How to Do Historical Research @SKGoldenwrites

 LUCY BURDETTE: I met Sarah (SK) Golden in Key West this winter and realized we are both published by Crooked Lane Books. Of course I wanted her to meet you—Welcome to the blog SK!

S.K GOLDEN: It’s taken me three books to do it, but I think I’ve finally got a good grip on how to do historical research. Not a great grip, mind you. Not very firm. But I’m hanging on, and I’m doing my best.

I’m fortunate that my cozy mysteries are set in the late 1950s – there’s lots of information available about that time, from movies and tv shows, to friends I’ve made that lived through the era. The bigger events have, of course, been easier to include because they left such a big impression. 1958 is right between the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Russia has launched a satellite into space. Eisenhower throws the first Halloween party at the White House. That last one might only have been a big deal to me, but, whatever. These things have been easy to research for my work. I have a newspapers.com subscription, and it has paid for itself many times over now. 

What has been a bit of a struggle has been the small details.

I found out what rent in Yonkers for a small apartment would’ve cost by reading a memoir. That wasn’t even why I read the memoir. I read it to help me get the feel of the time beyond what I was seeing in Marilyn Monroe movies. The memoir gave me lots of other details about the late fifties: like handheld cameras were becoming a thing thanks to Zunow and Bolex, so photographers had more options than the flashbulb-heavy styles used by the press; what types of alcohol were popular; and which automat had the best coffee. But the biggest help was the small sentence about rent.

The answer is $29 a month, by the way.

Fashion is a big focus in my books. My main character, a twenty-one-year-old agoraphobe who lost her mother at a young age, uses her appearance as a way to manage her anxiety. She can’t control the things that happen around her, but darn it, she can make sure her shoes and her belt are a perfect match, and her nail polish isn’t chipped.

One of the best things I’ve found to help me write about 1950s fashion so my sleuth can stop her freakouts comes in the form a Sears catalogue. Actually, it’s multiple Sears catalogues from the ‘50s combined into one edited volume by Joanne Olian. I love that thing. It has saved me so much time. Instead of searching Pinterest for hours trying to make sure the outfit I’ve found is era-accurate, I can flip a few pages and pick. It even gives item descriptions! It’s been great not only for my main character, but for my side characters, too.

This should come as a great relief to the – now two – readers who have emailed to let me know that my use of the word ‘pantyhose’ is anachronistic by several months.

As I said at the beginning, my grip on historical research is getting stronger all the time.

 Is there a small detail from the past that you find fascinating? Like, the price of rent in 1958, or the first White House Halloween party? Or maybe the scandal of pantyhose arriving before their time?

S.K. Golden is the author of the Pinnacle Hotel cozy mystery series. Born and raised in the Florida Keys, she married a commercial fisherman. The two of them still live on the islands with their five kids (one boy, four girls — including identical twins!), two cats, and a corgi named Goku. Sarah graduated from Saint Leo University with a bachelor’s degree in Human Services and Administration and has put it to good use approximately zero times. She’s worked as a bank teller, a pharmacy technician, and an executive assistant at her father’s church. Sarah is delighted to be doing none of those things now. Follow her across all platforms @skgoldenwrites.