They were both beauties, inside and out. Aunt Ginny had a compelling low-pitched Tallulah Bankhead voice and was a great success in community theater. On a family trip, she showed up in a backless green-silk evening gown, and let’s just say my stylish younger sister and I were no match for Aunt Ginny’s razzle-dazzle. My mother, Vauneta, equally beautiful, captivated her patients. One of our family treasures is a dramatic pencil sketch of our mom sitting on an unnamed beach. She had taken a group of recovering patients there, and one, especially smitten, had turned his ardor into art. Another had carved a jewelry box for her and lined it with soft red cloth, and today, that box sits on my dresser. My father worshipped her, and even in her late seventies — after forty-plus years of a storybook marriage — he would sigh and fret that someone might take her away from him. In a sense, my parents’ marriage inspired this book. I’ve always been interested in unlikely couples. My mother was a Southern Baptist farmer’s daughter from Lambert, Mississippi. My father, five years her junior, was the son of a Romanian Orthodox Jew and was raised in Providence, Rhode Island. Love is crazy, isn’t it? And sometimes the crazy works out.
They are all gone now — my father, who introduced me to Dashiell Hammett’s mysteries, my beautiful mother, Aunt Ginny, and her husband, Mac, along with all the other Cardwell siblings.
I do have to give a shout-out to my late Uncle Ed, the youngest Cardwell sib and, like his fictional counterpoint, Beau, the family genealogist. Uncle Ed was an example of the complexity of the South. He attended the University of Mississippi; a few years later, as a member of the National Guard, he was back on campus to protect James Meredith and the other African-American students gutsy enough to start integrating Ole Miss.
And for those of you fortunate enough to have enjoyed Southern cuisine, you should know that Uncle Ed’s widow, our Aunt Florice, is a consummate hostess with an abundant pantry, great skills, and a generous heart. I was channeling Florice when I created Phoebe.
Thanks have to go out to the Spy Museum in Washington, DC. Its exhibition on women spies, particularly in the Civil War, set me on this journey. Of course, women spies have shown up in virtually every American era since the Revolutionary War. However, the Civil War generated a remarkable collection of women who were spies for the Union and the Confederacy. The audacity of these women is remarkable, given that they plied their trade in times when it took very little to bring ruin to a woman’s name.
Many thanks to my cousins, particularly Janie Cardwell, Diane McDuff Johnson, and Anne Cole Billings, all of whom helped me navigate Oxford’s history, charms, traditions, and food. My cousin Diane is a wonderful discovery partner, whether roaming around Faulkner’s Rowan Oaks or filling me in on the latest news about the cousins. Anne’s lovely daughter, Mimi, is now at Ole Miss, so the circle continues unbroken.
My support posse remains steadfast. Excellent readers and writers cheered me on: Ann Appert, Kathy Bowles, Betsy Brown and Lulu Brown, Caity Burrows, Fred D’Orazio and Evan Young, Margret Elson, Scott Hafner and Bill Glenn, Kathy Halland, Maria Hjelm, Wendy Lichtman, Karen Mulvaney, Phyllis Peacock, Ben and Kate Peterson, Michele Siegfried, and the late Steve Tollefson, who even in the hereafter still hopes I’ll write — or at least read — an epic Norwegian saga. My high school bestie, Emily Stevens, is always thinking of new readers who must meet Maggie. And I confess to my other high school pal, Richard Wells, that when I write I am trying hard not to disappoint him. And though his career has been in television, those of us who admire him know that he is the real deal in writing. I have been blessed by knowing one of the world’s most elegant curators of good reading, Delwin Rimbey. Special thanks to Nancy Buck and Laurene Mullen, who not only read but also made suggestions so useful that I expect them to send me an invoice any day now. Gratitude to Sydney Kapchan, who connected me with Larry Bruiser, who introduced me to Louisa May Alcott’s first-person accounts of nursing in the Union Hospital at Georgetown. And kudos to my Stanford pals, who are legion and loyal: the Grillos, the Hothans, the Heywoods, Paula Fitzgerald and Chris Nielsen, Judy Heller, Lisa Lapin, Edie Barry, Carol Sisk, Duncan Beardsley, and many more.
Fellow mystery writers have been generous: Bob Dugoni, Jonnie Jacobs, Jon Jefferson, Susan Shea, Sheldon Siegel, Jackie Winspear, and Naomi Hirahara in particular. Plus, Naomi introduced me to two people whose DNA influences every cool mystery gathering known to humankind: Toby and Bill Gottfried.
It’s a lucky girl who benefits from the loyalty of two book clubs. The first is my San Francisco Bay Area group: Johanna Clark, Janis Medina, Pam Miller, and Ellen Zucker; the second is my beloved Portland gang: Susan Aldrich, Peggy Almon, Karen Halloran, Joni Hartmann, Susan Hartnett, Laurene Mullen, Nanwei Su, Sandra Tetzloff, and Joyce Wilson. Always and forever, I’m indebted to my friend and designer extraordinaire, Jacqueline Jones (www.jacquelinejonesdesign), who generously supports Maggie’s misadventures in every way, including the www.lindaleepeterson.com website. And I’m grateful to my business partner, David Skolnick, who made me get serious about mystery writing by sending me to the Book Passage mystery writers’ conference years ago.
This book would not have happened without the encouragement, enthusiasm, and, when needed, bullying of Tom Clarke. When I was maundering on about how on earth I could pick up the pace and actually complete the book in about a year, Tom came up with a brutal — but very effective — solution. “Two chapters every two weeks,” he said. “Send them to me.” He had structured a wickedly successful set of threats so that I did, in fact, meet almost all my deadlines. Tom and his (much kinder) wife, Pat, kept me on track. I can’t thank you both enough!
Lucky stars aligned many years ago when Amy Rennert agreed to be my agent. Her savvy, enthusiasm, and advocacy are something to behold, plus there’s the extra bonus of volunteer counsel from Louise Kollenbaum, who knows what does or doesn’t make a cover work.
My friends at Prospect Park Books are champions: responsive, creative, helpful at every stage, and just plain fun to be with. Thank you Colleen Dunn Bates and Patty O’Sullivan for everything. And a great big thanks to Caitlin Ek, who knows her way around bookstores.
Here’s the criteria for being in our family: You’ve got to like books, theater, music, and movies; you’ve got to be able to cook (or at least be an appreciative eater); and you’ve got to run a mutual support operation. I am eternally grateful to my Peterson, Borden, and Sable in-laws for reading — and forgiving — Maggie. I am grateful to the small but mighty Winthrop clan, comprising my brother, Larry, sister-in-law, Pat, and my sister, Laurie. They are all fine readers and writers and even finer wielders of pom-poms — from Phoenix to Geneva, they cheer for Maggie and me. Thanks aren’t enough.
My husband, Ken, says he often pictures our house, all three stories of it, being filled with words created by the three resident writers, circling up the stairs, dancing, searching for a fellow adjective or adverb. I guess they must float up, up into the air and escape out into the Portland sky, whether it’s bright blue or leaden gray. I am so happy to be surrounded by great readers (Ken and our daughter-in-law, Kate) and writers (Ken, Kate, and, most of all, our son, Ben). Grandson Will, age nine, is so comfortable with our lingua franca that, at age seven, he cheerfully dispossessed his father of the microphone at a wedding to deliver an elegant and charming toast to the bride.
Of course, all this bibliophilia was launched by my parents. One of our favorite photographs of them was taken on the US Army hospital ship Charles A. Stafford at the end of the war. Both had some off-duty time, and a friend photographed them lounging on a blanket, nestled close to each other on what appeared to be a very hard, unforgiving deck. Both were grinning and just looking up from — what else? — their books.
Finally, writing about the Civil War is not for the faint of heart. The world is full of Civil War experts, amateur and professional, and only a fool would attempt to write about the era without being a serious scholar. In that equation, I am the fool, not the serious scholar. But I ha
ve tried to remain faithful to what we know of the times, the battles, and the unexpected heroes and heroines.
The sources that follow were invaluable to this rank amateur:
The Walt Whitman Quarterly, various issues
Stealing Secrets: How a Few Daring Women Deceived Generals, Impacted Battles, and Altered the Course of the Civil War, H. Donald Winkler, Cumberland House, 2010
Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, Kate Cumming, edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell, Louisiana State University Press, 1959
Walt Whitman’s America, David S. Reynolds, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995
Walt Whitman: A Life, Justin Kaplan, Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1980
Hospital Sketches, Louisa May Alcott, James Redpath, 1863.
The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War, Margaret E. Wagner, Little Brown and Co., 2011
Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi, Dean Faulkner Wells, Crown, 2011
The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara, Crown, 1993
“What to Bring to a War: A Packing List for WWII Army Nurses List,” provided by Patricia Britton, courtesy of her mother, Laura Rodriguez, who served from 1944–46 in the European theater, published by the Vault, Slate’s history blog
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda Lee Peterson is the author of two previous Maggie Fiori mysteries, Edited to Death and The Devil’s Interval, as well as several nonfiction books, including The Stanford Century, On Flowers (Chronicle), and Linens and Candles (Harper Collins). She is also one of the founding partners of Peterson Skolnick & Dodge, a marketing communications firm that serves business, arts and culture, environmental, higher education, and health care clients around the United States. A long-time San Franciscan and an alumna of Stanford University, Peterson now lives in Portland, Oregon. Learn more at www.lindaleepeterson.com.
The Spy on the Tennessee Walker Page 18