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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!
Buy Links:
The
books in this series are available to read on Kindle Unlimited.
Universal Link
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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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