I spent most of my vacation working on edits for the next Will Rees: Murder, Sweet Murder.
It is a little amusing to be working so hard on the next in the series when Murder on Principle will not be published until August 3rd.
In this book, Rees and Lydia journey to Boston to investigate an accusation leveled against Lydia’s father. I wrote this one at the request of readers who wanted to know more about Lydia’s past.
I am so excited to present the cover of Murder, Sweet Murder. No publication date yet.
I have posted a giveaway on Goodreads for Death in the Great Dismal.
Rees and Lydia travel to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia to rescue their friend Ruth, a fugitive who has fled to the swamp and the protection of a village of maroons. As soon as Rees and Lydia arrive, one of the members of the village is found murdered. Rees and Lydia, as well as Ruth’s husband Tobias, are immediately suspect. To clear their names, and to leave the swamp for home, Rees investigates.
The new Will Rees, Murder on Principle
The owner of the people Rees and Lydia have escorted to safety in Maine arrives to recover the fugitives. When he is murdered, his sister and a number of slave takers arrive. Rees faces an ethical dilemma. Does he investigate and identify the murderer – who might have had very good reasons to kill the slave owner? Or does he let the murderer go free?
Murder on Principle will be released on August 3. A giveaway will be posted for the new book in July.
Read Death in the Great Dismal to prepare for Murder on Principle.
I associated the Fugitive Slave Law with the Civil War. The truth is, however, the first iteration of the law was signed into effect in 1793, long before I would have guessed. It is important to remember that many of the founding fathers, including George Washington, were slave owners.
In Death in the Great Dismal,
when Rees and Lydia rescue their friends Tobias and Ruth, they were breaking the law. Although both Tobias and Ruth had both been born free in Maine, they were abducted and sold into slavery. (The slave takers frequently took any person of color, born free or not, for sale in the South. Occasionally, white children were stolen as well.)
Not only were escaped people subject to recapture, anyone who obstructed the slave takers were considered in violation of the law. Moreover, any child born to an enslaved mother was also considered to be enslaved. The prevailing custom was one drop of black blood meant that person was considered black, no matter how light-skinned. Rees and Lydia, therefore, could have been in serious trouble if they had been caught.
The full text of the Act is available from the Library of Congress (and online) in the Annals of Congress of the 2ndCongress, 2nd Session, during which the proceedings and debates took place from November 5, 1792 to March 2, 1793.
The appropriate sections are 3 and 4.
By the end of the American Revolution all of the Northern states had abolished slavery or made provision to do so. (The United States abolished the slave trade in 1808.) However, fugitives could and were returned to the Southern states per the Fugitive Slave Act by men whose profession, if you will, was capturing escapees.
This law was further strengthened in 1850 at the request of the slave states. One of the elements most annoying to Northerners was the three-fifths rule that counted every five slaves as three people and therefore gave the slave states much more representation in Congress. Although there were abolitionists prior to 1850, the revised law caused a tremendous increase in people who identified as anti-slavery.
The term Underground Railroad did not come into common use until the construction of actual railroads became widespread. An abolitionist newspaper published a cartoon in 1844 that pictured a rail car packed with fugitives heading for Canada. Use of ‘conductor’ and other railroad terms came into broader use after the 1850 law.
In Death in the Great Dismal, one of my primary characters (Cinte) makes and plays and early form of the banjo. (The modern name; it had many others.)
The banjo came to America with the enslaved peoples, some scholars think by way of the Caribbean and the slaves imported by the Portuguese. In any event, there are over 60 similar plucked instruments, including the akonting, the ngoni, and the xalam, played in West Africa that bear some resemblance to the banjo. Early, African- influenced banjos, had a calabash or gourd body covered with hide and a long wooden stick neck, Usually the banjos had three strings with a shorter, drone string.
The earliest mention in the American Colonies occurred in the 17th century. The first known picture of a man playing a banjo-like instrument (The Old Plantation, circa 1785-1795) shows a four stringed instrument as described above. Banjo-playing was perpetuated in the plantations and the slave-labor camps as I describe in my mystery.
The banjo in its modern form is a melding of the old form with European influences, a flat fingerboard and tuning pegs. The pictures show both fretted and unfretted varieties. During the 1830 and 1840s, playing the banjo spread beyond the enslaved to the enslavers, Minstrels shows featuring the banjos became popular. After the Civil War, the banjos spread to drawing rooms and other venues.
The banjo was re-popularized once again during the folk revival by such performers as Pete Seeger.
American Music owes a huge debt to the men and women brought here so unwillingly and would be a lot less rich without these influences.
During the course of the Will Rees mysteries, midwives have made appearances in several books. Lydia herself has had occasion to require the services of a midwife and (spoiler alert) will need her again.
Midwives have a long history. There are references to midwives in Ancient Greek and Roman texts as well as in the Bible.
In the seventeenth century, however, the reliance on midwives began to diminish. Male doctors began to claim they were the proper individuals to help women deliver their babies. The men were educated while the women were ignorant. (And that was the kindest insult. They were also accused of being lazy, dirty and drunk.)
In A Midwife’s Tale; the Life of Martha Ballard, 1785 – 1812, edited by Laura Thatcher Ulrich, the midwife’s perception was much different. Most of these women had borne children themselves (although not all) and they were very experiences. Usually a younger woman would shadow an older midwife (it was not always a formal apprenticeship) to learn the necessary skills.
The male doctors, although they believed themselves far better at this, did not have the years of practice. In the above autobiography, there is a harrowing scene in which the male doctor takes the baby in a breech birth out in pieces. He had not learned to massage the mothers abdomen to turn the baby for the birth
The male doctors were also guilty of spreading puerperal fever. They would not wash their hands after dissecting corpses, going immediately to deliver babies. This has been well documented.
The account by Martha Ballard illustrates both the difficulties and the rewards of this profession. She leaves home at all hours and during all weathers to deliver babies. But she is far better paid for her skills than she would have been at any other type of ‘women’s work’,
It was her proud claim that, during all her years of practice, she lost only three babies.
When Rees and Lydia accompany their friend Tobias to the Great Dismal Swamp to rescue his wife, they do so as much to mend their own relationship as to help a friend. (Marriage is challenging and Will and Rees’s relationship was tested in A Circle of Dead Girls.)
The swamp proves to be a more challenging environment, and the community in which Ruth has taken refuge, more exotic than they could ever have guessed.
From the 1700s right up to the Civil War, fugitives from the neighboring plantations fled into the swamp to escape bondage. The swamp, which was more than a million acres at that time, (estimates range from one million to three million acres) was and is still a harsh environment. The Great Dismal has shrunk to 112 thousand acres. A Wildlife Sanctuary, it is home to deer, a large population of black bears, bobcats, more than 200 species of birds and many insects. (Insect repellent is a must.) It is a peat bog; items dropped on the thick water-soaked peat can disappear without a trace in a manner of minutes.
I have had questions about why Rees doesn’t become a constable or a law enforcement officer himself. Well, At that time, there were few police forces. Boston was one of the first to adopt a police force and that was not until 1837.
Prior to that, the law enforcement structure was a hodgepodge of constables, sheriffs , night watchmen and justices of the peace. As the populations increased, this system was strained until it did not work anymore. Moreover, although they were paid, it was more of a stipend than a salary. All officers had to have another profession that put food on the table. In my series, Rouge runs a tavern.
Other attempts as establishing a police force were tried. The wealthy usually hired their own force to protect themselves and their possessions. A system that paid the men with rewards was also tried. But abuse was rampant. Innocent men were hanged for crimes so the ‘detective’ could collect the reward.
London was the first city to set up a trained, professional force: the Metropolitan Police. As mentioned, that was 1837. So, even if Rees wished to become a full time law enforcement officer, there was no avenue for him to do so.
Very excited to announce that the Suffolk Mystery Convention will be held on March 6. I will send along information in a week or so.
I will be discussing my new Novel Death in the Great Dismal.
It is an appropriate choice since Suffolk is the town nearest the swamp.
It is an amazing experience to go from the streets of Suffolk and the small peanut farms nearby to the alien environment of the swamp. It is also very buggy!
So excited to reveal the cover for my new Will Rees mystery: Murder on Principle. I am not sure when it will be released. Death in the Great Dismal will be available Jan 5, 2021.
I am guessing sometime this summer. Stay tuned for more information!
I am so excited to announce a giveaway for my new book: Death in the Great Dismal. Will and Lydia travel south, to the Great Dismal swamp, They have been asked to rescue Ruth, a woman taken from Maine and sold down south. She has escaped to a village in the heart of the swamp and is living there with other fugitives.
Of course, Will and Lydia are in the village no more than a few days when the first murder occurs.
