Spotlight on Trish MacEnulty, author of The Whispering Women (Delafield & Malloy Investigations Series)

 

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“Richly drawn characters, the vibrant historical setting, and a suspenseful mystery create a strong current that pulls readers into this delightful novel. But it's the women's issues—as relevant today as they were in the early 1900s—that will linger long after the last page."

-- Donna S. Meredith, The Southern Literary Review

Can two women get the lowdown on high society?

“Two powerless young women must navigate a soul-crushing class system and find the levers of power they wield when they combine their strengths. These women may have been taught to whisper, but when their time comes, they will roar.”

– 5 Star Amazon Review

Louisa Delafield and Ellen Malloy didn’t ask to be thrown together to bring the truth to light. But after Ellen witnesses the death of a fellow servant during an illegal abortion, Louisa, a society columnist, vows to help her find the truth and turn her journalistic talent to a greater purpose.

Together, these unlikely allies battle to get the truth out, and to avenge the wrongful death of a friend.

What will our heroes do when their closest allies and those they trust turn out to be the very forces working to keep their story in the dark? They’ll face an abortionist, a sex trafficking ring, and a corrupt system determined to keep the truth at bay.

“If you like historical fiction and if you like mysteries, this one is for you!”

– 5 Star Amazon Review

Was change possible in 1913?

To find out, read THE WHISPERING WOMEN today!

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 The books in this series are available to read on Kindle Unlimited.

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 FUN FACTS

 One inspiration for my series about a society writer turned investigative reporter is my great-grandmother on my mother’s side. I keep a picture of her on the bookshelf by my desk. In it, she wears a black hat topped with some sort of elaborate lace and flower adornment and sits in front of a typewriter. Her husband ran off and literally joined the circus. To support her only son, she worked as a society writer. According to family documents, “After her divorce in 1900, Mary Page Field worked as a local newspaper reporter and was Probation Officer for the Town of West Haven.”

 

My grandparents on my father’s side also inspired me to write about New York’s stratified society. They had a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce (my grandfather never did learn how to drive), an apartment in Central Park, and a mansion on Long Island, where the gardener and his wife had their own house. My grandmother’s idea of gardening was to point out which roses the gardener should clip for her. I asked my mother once if they would have been part of Edith Wharton’s set (whose books I re-read religiously), and she shook her head emphatically. My grandparents would have been considered “new money,” and since my grandfather was an Irish immigrant who started out as an office boy and whose father was a street sweeper(!), they would have been eschewed by New York society. I don’t suppose it mattered to them. According to my mother, they “lived at the top of their income,” but when my grandmother was diagnosed with a debilitating illness, whatever money they had left after the depression went to keep her alive. Their fortune was gone by the time they died. I never got to meet them. The characters, Katherine and John Murphy, are based on these grandparents.

 Upper class slumming! One of the things that young members of society did in the late 1800s and early 1900s was go “slumming.” A lot of my research came from Herbert Asbury’s brilliant book “Gangs of New York.” Most of the stories we hear about gang activity take place in the late 1800s, but gangs continued to be active in the city into the early 20th Century. Some of the top men in these gangs owned fashionable gambling houses where the wealthy would gamble and rub elbows with murderers and their minions. One of my characters in The Whispering Women goes “slumming” and ultimately has an affair with Owney Madden (a real figure who became especially powerful during Prohibition). Slumming was a way for the upper classes, who were increasingly isolated from “real” people, to see how the other half lived. A large part of their motivation was simply entertainment at the expense of poor, disadvantaged people. However, the practice did have at least some social benefit, according to author and professor Chad Heap as described in a 2009 article in The New York Times: “As odd as this voyeuristic practice may appear now, Professor Heap argues that slumming actually promoted social mixing and reshaped the sexual and racial landscape in what had become an increasingly stratified society.”

The Alligator Farm! I loved going to the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine when I was a kid. In the second book in my series, The Burning Bride, Louisa Delafield goes to St. Augustine to cover a wedding. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the Alligator Farm had been operating since 1893! So it was the perfect place for Louisa and friends to visit in 1914 and see the same sorts of shows I saw as a kid. Here’s an excerpt: “Once they reached the Alligator Farm, they walked around low-walled pens, filled with fat, gray monsters that lay unmoving or lumbered about on their small legs. There were ponds in each of the pens. The foursome stopped at a large concrete pen with almost a dozen of the prehistoric amphibians. Louisa shuddered looking at creatures. One of them was an albino alligator with horrid white, leathery skin.”

 

 The third book in my series, Secrets and Spies, takes place in 1915. Some terrible tragedies happened that year, including the sinking of The Lusitania by a German U-boat. But there was a particularly happy event as well — a filly won The Kentucky Derby! When the filly was born in 1912, her owner Harry Payne Whitney (husband of Gertrude Vanderbilt) was disappointed. Her parentage was prestigious — sired by Broomstick out of the mare, Jersey Lightning. But Whitney didn’t hold high hopes for her since she wasn’t male, so he named her “Regret.” Then came the Saratoga Special in 1914, and she defeated her number one rival, Pebbles — a colt — and barely broke a sweat. In 1915 the new owner of Churchill Downs wanted to put his little regional race on America’s map. He believed the filly would bring the kind of fame needed to make the Kentucky Derby a household name. That year at Churchill Downs, the once-unwanted filly turned Whitney’s regret into a cause for celebration as she became the first filly ever to win the Kentucky Derby. Beating out her fifteen male competitors, Regret made women and girls around the country proud. A record crowd came to watch the horse — a sleek beauty with a white blaze down her face — take the title of turf queen. The crowd leaped to their feet when Regret snatched the bit and won the race by two lengths.

 

Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain 

 

Trish MacEnulty

Trish MacEnulty is a bestselling novelist. In addition to her historical fiction, she has published novels, a short story collection, and a memoir. A former Professor of English, she currently lives in Florida with her husband, two dogs, and one cat. She writes book reviews and feature articles for the Historical Novel Review. She loves reading, writing, walking with her dogs, streaming historical series, cooking, and dancing.

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