Guest Post: "Ohio Renaissance" by Martha Conway, Author of THE UNDERGROUND RIVER

Ohio Renaissance

Guest Post by Martha Conway,

Author of THE UNDERGROUND RIVER

In sixteenth century Ohio, there were no newspapers or printing presses, no mills or grindstones, no churches or cathedrals. There weren’t even any brick chimneys. The Native Americans who lived in the area included Chippewa, Ottawa, and Kickapoo. A few French explorers and missionaries wandered about, as well as a handful of European immigrants who were mainly fur traders or coureur de bois, backwoodsmen. In the Great Lakes region, more than a dozen Native American tribes collectively called themselves Wendat and formed what was known as the Huron Confederacy. Many of these lived along the Ohio River, too.

In the seventeenth century, the Beaver Wars (think Iroquois against everyone else) drove everyone out of Ohio for nearly one hundred years. That’s right, for nearly one hundred years the area was virtually empty of people. Can’t imagine that happening in Europe!

The Ohio River that I wrote about in my novel The Underground River— which takes place two centuries later — was a vastly different place. However, these changes had only taken place very recently. Until the turn of the nineteenth century, the river traffic was still mostly canoes. Slowly, European settlers came in with their keel boats and flatboats and barges. In 1793, Jacob Meyers started the first passenger keelboat service between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, and in 1798 John Fitch built the first steamboat on the Ohio River.

In 1830, an actor/director named William Chapman built the first “Floating Theatre” on the Ohio River: a rectangular shed (the theatre) nailed onto a barge, which he poled downriver. His theatre troupe was comprised of his wife and eight children—a nineteenth century Partridge Family!—all of whom sang, danced, acted, and played at least two musical instruments.

They stopped in the little towns along the way, giving performances to people who did not get much in the way of entertainment in their lives. Since cash was scarce, the men and women (and children, at a reduced rate) often paid for their tickets with food, such as pies or wild game.

Chapman, a Londoner who trained in Drury Lane, shocked the rural townsfolk by having a painted drop curtain featuring a woman’s bare foot cooling in a stream. The local constable made him paint that over! He also had to contend with Yellow Fever and audiences so rustic that they sometimes didn’t understand what they were seeing was make believe. Before 1900, the showboat programs were mostly vaudeville: singers, dancers, comics, novelty acts, and the occasional short sketch or scene.

To me, the riverboat scene on the Ohio River is especially poignant because it was so short lived. Steamboats weren’t a regular feature of water travel until 1815 or so, and yet by 1845 railroads had begun their ascendancy. By the Civil War, the railroads were the preferred mode of travel.

What initially drew me to write about this period, however, was not so much the romance of water travel (although that was part of it), but the community that William Chapman and others fostered. When you go from town to town, you get to see how others live. And yet, there was tension, too. At the time of my novel (1838) the Ohio River was the natural division between the slave-holding South and the free North. This made for some conflict—which is always good for drama.

In fact, in pre-Civil War America, many slaves referred to the Ohio River as the River Jordan, a biblical name that represented freedom. Cross the Ohio River from Kentucky to Ohio (so low sometimes in summer that in parts you could wade across it), and you became free. If, that is, you weren’t caught afterwards by slave hunters; there is one of those in my novel, too.

I am from Ohio, and yet I learned more about the state and the river when I researched this novel than I ever did in my state history classes in grade school! I am amazed at the variety of what we would now call lifestyles. Ohio means “Great River” in the Seneca language, and it is.

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Martha Conway grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, the sixth of seven daughters. Her first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award, and she has won several awards for her historical fiction, including an Independent Book Publishers Award and the North American Book Award for Historical Fiction. Her short fiction has been published in the Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Carolina Quarterly, Folio, Epoch, The Quarterly, and other journals. She has received a California Arts Council Fellowship for Creative Writing, and has reviewed books for the Iowa Review and the San Francisco Chronicle. She now lives in San Francisco, and is an instructor of creative writing for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program and UC Berkeley Extension. She is the author of THE UNDERGROUND RIVER.

For more information, please visit Martha Conway’s website. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

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Order THE UNDERGROUND RIVER from

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | INDIEBOUND | BOOKS-A-MILLION | POWELL’S

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During the Blog Tour, we will be giving away 5 custom-made coffee mugs. To enter, please use the Gleam link below.

--Giveaway ends at 11:59 pm EST on July 26th.  You must be 18 or older to enter.

--Giveaway is open to US residents only.

--Only one entry per household.

--All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspicion of fraud will be decided uon by the blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrans may be disqualified at our discretion.

--Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or a new winner will be chosen.

The Underground River

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Review and Giveaway: THE UNDERGROUND RIVER by Martha Conway

Geographical boundaries are rarely as precise as they appear on a map, and moral boundaries can be just as fluid. Martha Conway's new novel, THE UNDERGROUND RIVER (Touchstone, June 2018), explores these truths with creative and compelling verve. Set in 1838 on a floating theater boat traveling down the Ohio River--the watery boundary dividing slave territory from free--the novel traces its characters' journeys from ignorance to understanding, aloofness to connection, ambivalence to conviction. As the boat docks for performances in seemingly interchangeable towns on both sides of the river, protagonist May Bedloe learns that appearance does not always correspond with reality--and that this discrepancy, far from being perfidious, often serves admirable ends.

Much of the novel's force and charm derives from May's idiosyncracies. A twenty-two year old orphan, May works as her actress cousin's dresser, designing, sewing, and caring for Comfort's costumes as the pair travels from gig to gig. Blunt to a fault and awkward in company--modern medicine would place May somewhere on the autism spectrum--May is generally content with her behind-the-scenes role. When a steamboat explosion destroys the costumes and changes the course of Comfort's career, May is forced to fend for herself for the very first time. To secure employment, she lends money borrowed from Comfort's abolitionist benefactress to Hugo Cushing, owner of a floating theater boat in need of repairs. May joins Hugo's troupe, and though her forthright tongue and literal-mindedness often land her in trouble, her skills, as well as her devotion to the enterprise, soon earn her the actors' acceptance. Drawn especially to Leo, the free black boatman who never dares disembark on the river's southern shore, and to Captain Hugo, struggling under the weight of responsibility and grief over his sister's death, May quickly adapts to life on the riverboat and blossoms beyond the confines of her cousin's shadow.

Yet all too soon, Comfort and her benefactress reappear, disrupting paradise. Demanding repayment of her loan, Mrs. Howard proposes that May work off her debt by delivering slave children to freedom on the northern bank of the river. Unable to refuse, May embarks on a series of dangerous, illegal missions that she must hide from her friends. Compassion vies with prudence as she tries to balance the needs of her charges against the safety of the troupe. At times, she must lie outright--an ever-difficult task--to protect or to deceive; at others, she must use her bluntness to misdirect or to persuade. Her struggle is keen and leads to disaster, but through it May finds courage she never knew she possessed, allies she never suspected, and a purpose she'd never imagined. Ever uneasy in her new role, May demonstrates that reluctant foot soldiers can be as effective as brash warriors in the righting of social wrongs--a much appreciated nuance that protects her from a predictable and potentially unconvincing transformation.

With its novel premise, unique setting, endearing protagonist, and gut-wrenching dilemmas, THE UNDERGROUND RIVER is a delightful, thought-compelling read. Just as the actors of the Floating Theater teach May to embrace the possibilities of believing something that isn't "true," Martha Conway convinces her readers of the marvelous power of fiction to convey truths worthy of contemplation. "There is always a surprise at the end," Hugo warns May midway through the story, and that surprise might just be this: the realization that truth originates and abides in the unrelenting conflict between imagination and reality.

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Martha Conway grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, the sixth of seven daughters. Her first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award, and she has won several awards for her historical fiction, including an Independent Book Publishers Award and the North American Book Award for Historical Fiction. Her short fiction has been published in the Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Carolina Quarterly, Folio, Epoch, The Quarterly, and other journals. She has received a California Arts Council Fellowship for Creative Writing, and has reviewed books for the Iowa Review and the San Francisco Chronicle. She now lives in San Francisco, and is an instructor of creative writing for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program and UC Berkeley Extension. She is the author of THE UNDERGROUND RIVER.

For more information, please visit Martha Conway’s website. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

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Order THE UNDERGROUND RIVER from

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | INDIEBOUND | BOOKS-A-MILLION | POWELL’S

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During the Blog Tour, we will be giving away 5 custom-made coffee mugs. To enter, please use the Gleam link below.

--Giveaway ends at 11:59 pm EST on July 26th.  You must be 18 or older to enter.

--Giveaway is open to US residents only.

--Only one entry per household.

--All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspicion of fraud will be decided uon by the blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrans may be disqualified at our discretion.

--Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or a new winner will be chosen.

The Underground River

Guest Post: How Many Sticks Do You Need For A Sacred Fire? by Susan Spann, Author of TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA

How Many Sticks Do You Need For a Sacred Fire?

by Susan Spann

Writing historical mystery means balancing a fast-paced, often intricate plot with compelling, historically accurate details. To keep the plot moving, I often have to eliminate the bulk of my research--including many details I find intriguing. Occasionally, however, the decision what to keep and what ends up on the proverbial "cutting room floor" becomes more difficult.

Case in point: the Shingon Buddhist ceremonies in TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA.

While researching the novel, I spent time on Koyasan, staying in thousand year-old Shingon temples and attending both worship services and the goma (fire ritual) that the priests still perform each morning just after dawn. As with most religious rituals, the goma involves detailed preparations, numerous books, bowls, and implements, and follows a carefully prescribed liturgical pattern. I discussed the ceremony with the priests, observed it closely, and took copious notes (and photographs, and video recordings) to ensure I understood it in detail.

As a result, the first draft of the goma scene in TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA ran several pages--far too long--and I found myself debating exactly how many sticks I needed to build this particular sacred fire. On one hand, the goma is an integral part of Shingon worship. I needed the ritual in the book, both to create a realistic portrait of Shingon temple life in the 16th century and to advance some character-related elements of the plot. On the other hand, too much detail bogs down the pace and bores the reader. (Never a good idea.)

Deciding which details to keep, and which to cut, seemed difficult until I re-watched the video clips and reviewed my favorite photographs of the goma ceremonies I attended. The photos, in particular, captured the ritual's essence--flickering tongues of fire in a darkened room, the shadow of a Shingon priest on the drum that accompanied his chant, and the clouds of incense I could almost still feel coating the inside of my nose.

These sensory memories set a course for my editing. By focusing on my senses--especially what I heard and smelled--I stripped away the extraneous details, leaving what I hoped would convey the sights and sounds of a dramatic Shingon ritual, wherein wooden prayers are consumed by sacred fire and carried to heaven on incense-laden smoke. While remaining true, and accurate, in the details that remained, my scene no longer contained esoteric dogma, the Sanskrit words most readers would not understand, or heavily descriptive passages that did not advance the plot.

To my surprise, the scene did a better job of conveying the ritual after editing, even though I removed almost three-quarters of the original goma scene. Less really was more--more readable, more evocative, and more successful at conveying the drama and suspense of the fire ritual.

Apparently, you don't need all that many sticks to build a sacred fire after all.

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Susan Spann is the 2015 Rocky Mountain FIction Writers' Writer of the Year and the author of six novels in the Shinobi Mystery series. She has a degree in Asian Studies and a lifelong love of Japanese history and culture. She is currently spending a year in Japan, researching her next two novels and climbing Japan's most famous mountains for her first nonfiction book, 100 SUMMITS, scheduled for publication in 2020. She posts photos and stories about her travels in Japan at www.susanspann.com.

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Read my review of Susan's novel here. Enter to win a copy of TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA here!

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Review and Giveaway: TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA: A Hiro Hattori Novel by Susan Spann

Guided by the conviction that men kill for three reasons--power, money, or love--Hiro Hattori, protagonist of Susan Spann's TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA (Seventh Street Books), races to unravel a disturbing series of murders at a remote Buddhist temple. Sent to deliver a secret message to an Iga ninja residing there, Hiro and Father Matteo become trapped at the monastery by a violent storm. As thunder booms and snow swirls in impenetrable clouds, a murderer begins to pick off the monks one by one, leaving the victims posed as one of the thirteen jusanbutsu, or deities that judge the souls of the dead. Realizing that the number of jusanbutsu matches the number of individuals at temple--including themselves--Hiro and Matteo must unmask murderer and motive before all succumb. Judging love and money as unlikely factors behind murders at an impoverished monastery, Hiro focuses on the power struggles that complicate the monks' attempts to name a new abbot. Only when Matteo becomes the murderer's next target does Hiro recognize the error in his thinking. But how to outwit someone intent on creating a grisly council of the dead?

TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA succeeds as both compelling mystery and rich historical fiction. The closed situation--a given number of individuals isolated in an inescapable location with an unknown killer among them--keeps tension high and forces the characters into a persistent state of mistrust. The realization that each victim personifies one of the thirteen jusanbutsu only adds to the strain, as survivors attempt to predict who will be next to die and how. The abbot falls victim early on, leaving the monks without a designated leader and exposed to the danger of factions. The presence of a prickly pilgrim allows for the possibility of outside political involvement, and Hiro and Matteo are never above suspicion in the eyes of the monks. The oppressive weather not only heightens the danger by muffling sounds and obscuring sight, but adds the stress of a ticking clock--the murderer obviously intends to complete the monastery's annihilation by storm's end. Spann manipulates these elements of suspense with great finesse, creating a true page-turner of a plot that culminates in an emotionally satisfying and logically convincing conclusion.

Even more notable in this sixth installment of the Shinobi Mysteries is the seamless fusion of psychological insight with cultural history. The murderer's modus operandi vividly exposes readers to Buddist teachings on death and final judgment. Each victim's gruesome pose permits discussion of a particular Buddist avatar, while the entire chain of murders opens discussion of how Buddhism treats the passage of souls from this life to the next. These teachings are integral to understanding the murderer's twisted motivation. None of the earlier Shinobi mysteries delves so far into religious questions, but in TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA Buddhist and Christian teachings confront each other in a direct and sustained manner. Father Matteo finds himself forced to counter Buddhist teaching with his own Christian convictions and comes directly under suspicion for murdering in the service of a rival religion. Spann treats this clash of philosophies with admirable insight, adding depth to Matteo's character and aspirations even as she humanizes a murderer whose horrific acts have a noble, if ultimately warped, purpose.

Politics simmers below the surface in this latest Shinobi Mystery, allowing questions of a more philosophical bent to bubble to the surface. Yet the underlying threat posed by Japan's feuding overlords remains ever present and ever dangerous to the Portuguese priest and his mission. Hiro cannot afford to let guilt and the heartbreak of lost love cloud his vision as Father Matteo falls into the hands of a murderer struggling to redeem his own disappointed devotion. Ingenious, ambitious, and resoundingly successful, TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA is Susan Spann's best novel yet.

AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE | INDIEBOUND

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Susan Spann is the award-winning author of the Shinobi Mystery novels featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Matteo. 

After earing an undergraduate degree in Asian Studies from Tufts University in Boston, Susan earned a law degree.    She currently specializes in intellectual property and business and publishing contracts. Her interest in Japanese history, martial arts, and mystery inspired her to write the Hiro Hattori novels set in sixteenth-century Japan. 

Susan is the 2015 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Writer of the Year, a former president of the Northern California Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, and a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Historical Novel Society, and the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She is represented by literary agent Sandra Bond of Bond Literary Agency. 

When not writing or representing clients, Susan enjoys traditional archery, martial arts, photography, hiking, and traveling in Japan. 

For more information, please visit Susan's website. You can also find Susan on Facebook and Twitter (@SusanSpann), where she founded the #PubLaw hashtag to provide legal and business information for writers. 

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Giveaway

During the Blog Tour, we will be giving away 5 copies of TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA! To enter, please use the Gleam form linked below.

Rules

--Giveaway endes at 11:59 pm EST on August 8, 2018. You must be 18 or older to enter.

--Giveaway is open to US residents only.

--Only one entry per household.

--All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the system; suspected fraud will be decided upon by the blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion.

--Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or a new winner is chosen.

 https://gleam.io/competitions/KPAPn-trial-on-mount-koya

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Blog Tour Schedule

Tuesday, July 3
Kick Off at Passages to the Past

Wednesday, July 4
Interview at Donna’s Book Blog

Thursday, July 5
Interview at T’s Stuff
Feature at The Bookworm

Friday, July 6
Guest Post at Jathan & Heather

Sunday, July 8
Review at Carole Rae’s Random Ramblings

Tuesday, July 10
Feature at Historical Fiction with Spirit

Wednesday, July 11
Review at Oh, for the Hook of a Book!

Thursday, July 12
Guest Post at Oh, for the Hook of a Book!

Friday, July 13
Review at Jorie Loves a Story

Monday, July 16
Review at Writing the Renaissance

Tuesday, July 17
Guest Post at Writing the Renaissance

Wednesday, July 18
Review at Beth’s Book Nook Blog

Friday, July 20
Feature at Maiden of the Pages

Saturday, July 21
Review at Cup of Sensibility

Tuesday, July 24
Feature at Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Thursday, July 26
Feature at Encouraging Words from the Tea Queen

Friday, July 27
Interview at Dianne Ascroft’s Blog

Monday, July 30
Review at Pursuing Stacie

Wednesday, August 1
Feature at CelticLady’s Reviews

Thursday, August 2
Review at A Book Geek

Friday, August 3
Interview at Jorie Loves a Story

Sunday, August 5
Feature at What Is That Book About

Monday, August 6
Review at Broken Teepee

Wednesday, August 8
Review at Reading the Past

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Woman's Work(s): The Poetry of Louise Labé

In 1555, printer Jean de Tournes of Lyon published a small volume of poetry titled, simply enough, EVVRES (WORKS). This innocuous label belied the book’s audacity, for the collection—a proto-feminist dedicatory epistle, a lengthy dialogue between Love and Folly, three elegies, and twenty-four sonnets—was the first of its kind in France: a volume of poetry written by a woman of common status and published under her own name, splashed brazenly across the frontispiece: LOUÏZE LABÉ LIONNOIZE.

How did the daughter and, later, wife of obscure Lyonnais ropemakers rise to become the premiere female poet of the French Renaissance? Few women in sixteenth-century France could read or write; far fewer could lay claim to the classical education requisite for the writing of verse. The fortunate minority with access to private tutors or convent formation belonged overwhelmingly to the noble class. Louise Labé could claim no such privilege, yet somehow she mastered not only written French, but Italian and Latin. So thoroughly did Labé assimilate the works of the ancients and those of her male peers that she transformed their tropes and techniques into a new poetic discourse, one that posited woman as the subject, rather than the object, of desire. A daring literary triumph—and one for which Louise would pay dearly for the rest of her life, with the coin of her reputation.

Labé’s direct affront to the ideals of feminine modesty and reticence made censure inevitable. In the eyes of her contemporaries, a female author was little better than a prostitute. Both put their private selves on public display, one hawking her words, the other her body. Unlike female authors of the noble class, Labé had no powerful man to vouch for her purity, and she eschewed the protection a pseudonym or posthumous publication might afford. Her participation in Lyon’s male literary circles birthed rumors of improper behavior that publication of the EVVRES appeared to validate. Vilified and disparaged as a courtesan by the general public, Labé nevertheless enjoyed the friendship and respect of her male colleagues, who praised her verse and learning in the two dozen poems of the “Hommage à Louise Labé” that rounds out the EVVRES. Now regarded as a leading figure of French poetry, Labé achieved the objective her dedicatory epistle announced: to show men how wrong they’d been to deprive women of the honor and benefit the pursuit of knowledge provided. “[L]ift[ing her head] above the spindle,” Louise Labé dared to claim a public voice for herself and for all women brave enough to speak.

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This post first appeared on the blog of P.K. Adams, author of THE GREENEST BRANCH: A Novel of Germany's First Female Physician. P.K.'s blog features guest posts about lesser-known historical women in fiction (or fictional female characters who are not royalty).