What-Iffing in Historical Fiction

In 1845 near where I grew up in southeastern Illinois, a woman named Betsey Reed stood trial, accused of murdering her husband by poisoning him with arsenic. This is the factual basis for my new novel, The Glassmaker’s Wife, whose publication date is this Tuesday. On Thursday December 8 at 6pm, Eastern time, I’ll be…

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Memoir and the Imagination

      I’ve been spending some time lately wandering through cemeteries, chasing down departed ancestors. I particularly love the old country graveyards, some of them alongside small churches, some of them on hillsides along gravel roads, some of them only accessible by driving through a farmer’s barn lot or down grassy lanes between cornfields.…

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