It’s finally happening. I’ve made the transition! For most of my writing life, my material has revolved around events in my own life. But with maturity has come a greater interest in events that happened before I was born. Now, my historical fiction debut, The Whispering Women, is available! What a journey it’s been.

Years ago, when Downton Abbey ended, I was bereft. I soon realized, however, that we had similar stories here in America, and that my own family played a part in some of those stories.

Mary Page Field, my great-great grandmother

My mother often spoke about my paternal grandparents, John and Katherine MacEnulty. My mother affectionately referred to her mother-in-law as the “little duchess.” They had a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce (my grandfather never did learn how to drive), an apartment on 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, 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, 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.

Picture of Dorothy Arnold who disappeared in 1910,Wikicommons.

I also keep a picture of my maternal great-grandmother 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. 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.”

These connections drew me to 1913 Manhattan, and as I began to research the era, I discovered a gold mine. Somehow, out of all the reading and research, Louisa Delafield, an impoverished society writer, and Ellen Malloy, feisty Irish immigrant, were born. Then when I discovered that a popular heiress named Dorothy Arnold  who disappeared in 1910 may have died of an illegal abortion, I had a subject.

And the journey continues: The Whispering Women is only the first of many “Delafield & Malloy Investigations.” I hope you’ll dive into the past with me and discover a world in some ways very similar to our own.