Behind the Books

Join me for a weekend in Chicago like none other. We’ll explore the city’s rich history through the sites found in Veiled in Smoke, Shadows of the White City, and Drawn by the Current (releasing Feb. 1, 2022). Our time together will include a visit to the Chicago History Museum, which has a new major exhibit called “City on Fire: Chicago 1871”, as well as other exhibits which include the 1893 World’s Fair and the 1915 Eastland Disaster. Our visit here will provide the context for all three novels in The Windy City Saga and show how they fit in within the overarching story of Chicago. We’ll also walk in the characters footsteps as we visit Lincoln Park, have lunch in The Walnut Room at Macy’s (formerly Marshall Field’s), experience the Chicago Cultural Center (the city’s first dedicated public library), tour the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and hear from the granddaughters of an Eastland Disaster survivor at the site where the event happened along the Chicago River.   Those who arrive by late Thursday afternoon may opt to come on a walking tour of Prairie Avenue Historic District, which is the neighborhood where Sylvie and Meg Townsend (in Veiled in Smoke) live after the Great Fire displaces them from Courthouse Square. The tour will conclude with a tour and dinner at Second Presbyterian Church, the only church in Chicago to be on the National Historic Landmark Registry. But that’s not all. Other optional excursions include: Attending a performance at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Enjoying an architectural cruise on the Chicago River Watching a live radio production of “Unshackled” at the historic Pacific Garden Mission Touring The Art Institute, one of the best art museums in the nation and one of only two buildings still standing that were built for the World’s Fair of 1893 Visiting the Museum of Science & Industry, originally built as the Palace of Fine Arts for the 1893 World’s Fair. Explore the Wooded Island next to MSI, also constructed for the World’s Fair. And more!   Plenty of free time will allow you to customize your weekend and visit the attractions, shops, and/or restaurants that are important to you. Our home in Chicago will be the iconic and unparalleled Palmer House hotel, as seen in both Veiled in Smoke and Shadows of the White City. It’s the longest continuously-running hotel in the country and truly a work of art. See a YouTube video tour of the hotel here, and a brief taste of its history in a YouTube video here. Its downtown location puts us within an easy walk of several attractions and many restaurants. I’ve highlighted a few on the snapshot below, but you can get a better sense of our location by looking up our location on Google Maps and exploring the area that way.   More details, including detailed itinerary, pricing, excursions list and FAQs will be added soon. If you’d like to be notified via email when more information is available, please fill in this Google form.

I had a blast researching the 1893 Columbian Exposition, aka World's Fair, for my novel Shadows of the White City. Below, I'll share just some of what I learned. But first, here's what the novel is all about: The one thing Sylvie Townsend wants most is what she feared she was destined never to have--a family of her own. But taking in Polish immigrant Rose Dabrowski to raise and love quells those fears--until seventeen-year-old Rose goes missing at the World's Fair, and Sylvie's world unravels. Brushed off by the authorities, Sylvie turns to her boarder, Kristof Bartok, for help. He is Rose's violin instructor and the concertmaster for the Columbian Exposition Orchestra, and his language skills are vital to helping Sylvie navigate the immigrant communities where their search leads. From the glittering architecture of the fair to the dark houses of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods, they're taken on a search that points to Rose's long-lost family. The World’s Fair of 1893 in Chicago has left a lasting legacy in ways you have probably experienced yourself—especially if you’ve ever visited Chicago. L. Frank Baum was so inspired by the Fair, also called the White City, that he modeled the Emerald City in his book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz after it. The brownie was invented at the request of Bertha Palmer, wife of hotelier Potter Palmer, expressly for visitors in town for the Fair. The first Ferris Wheel was invented for the 1893 World’s Fair. Wellesley College English professor Katharine Lee Bates’s visit to the Fair inspired her to write the line “thine alabaster cities gleam” in the anthem “America the Beautiful.” The Art Institute of Chicago was built for the Fair and used for assemblies. After the Fair, it was converted to housing the Art Institute’s collection. Chicago’s current Museum of Science and Industry is housed in the only permanent building of the Fair, originally built to house the Palace of Fine Arts. Named for Marshall Field for his donation, The Field Museum was founded as a memorial to the World’s Fair and held fifty thousand objects collected for it, many of which can still be seen today. The World’s Fair was a dazzling spectacle for twenty-seven million visitors. While travel and special events haven't been possible for many of us due to the pandemic this past year, we can still travel through both time and space through books. Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, originally built to house art at the World's Fair  

As we approach the Feb. 2, 2021, release of Shadows of the White City, I'm taking you on a tour through video of its setting, the 1893 World's Fair. In this week's edition, we're hitting the Midway, which was just outside the official fairgrounds. My characters in visit all the places you'll see here, and more! Watch the video here. If you haven't watched the other videos in the series, find the links below: An Introduction to the 1893 World's Fair Inside the Manufactures Building Woman's Building and Palace of Horticulture

We're only one month away from the Feb. 2 release of Shadows of the White City, book 2 in The Windy City Saga! To help celebrate the launch, I'm making a series of short videos to help familiarize you with the amazing 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Last week's video gives you an overview of the fairgrounds, with photographs and paintings of several scenes. Find it here. In this week's video, we take a closer look at the largest building at the World's Fair of 1893: the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. Watch it here. Enjoy!

On this day in 1847, Jane Eyre was published for the first time by Charlotte Bronte, writing as Currer Bell! This three-volume novel, written and published in secret by a painfully shy woman to help shore up her family's finances, would become one of the most famous stories of all time. It has been translated into at least 57 languages at least 593 times. The two sister protagonists in my novel Veiled in Smoke are big fans of Charlotte Bronte. They are bookstore owners, so it stands to reason Meg and Sylvie feel passionately about books. So as part of my preparation to write their story, I read Jane Eyre and Villette, along with biographies of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell and Claire Harman. Based on all of that reading, here are three things I appreciate about Jane Eyre and its author.   1. Charlotte Bronte was deliberate about creating a heroine that was not beautiful. In the Gaskell biography, we read: She once told her sisters that they were wrong--even morally wrong--in making their heroines beautiful as a matter of course. They replied that it was impossible to make a heroine interesting on any other terms. Her answer was, 'I will prove to you that you are wrong; I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.' Hence 'Jane Eyre,' said she in telling the anecdote: 'but she is not myself, any further than that.' I love this about Charlotte and Jane, and find it very forward-thinking. Of course there's nothing wrong with being beautiful. But the idea that it isn't a prerequisite for heroines translates into readers' lives, doesn't it? We don't have to achieve a certain society-set ideal of beauty in order to be the heroines of our own stories.    2. Charlotte took her faith very seriously, and wasn't afraid to admit her struggles. That is, she wasn't afraid to admit them to her friend and fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell. There is a line in Jane Eyre, spoken by Mr. Rochester, which states: "I wish to be a better man than I have been; than I am.” Whether Charlotte intended it or not, this is an echo of her own heart. Consider the following, which she confided in a letter to Gaskell: I do wish to be better than I am. I pray fervently sometimes to be made so. I have stings of conscience, visitings of remorse, glimpses of holy, of inexpressible things, which formerly I used to be a stranger to; it may all die away, and I may be in utter midnight, but I implore a merciful Redeemer, that, if this be the dawn of the gospel, it may still brighten to perfect day. Then in a different letter, she wrote: When I decide on an action I scarcely remember to look to my Redeemer for direction. I know not how to pray; I cannot bend my life to the grand end of doing good; I go on constantly seeking my own pleasure, pursuing the gratification of my own desires. I forget God, and will not God forget me? And, meantime, I know the greatness of Jehovah; I acknowledge the perfection of His word; I adore the purity of the Christian faith; my theory is right, my practice horribly wrong. I think we can all relate to this struggle. It reminds me of what the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 7:15. "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."  What I love is that Charlotte considered her Christian faith worth working at, even when it was hard. She considered improving herself a worthwhile endeavor, even when she stumbled. 3. Jane Eyre displays conviction and strength at her darkest hour. Near the end of Jane Eyre, Jane is utterly distraught over the fate of Mr. Rochester, but refuses to compromise her own moral compass to help him herself. I love this moment of spiritual strength in the novel: Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night; too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us: and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty milky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Savior of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe: he was God’s and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long, in sleep, forgot sorrow. That's my favorite part of the book. The passage above is also one that my character Sylvie references in Veiled in Smoke when she is navigating her own trial. There's certainly more to appreciate and more to discuss from Jane Eyre, but I'll leave it at that for now.  Did any of these quotes surprise you in any way? Which one(s)?