AUTHOR EDITH MAXWELL ON THE INSPIRATION FOR HER QUAKER MIDWIFE MYSTERIES

The Biddle and Smart Building

In our continuing series on where authors get their ideas, today we welcome six-time Agatha Award nominee Edith Maxwell, author of The Quaker Midwife Mysteries and The Local Foods Mysteries, as well as award-winning short crime fiction, under her own name and The Country Store Mysteries and The Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries as Maddie Day. When she isn’t killing people on the page or wasting time on Facebook, she enjoys cooking and gardening. Learn more about her and her books at her website and the Wicked Authors blog. 

Quaker Midwife Mysteries Origin Story

Why do I write a mystery series set in a late nineteenth-century New England mill town with an independent Quaker midwife in her twenties as amateur sleuth? Let me tell you.

I’ve lived north of Boston in the northeast corner of Massachusetts for thirty years. For all that time I’ve been a member of Amesbury Friends Meeting (Quaker) but lived in other towns and drove to church on Sunday mornings.

In the summer of 2012 we downsized and bought a house in Amesbury. I already had friends here and loved the historic town full of brick mill buildings and a river that runs right through downtown. And now I could walk to Meeting, but I didn’t know much about Amesbury’s history before moving here.

The next spring I read a newspaper article about the Great Fire of 1888 in Amesbury. The town was world-famous at that time for its graceful well-built carriages, and the fire on the night before Good Friday burned down most of the factories on Carriage Hill. The disaster was only saved from being worse by rain that fell during the night. The Biddle and Smart building was one of the few saved, and the rest of the factory owners resolved to rebuild.

After I read that article, I was strolling to our lovely simple Meetinghouse built in 1851 one First Day (that is, Sunday) morning when a short story popped into my head about the Quaker mill girl who solves the mystery of the arson. Historically the Great Fire wasn’t from arson, but it could have been. I wrote that story, and “Breaking the Silence” was published in Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold (Level Best Books, November 2013).

I didn’t want to let the setting and characters go, so I invented the girl’s midwife aunt Rose Carroll, based on my previous experience teaching childbirth education and helping women through labors, both at home and in the hospital. I wrote Delivering the Truth, and sold the series to Midnight Ink. Each of the first three books have been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel, including Turning the Tide this year.

I’m excited Charity's Burden, Quaker Midwife Mystery #4 is out, and I am happy to announce the series is moving over to Beyond the Page Publishing with book five. Look for Judge Thee Not to release this fall! There will be at least two more in the series after that. Note: A revised version of this post appeared on the Short Mystery Fiction Society blog.

Delivering the Truth

A Quaker Midwife Mystery, Book 1

After an 1888 Massachusetts town’s carriage industry is torched and a man is stabbed to death with Quaker midwife Rose Carroll's knitting needle, she is drawn into solving the mystery. A factory-owner's mistress is also murdered, leaving her one-week-old baby without a mother. While struggling with being less than the perfect Friend, Rose draws on her strengths as a counselor and problem solver to bring two murderers to justice.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--AN INTERVIEW WITH GUEST PROTAGONIST PEACE MORROW

Today we sit down for a chat with Peace Morrow, protagonist of the Peace Morrow Novels by author Sandra Carey Cody.

What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?

First, let me tell you that I was adopted. Not a big deal, you say? Actually, it is; it’s an important part of my story. An indomitable Quaker woman found me in the corner of a dusty shed behind a museum and adopted me. She gave me a normal, happy childhood, but that didn’t stop me from looking into the face of every new person I met and wondering if we were related. The Dr. Seuss book “Are You My Mother?” had special meaning for me. Having said that, let me add that, even in my most rebellious moments, I knew I’d hit the jackpot when it came to mothers. When Ms. Cody came into my life, I’d recently graduated from college, had a cute little apartment that I shared with Henry, the world’s trustiest Black Lab, and was working at my dream job in the museum where what little I knew of my life had begun.

What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?

I love new experiences and am open to just about anything.  

What do you like least about yourself?

Well, as you can imagine, the openness I just mentioned sometimes gets me in trouble. It’s kind of a best of traits, worst of traits situation.

What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you?

Working at my first job after graduating from college, she had me stumble over the body of a man who looked so much like me, I knew I’d found my father—the person who could answer the questions I’d been hiding in my heart my whole life. Here was my chance to discover who I was. Trouble was, he was dead, not just dead, but a John Doe—a drifter who wandered into town with no identity. With no clue who he was, how could he help me find out who I am?

Do you argue with your author? If so, what do you argue about?

We had one big argument—and I won! Early in the book, my author had the misguided idea that she could tell my story without letting me find my biological parents. She thought I needed to learn the lesson that it didn’t matter whose DNA I carried, the important thing was what I made of myself. I set her straight on that, insisting that not only did I deserve to know my parentage, so did the readers of my story. I reminded her that characters deserve closure and readers deserve answers.

What is your greatest fear?

That one day I’ll meet one or both of my biological parents and they won’t like me or worse yet, I won’t like them. Maybe they’re serial killers. I saw the play, The Bad Seed, when I was in college. I know the risk I’m taking by pursuing their identity.

What makes you happy?

Imagining myself celebrating holidays with a big, sprawling family—grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins. As an only child, I always wanted more faces around the dinner table.

If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?

Before the homeless man was killed, I had a chance to ask him about himself and to point out how much alike we looked. If only I had, I might have saved myself a lot of heartache—and maybe his life.

Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?

That has to be my boss at the museum where I work. She’s stuffy and wants to chase away a scruffy teenager who hangs around the museum. She cares far too much about the museum’s image and not enough about reaching out to a lonely kid.

Of the other characters in your book, which one would you love to trade places with? Why?

Believe it or not, Caroline Morrow, my adoptive mother. If ever there was a person who knows who she is, it’s my mom. She’s fearless, a Quaker, described by her peers as the most militant pacifist on the planet. I’d love to possess her confidence and certainty.

Tell us a little something about your author. Where can readers find her website/blog?

My author, Sandra Carey Cody (Sandy) also writes the Jennie Connors mystery series. Her website is http://www.sandracareycody.com and she blogs at a couple of places: http://www.birthofanovel.wordpress.com and http://www.classicandcozybooks.blogspot.com

What's next for you?

It’s not a spoiler to tell you that by the end of Love and Not Destroy, I know the story of my birth and identify of my biological parents. In the next book, An Uncertain Path, I meet a cousin and my grandparents, part of that sprawling family I’ve always dreamed about. It turns out to be a mixed blessing, but aren’t we always surprised by what happens when a dream comes true?

Love and Not Destroy

A baby is found in a basket on the grounds of a small-town museum during their annual Folk Festival.  Twenty-two years later, the body of a homeless man is discovered in the exactly same spot with an antique scalpel in his chest. Peace Morrow, the foundling, now an adult working at the museum, is haunted by the coincidence.  As she tries to reconstruct the victim's history, his story becomes entangled with her own search for family roots – a search no one wants her to pursue. Peace's only allies are a fifteen-year old misfit as desperate to lose his family as Peace is to find here, and Henry, the world's trustiest Black Lab. In addition to being a mystery, this novel explores the ways in which the present is shaped and haunted by the past.

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AN INTERVIEW WITH EDITH MAXWELL'S MIDWIFE SLEUTH ROSE CARROLL

Today we’re joined by Rose Carroll, from author Edith Maxwell’s Quaker Midwife Mystery series.

What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?

I was happily working as a midwife, with murder nowhere in sight.

What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?

I like that I’m independent, in my midwifery and my investigations. It’s not common for a young woman, but being a Quaker gives me more freedom from society’s strictures.

What do you like least about yourself?

I experienced an emotional trauma when I was younger that still haunts me, and I find it hard to completely recover from it.

What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you?

She had me on a wild horseback ride to the beach, but that’s not too strange. I suppose it was when I was abducted by a villain. After some time I managed to both overpower him and help a baby be born. Not the usual birthing scene!

Do you argue with your author? If so, what do you argue about?

She puts me in harm’s way, and I don’t like it. In the new story, I walk to help a birthing client I’ve never met before – in a snowstorm – and end up with a concussed head by way of thanks.

What is your greatest fear?

That something will happen to my beloved family or my darling betrothed, David Dodge.

What makes you happy?

Witnessing God’s miracle of a healthy baby born to a healthy mother always makes me happy. A successful birth never fails to bring joy to my heart.

If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?

See my answer about the head injury! Good heavens, did I need that?

Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?

I’m afraid David’s mother Clarinda Dodge and I don’t see eye to eye. She doesn’t approve of us courting and is most unhappy about the prospect that we might marry. David blessedly doesn’t let her sway him, and his father is also fond of me.

Of the other characters in your book, which one would you love to trade places with? Why?

I confess to a bit of envy about my friend Bertie Winslow’s carefree, eccentric nature, which she somehow combines with a professional position of some influence. She rides her horse astride, she isn’t concerned with gossip about her living arrangements with her dear Sophie, and she runs the Amesbury post office with a firm and cheerful hand.

Tell us a little something about your author. Where can readers find her website/blog?

Edith also writes two mystery series set in thy modern times, as well as short crime fiction. Our second tale, Called to Justice, is nominated this year for an Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel. Edith is president of a group called Sisters in Crime New England and is, like me, a member of the Religious Society of Friends. She lives with her man and two elderly cats right here in Amesbury, Massachusetts – in the same house where I reside! All of her writing is well represented at her website, and Dear Reader, she hopes thee might sign up for her quarterly newsletter there.

What's next for you?

My next story is Charity’s Trouble, which will be available to read a year from now. In it a mother of six dies from an apparent miscarriage, but Rose discovers her death was caused by something much more evil.

I believe Edith will use the fifth book in the series (to appear in 2020) to describe a case I worked on with Jeanne, a blind woman I cared for in her pregnancy. Humans can be so stupid – many believe she has a lack of intelligence simply because she cannot see. But such beliefs let her be privy – and therefore me, as well – to hearing a great many secrets. We found the killer, delivered her baby, and have remained fast friends.

Turning the Tide

During Presidential election week in 1888, the Woman Suffrage Association plans a demonstration and Quaker midwife Rose Carroll joins the protest. When she finds a prominent suffragist dead the next morning, Rose must deliver more than babies. Her own life is repeatedly threatened as she sorts out killer from innocent.

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