the evil Blackwell brothers several novels ago and so it’s with dread to see the son of one of the brothers appears in his latest mystery thriller, If She Wakes. Still a teen but already a perfect sociopath, Dax Blackwell is hunting down a missing cell phone and trying to eliminate anyone who stands in his way. That includes Tara Beckley, who was almost murdered by another competitor for the phone and now is a prisoner of locked-in syndrome, confined to a hospital bed, totally alert but unable to communicate in anyway. If Tara wakes, she can reveal the secrets of the phone. Those trying to protect her without fully understanding what is going on are former race and stunt car driver Abby Kaplan who is now working as an insurance investigator and Tara’s sister Shannon, an attorney who is sure her sister can understand what’s going on while others are urging that life support be turned off.
Michael Koryta took time to chat with Jane Ammeson about his latest book.
JA: How would you summarize If She Wakes for readers?
MK: A hit man, a disgraced stunt driver, and an alert
woman who is believed to be in a coma — and there’s a dog! What more do you
want?
JA: Do the Blackwells scare you as much as they do me?
MK: I
know what it says about me that I’d begun to miss the Blackwells after writing
about them first in Those Who Wish Me
Dead and then again when I was working on the script for that film. It was
while working on the script that I began to think about just how oddly
family-oriented they are for sociopaths. They care about nothing but one
another. The family bond is very deep. This came back to mind a few times, and
I wondered what it would be like to be the son of the LeBron James of contract
killers. What would that kid turn out like? What if he took on the family
business? I decided to try Dax for a chapter and see if I found him
interesting. Once he arrived on scene, he wasn’t leaving.
JA: How did you get up to speed (sorry about the pun)
about the type of driving Abby is capable of?
MK: A
combination of reading, research, and having a lot of experience being a very
bad driver. I totaled my mother’s car on a double-S curve within a few weeks of
getting my license, while testing my Abby-style reflexes. While I advocated
that it was really the car’s fault, and never would have happened in a vehicle
with more horsepower and better handling, no one seemed interested in
supporting me in that.
JA: How did you come up the idea of If She Wakes? And do you plot out
everything meticulously or does the story just flow once you start writing it?
MK: I can’t plot
to save my life. It’s all rewriting for me, getting a draft down and then
seeing the book and going back and revising, revising, revising until it begins
to take coherent shape. As for the idea, I really don’t understand enough at
the start of a book to claim that I ever had the full concept. But the starting
point came from reading a book about locked-in syndrome called Into the Gray Zone by Dr. Adrian Owen,
and in particular reading about testing that was done using a Hitchcock film
and an MRI.
JA: I read that you spend your time between Bloomington,
Indiana and Maine—is each place a different kind of incentive for writing?
Where to set your stories?
MK:
I seem drawn to writing about places farther away from my hometown in
Bloomington, for whatever reasons. The closest I’ve come was West Baden, in So Cold the River. And, of course, the
caves in Lost Words. Maine has
definitely become a place that I enjoy writing about, much as Montana did. I
suspect a difference is that no matter how much time I spend in Maine, I’ll
always have the perspective of being an outsider, or “from away” as
they say up there. I like stories where characters are outsiders, and I love
stories where the natural world can push back on a character’s goals, so Maine
is a very comfortable fit.
Ifyougo:
What: Michael Koryta talk and
book signing
Where: Anderson’s Bookshop, 123
West Jefferson Avenue, Naperville, IL
Shelf Life 