Echoes of the Past with Edith Maxwell's Quaker Midwife #7

HALLIE EPHRON: It’s always a pleasure to welcome Edith Maxwell to talk about her latest. And she has so much good news right now — with her 6th Quaker Midwife mystery starring Quaker midwife Roe Carroll (Taken Too Soon) nominated for an Agatha — and her 7th in that series, A Changing Light, published yesterday.

For the record, she also writes Country Store Mysteries featuring chef/carpenter Robbie Jordan (written as Maddie Day), Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries with bike shop owner Mac Almeida and the Cozy Capers Book Group on Cape Cod (written as Maddie Day), Local Foods Mysteries with farmer Cam Flaherty, and Lauren Rousseau Mysteries with Quaker linguistics prof Lauren Rousseau (written as Tace Baker).

She is... amazing. And her new book, A Changing Light, is not to be missed -- it's the final one in what she calls the “series of my heart.” 

I’ll let her tell you why...

EDITH MAXWELL: Thank you so much, Hallie, for welcoming me back to the Jungle Reds, one of my very favorite blog communities. I’m delighted to celebrate yesterday’s release of A Changing Light with everyone here.

Rhys knows that when a historical novelist noodles ideas for a new book, we dig around for what might have been happening in the world, in a region, in the culture at the time we want to set the book.

Taken Too Soon, my Agatha-nominated sixth Quaker Midwife Mystery, took place in early fall, 1889. Midwife Rose Carrol – now Dodge, as the book opens minutes after her marriage to her beloved David – solves a murder on Cape Cod during her curtailed honeymoon. (When I learned that West Falmouth, where I go on solo writing retreat twice a year, was a hotbed of Quakers at the time, I knew Rose had to visit.)

I wanted to end this series of my heart back in Amesbury, Massachusetts, where all the rest of the books take place. (Yes, A Changing Light is the last book. More on that later.) I’d read about the annual Spring Opening, when Amesbury’s world-famous carriage factories opened their doors to the public. Festivities went on for a week, including balls and parades.

[picture of Coaching Parade article, used with permission by Amesbury Carriage Museum]

But what more widespread historical or cultural thing was going on in March, 1890? Ah. That would be the infamous disease without a cure or a vaccine – tuberculosis. It was rampant and devastating. I dug around for information and happened across Robert Goetz’s The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis.

The title, of course, dropped my jaw, literally. TB and the creator of Sherlock Holmes? After I read the book cover to cover (I highly recommend it), I started to write. A local woman, a former president of the Amesbury Carriage Museum, had been the high bidder at a museum fundraiser on naming rights to a character in the series. I was delighted to make Mary Chatigny into Dr. Chatigny, lady tuberculosis specialist.

I wrote scenes where people are concerned about public spitting, and I included mention of the New York City public health department’s ban on the practice. Rose is concerned when she meets a friend who looks ill and is coughing in public. We hear about the town’s police chief having to go off to the new sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York, for the cure. Mind you, I wrote this book last summer. Yes, summer 2020, when another disease without a cure or a vaccine was devastating families and businesses, an illness also spread by exhaled particles. You all know.

We authors have heard readers say they don’t want to read novels set in COVID-19 days. We’re all scrambling to set our contemporary novels either before 2020 or vaguely after. With this book, I could write about a pandemic, just not the current one. I could bring in a hint of those feelings of fear and helplessness we’ve all had. An echo of the present in the past.

Other changes go on around Rose even as she works to solve the murder of a Canadian visitor to town. The horse-drawn trolley is being electrified. There are murmurs about motorcars. Rose has changes in her personal life, too, some painful, some filled with joy.

Because this is the last Quaker Midwife Mystery, I brought back most of the characters named after other naming rights winners in previous books: Frannie Eisenman, Jonathan Sherwood, Catherine Toomey, and Marie Deorocki. I also brought back Jeanette Papka, the blind woman modeled closely on my longtime friend (and Friend) Jeanne Papka Smith, who starred in Judge Thee Not (my guest post here was about Jeanne).

But wait, you say. Why end the series? Charity’s Burden, book four, won the Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel only last year! Book six is also nominated, results to be announced at Virtual Malice in July.

Here’s why. I have loved writing these books. Channeling my Quaker faith into Rose has been a joy. Learning everything I can about my town and living in the late eighteen-hundreds never fails to satisfy. Making the elderly John Greenleaf Whittier a supporting character has been fun. And the readers who love this series adore it.

But there aren’t enough of those fans. I make very little money on these books. It comes down to a business decision. At this point in my authorial career, I’m not willing to spend a third of my year every year writing for love and not sales. And I’m pleased that I ended the series on my own terms, with Rose and David in a good place. All’s right in their world for the moment.

If you are one of my Rose Carrol uber-fans, I’m sorry. But you never know. She has starred in Agatha-nominated short stories before (scoot to minute 21 here and watch me read “The Mayor and the Midwife” from Blood on the Bayou). She might well again.

HALLIE: We’d love it if you join Edith and me in an online chat about A Changing Light next week on April 22 at 7 pm EDT. There will be door prizes! For information and to register: https://edithmaxwell.com/event/a-changing-light-launch-party/ 

Readers: Did any of your forebearers contract TB? Have you mourned the end of a beloved series? I’ll gladly send one commenter an ebook version of A Changing Light. I’ll also send anyone a signed bookplate if you own an unsigned copy of any of my books. Write to me at edith@edithmaxwell.com with your snail mail address and let me know which book or books you’d like a signature for and if you’d like the bookplate endorsed..

About A Changing Light: Midwife Rose Carroll sees signs of progress and change everywhere. Her New England mill town presents its 1890 annual Spring Opening, when world-famous carriage manufacturers throw open their doors to visitors from all over the globe. This year’s festivities are tainted when a representative from a prominent Canadian carriage company is murdered and plans for a radical new horseless carriage go missing. Faced with the question of whether the two crimes are connected—and a list of suspects that includes some of Amesbury’s own residents and any number of foreign visitors—Rose delves into a case with implications for the future, even if the motive for murder is one of mankind’s oldest.

Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she pens the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. Maxwell is a member of Mystery Writers of America and a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. She lives with her beau and maniac cat north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. She hopes you’ll find her at Edith M. Maxwell and Maddie Day Author.