Sarah Stewart Taylor--Agony Hill

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Sarah Stewart Taylor's Maggie D'Arcy novels, set in Ireland and Long Island, have been huge favorites of all of us here at JRW, and now we have a brand new series to look forward to from Sarah, this one set in small town Vermont! Here she introduces us to fictional Bethany, Vermont, in the 1960s, and contemplates the contradictions of small town life. Welcome, Sarah!

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR:  Small towns loom large in crime fiction — and indeed in literature. I think it’s because they are such ripe territory for exploration of the human condition. When everyone around you has known you since the day you were born, it’s hard to hide, well, anything. And it’s all the more transgressive when you do. The idea of a murderer hiding in plain sight in a small town is fascinating to us as readers because we think of small towns as versions of the many kinds of communities we build in our lives.

St. Mary Mead, Three Pines, Cabot Cove, Midsomer, Miller’s Kill — these places feel real despite being fictional because they contain all of the colorful personalities and hidden and not-so-hidden histories of their inhabitants. And, they provide a special pleasure for crime fiction series readers, a chance to return home to a place you’ve come to know and love every time you open the book.

We have lots of positive associations with small towns. When everyone knows you, it’s hard to fall through the cracks or escape notice when you’re in crisis. There’s a comfort to a place that never seems to change.

But small towns can be suffocating too and that never changing thing can be dangerous for marginalized people. Small towns can make newcomers feel unwelcome or scrutinized to an uncomfortable degree. Vermont, like the other New England states, is engaged in a statewide discussion right now about how  to be more welcoming to the new Vermonters we need to prop up our schools and town governments and help provide more tax dollars to fix our roads and bridges. It’s sparked sometimes difficult but very important conversations about how we may need to change and adapt to attract these new residents.

My own small town (pop. 3,483) is experiencing all of these growing pains. Our town listserv contains daily postings about loose cows in the road, runaway dogs, items for sale, reminders that the food shelf is open, library programs, offers of help with stacking firewood, or free items that might be useful to someone in need. But it also contains arguments over land use and development and, though we’re not supposed to post about political subjects, sometimes bitter debates about hot button topics like book banning, the presidential election, and school funding. Raising my kids in our town, where my husband grew up but I did not, I feel so good about providing them with a community that truly cares about them and will always be there for them. I also really, really hope they’ll go off and explore other parts of the world (and then, yes, move in down the street from us. A mother can hope . . .) 

In so many ways, the small towns near where I live in Vermont, each with their own history and particular makeup and personality, were the inspiration for my novel, Agony Hill, the first in a new series set in Vermont in the 1960s. The fictional Bethany, Vermont has a town green, a general store, a library, two churches, four lawyers, and a widow named Alice Bellows who in many ways keeps the town running. Alice grew up in Bethany and has returned after the death of her husband, who, as they say, “worked in intelligence.” She spent years living abroad and even helped out with some intelligence gathering from time to time. Now she’s back in Bethany and makes it her business to know everything that’s going on, not only because she’s nosy, but because she can help out anyone who might need it. I love Alice and I love the way that she cares for those in her community (even if she sometimes has an ulterior motive!)

She’s committed to her work with the Ladies Aid Society and the town’s library but perhaps feeling a bit bored when a young homicide detective from Boston named Franklin Warren moves in next door. He’s there to take a job with the Vermont State Police and, after a tragedy that Alice will learn more about, is ready to start over in Vermont. He’s barely unpacked when he’s called out to his first case and as he investigates the death of a farmer who no one in town seemed to like, Warren realizes that his new neighbor is an asset in more ways than one.

I’ve loved exploring the experiences of a newcomer to a small town alongside a longtime resident who knows everyone’s secrets. And as I write the second Bethany mystery, I’ve loved revisiting the personalities and places and rituals that make up my fictional small town. I tried to capture this feeling in Agony Hill. Standing in line at Coller’s Store on the Green in Bethany, Alice thinks, “When she’d been away and returned home, she never felt she’d really landed until she’d been in to get the papers and hear the news.”

What are your favorite small towns, real or fictional?

DEBS: What a great question from Sarah! Readers, tell us about your favorite small towns!

SARAH STEWART TAYLOR is the author of the Sweeney St. George series, set in New England, the Maggie D’arcy mysteries, set in Ireland and on Long Island, and Agony Hill, the first in a new series set in rural Vermont in the 1960s.

 

Sarah has been nominated for an Agatha Award, the Dashiell Hammett Prize, and the MWA Sue Grafton Memorial Award and her mysteries have appeared on numerous Best of the Year lists. A former journalist and teacher, she writes and lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries. 

Set in rural Vermont in the volatile 1960s, Agony Hill is the first novel in a new historical series full of vivid New England atmosphere and the deeply drawn characters that are Sarah Stewart Taylor's trademark.

In the hot summer of 1965, Bostonian Franklin Warren arrives in Bethany, Vermont, to take a position as a detective with the state police. Warren's new home is on the verge of monumental change; the interstates under construction will bring new people, new opportunities, and new problems to Vermont, and the Cold War and protests against the war in Vietnam have finally reached the dirt roads and rolling pastures of Bethany.

Warren has barely unpacked when he's called up to a remote farm on Agony Hill. Former New Yorker and Back-to-the-Lander Hugh Weber seems to have set fire to his barn and himself, with the door barred from the inside, but things aren’t adding up for Warren. The people of Bethany—from Weber’s enigmatic wife to Warren's neighbor, widow and amateur detective Alice Bellows — clearly have secrets they’d like to keep, but Warren can’t tell if the truth about Weber’s death is one of them. As he gets to know his new home and grapples with the tragedy that brought him there, Warren is drawn to the people and traditions of small town Vermont, even as he finds darkness amidst the beauty.