Edith Maxwell: How in Heck Did We Get to Indiana? #BookGiveaway!

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HALLIE EPHRON: It's my pleasure to welcome back to the FRONT of the blog Edith Maxwell who is launching a new Country Store Mystery Series... yup, another series with a lovely new nom de plume Maddie Day. This time the setting is rural Indiana.  She explains how that happened.

EDITH MAXWELL/MADDIE DAY: I’m so delighted to be back here on the first blog I read every morning (seriously)! Thanks for hosting me, Hallie.

So how in heck did I come to write a mystery series set in hilly southern Indiana, you might ask? It was an easy choice for me when I was thinking about a second (well, third...okay, fourth) series. I was living in Japan after college when I decided to try my hand at a PhD. Not only did Indiana University have a linguistics program that seemed a good fit with my goals: exploring language, how women speak, and attitudes about women – yeah, tiny topic, right?

But IU and Bloomington were also a homecoming in a way, even though I’d never been there. All generations of Maxwells back to my great-great-grandfather have been associated with IU. In fact, Dr. David Hervey Maxwell was the person who successfully petitioned the Indiana state legislature in 1820 for funds to open the State Seminary, the progenitor of the university.

Pictures of my ancestors adorn the Student Union. My great-grandfather was the first dean of the IU medical school. My grandfather was the captain of the IU basketball team in 1916. Daddy was an undergrad there before he was drafted into WWII. The Maxwell Hall on campus is named for my branch of Maxwells. How could I not continue the lineage?

I was accepted to the program, came back from Japan, drove from California to Bloomington in the fall of 1977 (in a 1961 convertible VW bug with a soon-to-be-ex boyfriend), and dove into graduate school. It was a glorious and heady time. Everybody was there because they wanted to be. Edith Bedou from Togo became one of my good friends. Another was Marios from Greece. Jennifer had been in the Peace Corps in Niger. Janet had been in Barcelona. Katherine in Lesotho. We had weekly (often drunken) dance parties and skinny-dipped in the quarries, and our group of friends held monthly gourmet dinners. We also studied hard and finished our doctorates.

IU is in the southern third of the state. You might think of Indiana as part of the flat midwest (like where Hank grew up). But the glacier stopped south of Indianapolis, and the lower part is hilly and pretty, a lot like New England. Bloomington is a small town with a huge university, so it’s pretty, easy to walk and bike around in, and has easy access to neighboring scenic Brown County. And I realized the way people talk is more Kentucky than upper midwest.

One student in the linguistics program dropped out of the program and, with his girlfriend, bought a rundown general store in Brown county. They fixed it up into a breakfast restaurant and gave birth to a baby upstairs from the store. We all trooped out there for the store’s grand opening and toasted to their success  (they didn’t have any murders in the store, thank goodness).

The Story Inn is now under other management, but that was the inspiration for my series. And I love being back, even if only on the page, plus the annual visit to Brown County to refresh my stock of local phrases and scenery.

HALLIE: Thanks, Edith/Maddie - and she offers up these questions: How about a favorite dish Robbie Jordan can add to the breakfast menu with a great Midwestern flavor?

And Edith is giving away a copy of FLIPPED FOR MURDER to one lucky commenter.

Flipped for Murder: The first book in the Country Store Mysteries series features Robbie Jordan and Pans ‘N Pancakes, her country store restaurant in fictional South Lick, Indiana. When she remodels the store full of antique cookware and turns it into a local breakfast and lunch establishment, she doesn’t plan to have murder on the menu.

Edith Maxwell: Agatha-nominated and Amazon-bestselling author Edith Maxwell writes the Local Foods Mysteries series, the Lauren Rousseau mysteries (as Tace Baker), the Country Store Mysteries (as Maddie Day), and the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, as well as award-winning short crime fiction. Shel writes mystery fiction north of Boston in antique house where she lives with her beau and three cats. She blogs with the Wicked Cozy Authors.