Book recommendations Spring 2020

Here's the latest installment of my periodic (but maybe not reliably scheduled) twice-yearly book recommendations list. I'm thrilled to share these titles, and hope they bring joy in the midst of stay-at-home reading time!

I'm going to list them in alphabetical order by author:

Lian Dolan's The Sweeney Sisters:
This book is near and dear to my heart for many reasons. The author is a total sweetheart, and I was a developmental editor for this book when Lian was drafting it. It's a book about sisters; Lian has four; I have three. It's absolutely beautifully written, and even if you're not a sister, you will find this riveting. The elevator pitch: you learn after your father passes that your next door neighbor is actually your "sister from another plot-twister!" (that could be a thing, right?) My favorite story about this book is that my eldest sister texted me that she was reading a book about sisters that she wanted me to read because it was so good--and then she finished it and saw my name in the acknowledgments. Small world! Plus: this is honestly one of the best covers I've seen.

Gini Grossenbacher's Madam of the Silk:
This is the second in Gini's series about madams (yes, the prostitutional kind!) I attended Gini's book launch and it was a really fun and informative event. I haven't yet read this, but I know it'll be a thoughtful read, based on all the research she talked about at the launch. The elevator pitch: it's about real-life historical San Francisco madam Ah Toy. Gini and I belong to the same Historical Novels Society group, and she is always fun to catch up with!

Anara Guard's Hand on My Heart:
This is a poetry collection by another friend IRL. And speaking of sisters, she did a book tour before the pandemic with her sister, who had also brought out a book. Very sweet to think of doing that with a sister. The poems in this collection are strong and remind me of how much I love poetry. Anara's also a great fiction writer. Watch for more from her!

Sands Halls's Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology:
This is a memoir that caught my eye because Sands was recommended to me and the other directors of the Gold Rush Writers Conference as a possible presenter (and yes: she will be one of our headliners at the conference, rescheduled from right now to October 2-4. It's Saturday, May 2, as I type this in the evening: we would be eating dinner and literally listening to her keynote THIS VERY MINUTE. Wild!) In other small-world wonderfulnesses, soon after we scheduled her, she and I were both presenters at the Sierra Writers Conference which took place in January before all the madness descended, and so we got to meet in person and attend each other's presentations. Her book is so well written and disturbing. The elevator pitch: an earnest, smart young woman falls into and out of the grip of Scientology, Sands's own story.

Greer McAllister's Woman 99:
I don't know Greer in real life, but we've had some great interactions online, and when she launched this book, she did a wonderful series of blog postings with 99 other authors invited to recommend another woman's book. How cool is that?! It was an ambitious project with the hashtag #read99women. She kindly hosted me for one of those. I'm a 99 woman! Click through to see what I recommended (and then come back). I really loved Greer's book The Magician's Lie, and was thrilled to jump into Woman 99. The elevator pitch: a woman gets herself committed to an insane asylum to rescue her sister there.

Anna-Marie McLemore's Dark and Deepest Red:
Anna-Marie is the queen/king/mermaid/merlad of brooding magical realism, and you will love their latest, which is about the real-life "dancing plague" of medieval Strasburg. An amazing person in real life, Anna-Marie and I are both members of the aforementioned Historical Novels Society group (as is the next author in this list) and I was so happy to attend their launch at a local bookstore seemingly just moments before the shelter in place mandate was announced. I'm also proud I got to interview them for this Washington Post article about how the pronoun "they" will have the same staying power as the similarly originally-conflicted title Ms. Elevator pitch: Dark and Deepest Red is also a sideways retelling of the Brothers Grimm "The Shoes that were Danced to Pieces" or "The Twelve Dancing Princesses." Don't miss this beautiful novel!

Gina Mulligan's Remember the Ladies:
Gina's novel was traditionally published in hard cover by Five Star and she recently got the rights back and released an ebook version. This is a fantastic look at the fight for suffrage, which hello!, this year is the centennial of. Can you believe U.S. woman have only been voting for 100 years? (Well, in places like California and a few other states, suffrage passed earlier: 1911 here). Elevator pitch: this is the novel to read to get a good look at what it was like to lobby for suffrage. And plus: Gina in real life is a true and genuine friend. Check out her other novel From Across the Room as well (same situation with getting rights back and releasing an ebook), an epistolary masterpiece with a total kicker of an O'Henry at the end.

Rebecca Pittman's The History and Haunting of Lizzie Borden:
Rebecca is a devoted researcher of paranormal spots, and her books sell incredibly well. I was so excited to read this book about Lizzie Borden, especially since I know she found out a shocking new theory about who might've been there that fateful day of August 4, 1892. Elevator pitch: a thorough and innovative look at a historical double-murder case that continues to haunt us today. Rebecca and I planned to put our heads together on a book project just before Coronavirus came to town, and I hope that when the world is back to normal we can resume! In the meantime, check out her oeuvre, and most especially this book! I've got just a tiny hint: let's play balllllll.

Lisa Redfern's Phases of Gage:
I couldn't help but be drawn to this story. Elevator pitch: a novelization of the true-life morbid case of Phineas P. Gage, a medical curiosity in the 1800s whose skull was punctured by a 13 pound iron rod...he continued to live and be studied by neurologists. Today his skull resides in a Harvard museum. Lisa's a kindred spirit and I know you'll enjoy this look at a very strange life.

Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl's Rad American History A-Z:
Yes yes yes yes yes, you need this book, and you need to buy copies for the young readers in your life too! Elevator pitch: this is the latest in a series of books celebrating rad women, with Kate's great text and Miriam's amazing illustrations. I did a minor bit of invited brainstorming along with others, and am proud as PUNCH to be in the acknowledgements because of that. Seriously, buy this book and others in the series both for yourself, and as gifts for the young people in your lives. Get the word out about the powerful accomplishments of rad women! I couldn't love these books more. They are the equivalent of those old wonderful orange biographies of women that some readers will remember from their childhoods.

Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation:
Exactly my kind of book. That is all.

Next in line to be purchased:

• Ed Skoog's poetry volume Travelers Leaving for the City, 
• Meredith Arthur's Get Out of My Head: Inspiration for Overthinkers in an Anxious World, and 
• Nanea Hoffman's The Anxiety Blob: Comfort and Encouragement Journal. 

You'll see these on the list in Fall!
. . . . .

Lizzie Borden's crime scene photo has a ghost in the wallpaper

A "Brigadoon" photo shoot with the book in today's fog

I'll never forget the first time I looked at the crime scene photos for
the Lizzie Borden case. This predated the Internet and these kinds of
things were not a mere keystroke away. You would've had to have visited a
library or bookstore to see these images.

In fact, I had visited my job. :)

I worked in a law firm at the time, and my boss had a long row of maroon
volumes with gold lettering, the Notable Trials Library. These books are
stunning, with true gold leaf on the page edges, handsome paisley
endpapers, even a little red satin ribbon that operates as a built-in
bookmark. One of these was a reprint of TRIAL OF LIZZIE BORDEN, edited,
with a history of the case, by Edmund Pearson. Pearson dedicated the book,
originally published in 1937, to Hosea Knowlton, the prosecutor in the
case who failed to get Lizzie convicted.

I'm of course wishing I could go back in time and see what other cases
were immortalized in this way--it could keep me busy as a writer for a
long time.

Although the book comes with a handsome built-in bookmark, you can
see I needed to avail myself of more!

Anyway, the crime scene photos were so murky and badly lit that you had to
study them to really see what you were looking at. I'm going to talk today
about the photo of Mr. Borden in particular, for one crazy reason. There's
a gentleman standing in the corner looking over at Mr. Borden's prone body
on the sofa: and you can see the wallpaper through his body.

My first thought was that he was a ghost. It makes a terrifying photo even
more terrifying to think that. Mr. Borden's head cannot be determined in
the photograph because it is a dark mass of blood competing with the dark
of his Victorian settee and the dark Prince Albert coat that had been
bunched up underneath his head. His coat was there presumably as a sort of
pillow for his nap or perhaps the way Lizzie got away with the murder
without having any blood on her (if she wore it during the blood spatter,
then took it off and thrust it under his head). Which reminds me, I want
to go back and look at the maid Bridget Sullivan's testimony as to whether
Mr. Borden hung up his coat in the hall when he came in from errands that
fateful day, or if he kept it with him when he went to the sitting room.

Anyway, the photograph is already upsetting without thinking there's a
ghost in it. But I'll let you either scroll down to see it, or opt out.




scrolling



it's scary



scrolling

Besides the "ghost," I incorporated the little round table into my novel

I assume it's part of the extended exposure time required by photographs
in that era. Does that explain the man being transparent while the
wallpaper is more solid? If you know why, I'd love to hear your
explanation in the comments.



. . . .

 

AMAZON
BARNES & NOBLE
POWELL’S

. . . . . 

Fancy a listen to Lizzie Borden? She's podcasting (er, sort of)

This supernatural program is supported by the listeners of KTMM
and the John D. and Catherine C. MacArthur Foundation
as well as listeners like you!

I wanted to compile in one place the various radio spots I did in support of The Murderer's Maid: a Lizzie Borden Novel. It seems there's a real trend towards podcasts now (I personally LOVED S-Town and am now circling back to the original Serial seasons. I've also enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast).

I tried to talk about different things in each podcast with the hope that people would want to listen to more than one. Plus, it's more interesting for me when I'm not repeating the same material. However, each usually began with the "Lizzie Borden took an ax" rhyme, since it is the best summary of the case for those who haven't heard of it. So, without further ado, here are five to pick from, with a brief description of each.

with the incredible Beth Ruyak

INSIGHT WITH BETH RUYAK on Sacramento's Capitol Public Radio, an NPR affiliate

11:50 minutes

Wed., Nov. 15, 2017

https://ia800807.us.archive.org/11/items/Insight-171115/Insight-171115d.mp3

This was such an honor to talk to Beth, a Sacramento anchor in the radio community. She is so gracious and warm and has wonderful questions and a great way of keeping a conversation moving. She had baked zucchini bread that was available to guests in the green room (!). There were several other guests on during the hour and we were all linked by talking about immigrants: my novel's Irish maid (during an era when the Irish were scorned—you can see a little taste of this in the movie Gangs of New York), Chinese immigrants in early Gold Rush California captured in a play, and Japanese-American interned during WWII, in a graphic novel. Three mediums to discuss three cultures. It was a fascinating show. I'm only linking to my segment but you can listen to the others by visiting the Insight site.

My big regret is that I didn't think to mention that Lizzie Borden had taught English to Chinese immigrant boys, and there is a scene of that in my novel. 

Beth's homemade zucchini bread in the Insight green room

Joey attended my reading at Avid Reader in Sacramento: what a sweetheart!

 

GUEST HOST JOEY GARCIA ON KFBK, Sacramento

19 mins (recording continues after my interview ends)

Nov. 24, 2017

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-The-Pat-Walsh-Show-27274639/episode/pat-walsh-show-november-24th-hour-28678564/

Joey's a great host, and so fun to talk to. She's also the organizer of a writers conference in Belize (the first ever!) so click here to learn more about that. Joey's an author too, and I've enjoyed getting to know her IRL.

THE OPEN MIC WITH RICH EHISEN

Rick and I sat on my back deck and chatted with coffee. He's a great author and journalist who has compiled a book of interviews he's done with authors over the years.

We did two quick Bumpers:

1. "Did Lizzie Borden Do It?" 2:26 mins

2. "The Murderer's Maid" 1:22 mins

(He also had our longer interview transcribed. If you prefer to read rather than listen: click here.)

Tim and I talked about the Lizzie Borden house, today a B&B,
where he has done paranormal investigations

 

SPOOKY SOUTH COAST WITH TIM WEISBERG

Saturday, November 25, 2017

My interview starts around 16:00. We spoke for about an hour.

This interview was unique in that Tim is already a huge Borden case fan and has been to the Lizzie Borden house many times to do paranormal studies. So there was no "let's catch up our listeners on who Lizzie Borden was" and we hit the ground running. He came up with some theories about the case I'd never thought of before, and I reminded him of something he'd forgotten: that the third floor bathroom, next to Bridget Sullivan's room in the attic, was once a bedroom. If you're a serious Lizzie Borden person, this is the one to listen to.

Caveat: we had a phone connection (I was not in the studio—we're on separate coasts) that was very wonky and sometimes I literally couldn't hear him. Then another host joined in and I thought she was "static" from another phone line. So apologies if I sound like a dingbat.

http://spookysouthcoast.com/murderers-maid-erika-mailman/?utm_content=bufferff172&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

WOMEN IN HORROR PANEL WITH SF IN SF, San Francisco

This was a live panel with Loren Rhoads, Dana Fredsti and me, moderated by Terry Bisson. We had a small audience and powerful recording equipment. They assured us they would edit the podcast afterwards, which of course made me eager to do something loony they'd have to edit out. As of this writing, the podcast hasn't been put up on the web yet. I'll circle back and add it as soon as it is.

I'm looking for more podcasts to listen to. I love ones where each episode delivers a new truth or unveils something—the major appeal of S-Town: every episode had a new, strong bit of information to reveal. Can you list your favorites in the comments below?

. . . . .

Your presence is hereby requested at the Gold Rush Writers Conference

Me, Mark Wiederanders and Antoinette May

For the last few years, I've attended the Gold Rush Writers Conference. Registration is now open for this year, and I want to let people know about what a laid-back, welcoming conference this is. Often, conferences can feel competitive or there's a sense of panic about those agent pitch sessions...this conference doesn't include agents, so that stressor is completely off the table. Gold Rush is a weekend of hanging out with sweet people who love to write and want to be with other writers. Period. I don't know how author Antoinette May has managed to create a veritable ambiance of kindness—but she has.

Exterior of the Hotel Leger, showing entrance to its saloon

Last year, I presented on poetry, including doing an "Exquisite Corpse" group-writing exercise and looking at Isabella Gardner's "Summers Ago" and did a separate presentation on historical fiction, I think. I just glanced back at my website events page to double-check, and all the events since 2011 have been deleted somehow. Sighhhhh. This year, I'm going to be talking about social media. The headliners this year are James Ragan and Donna Levin. Last year I was the brunch headliner and Mark Wiederanders was the after-dinner speaker.

One of the sessions in the ballroom

For each timeslot during the weekend, there are four or five options—and as is often the case, I want to attend more than one. For instance, here's Sunday morning's lineup:

• James Ragan - Celebrating the Writer and the Poem course description
• Lucy Sanna - Winning Strategies for Getting an Agent course description
• Antoinette May - The Novel You Were Born to Sell course description - limited
• Sally Kaplan - The Power of Filmic Technique in Fiction Writing - part 2 course description (limited to part 1 participants)

The conference is for screenwriters, poets and novelists. I've also run into memoirists and creative nonfiction writers at this conference before.

Mark's speech

 

My speech

My speech: this basically shows how small and intimate the conference is

After 11 years of hosting the conference, Antoinette May has found success in linking people together. The Friday night picnic, hosted around her beautiful grotto pool in a Victorian garden, is always a wonderful evening of people reconnecting and greeting new attendees.

My bedroom at the Hotel Leger

The second story balcony overlooking the main street in Mokelumne Hill

The conference takes place in the Hotel Leger, dating to 1879 (but on the site of an 1851 hotel). The hotel itself is worth the drive to Mokelumne Hill: each bedroom has its own charming Victorian furnishings, and due to its vintage, some rooms have bathrooms while others require you to go down the hall. But that's okay! Everyone's nice and it gives you a taste of what it would've been like a hundred years ago when Mok Hill was a Gold Rush boomtown. The hotel has a wonderful restaurant onsite, the Whitewater Grill, which caters the conference. There's also an authentic old saloon with the long wooden bar and I once had a basil martini here that blew my mind. If all that isn't fantastic enough: the place is reputed to be haunted. Just ask Antoinette: she spent the night here alone once.

Okay, yes, we stayed in Room #13. You get chills just looking at this, I know

I had youngsters in my room with me, nervous about the talk of ghosts. We put a strip
of toilet paper at the door to stop ghosts in their tracks. It worked!

Hope to see you next month! Feel free to email me if you have questions about the conference or tweet me @ErikaMailman.

Silliness in the saloon with, from left, Genevieve Beltran, Kathy Boyd Fellure and me.

We might've had a couple already

Details:

The Gold Rush Writers Conference takes place this year May 5, 6, and 7 in Mokelumne Hill, a few hours easterly-southerly from Sacramento. The cost of $185 includes:

Price Includes:

• Your selection of four workshops out of sixteen. Several are limited so register early (first-come, first-served).
• Informal supper in a Victorian garden Friday night
• Open mic poetry readings
• Sit-down dinner in an historic Gold Rush hotel with speaker Mark Wiederanders
• Sit-down pool-side brunch Sunday with speaker Erika Mailman
• Plus lectures, demonstrations
  
  To learn more, visit the conference website at www.goldrushwriters.com.
  
  
  
  . . . . 

Reinventing ghosts

It's October 13, also known as Halloween for the Dyslexic.

I was thinking today about The Shining, one of my all-time favorite books and movies, and how genius it was that Stephen King broke one of the foremost rules about ghosts in it: that they have no substance.

That used to be the wonderful thing we could rely on about ghosts, that you could get through the night in the haunted house if you could just keep your eyes closed and chant the Barry Manilow libretto. But King gleefully dashed our hopes on the diaphanous wraith front.

I'll never forget how terrified I felt when Danny was actually displaying strangle marks on his neck. Thanks, Mr. King, for taking ghosts to a whole new level. And also for giving my sister Red Sox tickets off the radio.

A few other scary reads to recommend for this pumpkin-spice-infused month:

Preston Castle

Officially termed the Preston School of Industry, Preston Castle is a boys' reform school established in 1894 in Ione, California. I had the good fortune to go tour it this weekend.

The first thing you notice upon entering is that this place is falling apart. At one point, the plan was to demolish the behemoth and its roof was taken off. Years of rain damaged the interior until a new roof was put on. It's on the National Register of Historic Places.

What many of the floors look like

The wards of Preston were boys as young as 8 and as old as 16, we were told. They were there as juvenile delinquents, including for the "crime" of being homeless. The entire building radiates sadness. The site is really very remote and was likely more so at the turn of (that) century.

Hallway upon entering

Upstairs boys dormitory

We were taken upstairs to the boys dormitory, where 50 beds once nestled close together. The ceiling is really quite extraordinary, with criss-crossed wooden beams. Boys had carved their names up there in the rafters. I wondered if the gorgeous ceiling must have been covered with a dropped ceiling back in the day, to make the room easier to heat or cool. As we left the room, a vintage photograph did indeed make it look like the ceiling was dropped and mundane.

Pigeon-stained rafters with carved names

The dormitory with beds & dropped ceiling

The adult guardian's bathroom in the dormitory

I'm not sure if that plunging method works

We visited the staff dining room. I'm kind of in love with the asylum-green paint color there.

Maybe the one pretty thing there?

Next, we went to the infirmary. Very uncomfortable-looking metal bed frames and the hint of illness still circulating...

Original wicker wheelchair

Next to it was the operating room. The docents have a clear sense of humor, as evidenced by the skeleton in the chair. I'm always sensitive about this stuff...but I don't think it was respectful. Scared boys shaped by tough circumstances came here for a chance to be clothed, sheltered, fed and instructed.

What is that machine? Many guessed it delivered electroshock therapy

Can you guess?

Another skeleton, in construction hat. Not sure why?

In the room where the skeleton pensively looks out the window, surgeries were performed on the floor. You've had enough time to think about the machine--post your guess in the comments?

I guess in some way I can't fault the impulse to position skeletons around; the place really does seem like a stereotypical Hollywood haunted reform school. And then we learned about the ghost.

The kitchen

We entered the kitchen, in which I immediately noticed the beautiful Hoosier cupboard. Apparently I am not a "sensitive" soul, because I was standing only feet away from where a violent murder occurred, and yet I didn't feel any echoes from that sad event.

We were told that the young cook came upon two boys in the kitchen, scolded them and told them to leave. As she went to climb the stairs up to her apartments, they pulled her back down and bludgeoned her to death. Or, well, the story goes that one of them did. He stood trial and benefited from a hung jury, in part because the other boy informant was known to be a big liar. The acquitted boy went on to later stand trial for two other murders.

The cook's body was stowed in a room off the kitchen, under the stairs.

So here's what's wierd. I tried to photograph the staircase she was pulled from. I couldn't. My cell phone's screen was black. I thought for a second the phone had turned off. I kept trying to get a picture of it, but blackness seemed to be seeping, exuding from the stairs. The best I could do was to capture the door frame of its entry. After the tour moved on, I remained, thinking that I could get a picture now that no one was standing in front of the room's window blocking the light. No. Still no light to illuminate that photograph. Here are my three tries:

A pool of blackness

Still can't get it

Much better now the room is empty, but still can't see the steps

I'll be the first to admit my cell cam is pretty crappy, but it was odd it just couldn't show me the steps. Now, the only reason I knew about Preston Castle was that I attended the book launch of Angelica Jackson, whose book Crow's Rest is in part set there. (I'm halfway through the book and totally, enthusiastically recommend it!) The night of our visit, I continued reading and came across mention of the main character's camera's failure to work properly at the castle. I got a little frisson of shock reading that.

The plunge

Across from the kitchen is the plunge, adorned with coffins (sigh). A plunge is an old-time word for swimming pool, and my opinion is that that's what it is. However, we were told it was once filled with lye and was used to decontaminate new boys, even down to the chilling detail that a long stick would hold you under until you swam the entire length. I'm a little dubious about a huge vat of lye devoted merely to registering new boys.

This place lends itself to disquieting photography.

Downstairs dormitory and door to freedom

In the basement was another dormitory, also said to hold 50 beds. When we heard the boys were housed in the basement, I felt a sharp disappointment that they would held in dank quarters when the whole structure was there for them! Yet the word basement was a bit misleading--it is really ground level, and there was actually a lot of windows and natural light flooding in. The door to freedom was the way boys exited when they aged out; a bus sat outside waiting to take them away. The superstition is that you can't ever look back, or you'll return for good. We learned the names of many notable wards of Preston, but the only one I remember or knew of beforehand was Merle Haggard. Apparently he doesn't talk about Preston. I'd like to read his autobiography.

"I will not bludgeon other students"

Also in the cellar was the schoolroom. The chalkboard displayed more macabre humor.

Ceiling showing light from floor above: not sure what room

In the schoolroom, I noticed slung netting covering portions of the ceiling. In that netting were some pretty big chunks of ceiling plaster. I'm glad the net was there to protect our heads. It wasn't until we exited the structure via the boys' dining hall that I looked back and saw this above the door:

Well, so that gave me pause.

Aesthetically pleasant exterior with curving ramp

Out in the courtyard, we were shown a metal ring and told bad boys would be chained there and beaten. I didn't photograph it because if it was true, I'd be a ghoul. But I don't think it's true. We saw three more of those rings out in front of the castle.

You'd like to think maybe this was a place of true rehabilitation, and that the boys were treated well and fed well. I'm fascinated and want to learn more. Preston closed in 1960, and so there are surely many boys still out there now men, with their stories.


. . . . .
P.S. Logging in the next day to say I hope I wasn't too hard on the docent and the volunteers that run Preston Castle. It's certainly worth discussion, the idea of how we talk about places where traumatic things happened. For instance, I was personally appalled to learn that the site of the Lizzie Borden murders is now a B&B... yet without its being preserved in such a way, the public wouldn't get a chance to go and look. What do you think? And I want to go on record as saying THANK YOU for the volunteers of the foundation who donate time and energy to keep Preston Castle open. It is a great gift.

. . . .