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The Swanson Shuffle

Who’s Who in The Swanson Shuffle

As promised in my last post, I will share info about residents who live at Swanson House — the psychiatric halfway house in my new novel, The Swanson Shuffle, which has an April 30 release. Yikes, that’s getting closer.

I confess the characters I create in my novels are real to me. I know how they look, speak, and act. That’s true of the residents who live at Swanson House.

First a little info. Except for one, the residents are former patients from a public or private mental hospital. They pay minimal rent and have a job, typically at one of the factories in town. The residents are expected to keep up with their meds and have regular visits with a shrink. They have a few household chores.

Bia Fernandes, who tells this story, gets into being their helpmate despite zero experience. She also likes the residents, actually more than the other staff members, Ben, Nina, and Paul — with good reason.

Here’s a brief look at several.

Lane is a smart 20-something who came to Swanson from an upscale private hospital when the insurance runs out. He compiles his observations in small notebooks with titles like Twisted People. This from Debbie, the staff member Bia replaces: “Lane’s a smart goofball. His folks have bucks. I don’t understand why they let him stay in a dump like this.”

Kevin, the youngest resident, maybe 18, is Lane’s sidekick. If Lane is doing something, Kevin is with him — like going on the weekly grocery trip with Bia. He’s thin, with short brown hair, ears that stick out, and really bad skin. Not much is known about his background. The kid hardly talks. He’s a listener.

Angie is one wild woman, who claims to have been a groupie to big rock stars. She doesn’t hold back on her comments or actions. As Debbie warns Bia: “Don’t believe a damn word that comes out of Angie’s mouth. She’ll brag about being a groupie. She was probably a stripper or maybe a hooker. She’s just found a good place to hide out for a while.”

Jerry is the house’s cool guy who grew up poor in a New Jersey city. He got into drugs, and all the old stuff started coming up in a troubling way. He began hearing what people were thinking, and as Debbie tells Bia, “Nothing good’s going to come from that.” Jerry has a relationship of sorts with Angie. But he has goals beyond Swanson.

Who else is at Swanson House? Alice, who is much older than the other residents, falls asleep mid-sentence. Caroleclaims doctors stole her baby. Then there is Big Jim and Little Jim. Stanleyand Brian both have mother issues. Mark is the new guy.

Here’s a scene early in The Swanson Shuffle. Bia, who is spending the night as part of the interview process, plays cards with some of the residents.

Stanley deals me a lousy hand. No face cards, and I get low numbers and four suits. We’re playing for matchsticks. I haven’t won once although I came close when Jim’s three-of-a-kind beat my pair of aces. They tell me they used to play cards in the wards all the time.

“Don’t feel so bad,” Jerry says beside me. “We’ve had lots of practice.”

Jerry pushes against Kevin’s cards. All night he has to be told to keep them up. Kevin bats his lashes, and the skin around his acne reddens when he’s reminded.

Lane’s feet jump beneath the table and kick mine.

“What’s he got this time?” he asks.

“Never you mind,” Jerry says.

“I’ll take three,” I say.

Everybody laughs. They know I’ve got nothing, and the cards I’m dealt don’t help. I can’t even get a pair.

“Maybe we should be playing for money,” Jerry says, whistling as he lays two cards on the table.

Lane grins when he gets his.

Jim squints at him across the table. “Lane, you’d make a better poker player if you didn’t give away your cards. Don’t you know what a poker face is?”

“Poker face,” Lane says.

“Look at Kevin.” Jim nods. “He has the perfect poker face. Nobody can tell what’s going on inside. Now, if he can just keep his cards up, he’ll do fine.”

Kevin shoots Jim a grateful grin. The kid hardly talks. He’s a listener. Ben said Kevin is not quiet, he’s silent. He calls him Kevin the Spy.

I fold. Not even the best bluffer could fake their way out of this one. Jim is next, and he goes to the sink to fill the kettle for Sanka. He stands by the stove, waiting for the water to get hot enough while the others play out their hands. Jim marches in place because he takes the same drug as Lane. So does Stanley. They go every two weeks to get a shot at the hospital. They take Lane with them.

Angie enters the kitchen and begins circling the table. A bandana holds her hair, so it forms a lumpy halo around her head. She wears a long shift of paisley fabric with a v-neckline so low anybody could see her breasts.

“You gonna play all night?” Angie asks me on the third go-round.

“Why? You want to join us?”

Angie holds a square piece of paper by her side so no one else can see it. She sniggers.

“Nah, I wanna show you somethin’.”

“Hey, Jim, deal me out of the next hand,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

Angie tips her head. She wants me to follow her into the pantry, and when I do, she yanks the pull chain on the bare bulb overhead and shuts the door. She lifts the paper.

“See. There.”

I bend closer. It’s a terrible photo of a man and woman, too dark, and whoever took it didn’t hold the camera steady. It could’ve been at a party or a bus station or any place really. I study the photo, and then Angie’s face. She thinks I should recognize these people. Angie frowns when the guys in the kitchen let out a roar. Somebody had a big hand.

“Is that you?” I ask.

“Yeah, me and Mick Jagger. It’s in New York. See his arm around me?”

I can’t see the arm, but I think I recognize her hair.

“When were you in New York?”

“When Mick was on tour. They let me go backstage. Neat, huh?”

She smiles when I tell her, “Yeah, really neat.”

Here’s the link to The Swanson Shuffle to buy as an eBook or paperback. Thank you if you do.

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The Swanson Shuffle

 The Swanson Shuffle:  Bia Tells This Story 

When I began writing The Swanson Shuffle, I wanted people to experience this story along with the protagonist, Bia Fernandes. Hence, the book is written from her point of view. And I do it in present tense so the reader is discovering what will happen next along with Bia. (By the way, the official release for The Swanson Shuffle is April 30.)

So who is Bia Fernandes? Two years out of college, she wants to try something more meaningful than the job she has. So, she applies for a position living and working in a psychiatric halfway house. Here, I will let her tell you herself.

I called Swanson House after I saw an ad in an alternative weekly. The pay is $115 a week plus free room and board. No experience necessary. This job sounds more interesting than the one I now have doing piecework for a wholesale jewelry business in Cambridge. I sit at a bench soldering silver circles for eight hours, and there are only so many dangly earrings and bangle bracelets you make before you forget this job is supposed to be creative. You think of rich girls with tanned arms buying them in some beach boutique and believing they’re getting that hippie look down, but they don’t have a clue.

And I will never ever work another job that requires an apron and comfortable shoes. I did that in college, carrying trays of pizza and beer to frat brothers slumming it at a townie bar, and summers, waiting on tourists in fish joints on Cape Cod.

The halfway house takes in patients from mental hospitals, so hopefully, they can make the transition. Also, at this the time, 1974, Massachusetts was in the process of closing its mental hospitals. Many patients were released to halfway houses like Swanson House, where the staff has no experience or training.

Here’s Bia again. Another decision she is about to make is dumping her longtime boyfriend.

I think I might have this job. Even so, I haven’t given my notice yet, but I have it all mapped out in my head. I’ll bring enough to make my room comfortable and store the rest at my parents’ house. They don’t want me to work here, my kid sisters told me, but they’ll keep quiet about it. It’s their way.

My soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Danny has the same idea. He told me when we were at the New Year’s Eve party it wouldn’t be a safe place to live. One of the guys could go crazy and rape me. He asked me what I know about working with the mentally ill, that talking somebody down from a bad acid trip doesn’t count. He reminded me about the Psych 101 class I hated and how I begged the professor to give me a C, so it didn’t ruin my GPA.

Danny does have a valid point. Most of what I know about mental illness is what I’ve read in books or seen in movies like The Snake Pit, that really old one in which the actress Olivia de Havilland goes crazy, and a pipe-smoking doctor tries to figure out what went wrong in her life. Naturally, it had something to do with her childhood. When she gets better, the movie plays the song, “Going Home,” which gets me all choked up.

Actually, I’ve been to a mental hospital many times. One grandfather spent his last six years in one, not Alden, but another state hospital closer to where he lived. Every Father’s Day, we took my grandmother, who was happy to put up with her husband only once a year, to visit him. We had a picnic on the hospital grounds and brought my grandfather a carton of Lucky Strikes as a gift. He took my sisters and me to the canteen for ice cream. His friends wanted to meet us, and those men scared us.

What I like most about Bia is that tries to see the good in people. The woman she will replace calls the residents “dented cans,” as in, those dents are permanent. Bia chooses not to believe that.

Her job requires her to give rides for those residents who don’t have a car to work and doctor appointments. Bia helps them draw up the week’s menu for the house’s cook and go grocery shopping. She engages with the residents in such activities as card games, volley ball games, field trips, and watching the news about Watergate. There are weekly meetings. She and the three other staff members interview potential residents.

Bia enjoys relating with the residents. She’s actually very good at it. I will be sharing posts about those characters like Lane, who compiles his observations in small notebooks with titles like Twisted People; Angie, who claims to have been a groupie to rock stars; Jerry, the ultra-hip ex-carny; Carole, who says doctors stole her baby; and Alice, who falls asleep mid-sentence.

Here’s a scene during Bia’s weekend visit that is part of the interview process. Staff members Ben and Nina, plus the residents are having dinner together. Tonight’s menu is pancakes and sausages. Bia, who is a vegetarian, skips the sausages.

Angie drops back onto her chair, and then she gets busy using the side of her fork to cut the pancakes into soggy chunks. Her mouth is full when she says, “Bia, did I tell you I hung out in New York with Mick Jagger? Yeah, the lead singer with the Rolling Stones. Of course, you know who he is.”

Anybody who remains at the table doesn’t say a thing to cross her.

“Of course, I do. He’s a big deal,” I say.

Angie’s smiling.

“I hope they hire you,” she says loud enough for Ben at the end of the table to hear.

Is it an easy job? No. Some residents struggle badly. The three other staff members at Swanson have their own problems, especially one who gets too close to the people they are supposed to help. But it’s a meaningful experience for Bia, and I hope for those read this book.

Here’s the link to The Swanson Shuffle. Thank you.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

News about Isabel Long Mystery Series

So, what has P.I. Isabel Long been up to these days? Plenty. And fans of the mystery series will soon be able to read about it when I release no. 8 — Finding the Source. That will happen late May, a date to be determined. Right now, my son Ezra Livingston is working on the cover.

For those just tuning in, Isabel Long was coming off a bad year when she decided to investigate what happened to a woman who walked home from her family’s general store and was never seen again. That was 28 years ago. When she began the case, Isabel was coming off a bad year after her husband died unexpectedly and she lost her job as editor-in-chief of a local paper. With that case solved, she moves onto others. 

Each book features a cold case Isabel tries to solve in the fictional hilltowns of Western Mass. I wrote the first, Chasing the Case, eight years ago.

Writing a series means that I can hold onto the characters I love but let them do something else. Certainly, that includes Maria, Isabel’s 93-year-old mystery-loving mother who is her Watson; Jack, who owns the Rooster Bar, where Isabel has a part-time job and with whom she has a relationship; the Old Farts, a group of gossipy old who provide great intel; Annette Waters, aka the Tough Cookie who owns a junkyard. Others are one and done.

So, what’s Finding the Source about? Isabel Long and Maria are about to have lunch in a nearby city when they are approached by a homeless man, Tom McKenzie, who announces his mother had been murdered 43 years ago and the case never solved. Tom was only 12 when he found her beaten and strangled in their home.

His mother, Abby McKenzie, was a likeable and smart book buyer, finding vintage editions where people don’t value them like in yard sales. She sold books to collectors and at her store in the small town of Dillard. Her body was found beside a smashed bookcase where she kept her most valuable books.

Here’s a chance to help somebody who obviously was traumatized. Naturally, Isabel is interested.

So, as she did with her other cases, Isabel gets to work finding sources to interview. Fortunately, Tom has accumulated helpful information in a notebook.

One of the obstacles Isabel faces in this case is that many of the suspects are dead. They include an avid book collector, a former town official who stalked her, and the man who was allegedly the last to see Abby alive. But there are others to interview like the collector’s twin brother, a supposedly best friend, and Abby’s ex-husband. Hmm, what about his current wife?

Then there is Jim Hawthorne, Dillard’s police chief, who has become Isabel’s nemesis running interference on her other cases. He even tried to pin a murder on her.

In this midst of all this drama, there is fun, including a big Halloween bash at the Rooster.

As I get closer to the release, including making a formal announcement, I will tell you a whole lot more, like how a chance encounter inspired this book.

For those who want to catch up, here is the series: Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge, Checking the Traps, Killing the Story, Working the Beat, Finding the Source, and Missing the Deadline. You can find those and other books I’ve written for Kindle and paperback in this link.

By the way, I was very happy this weekend, when a reader bought the entire series to take home to Canada. Thanks Murray.

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Hilltown Postcards

Hilltown Postcard: Maple Sugaring

I recall the late Win Donovan saying when we moved to Worthington that the hilltowns have two seasons — winter and the Fourth of July. Then I learned about another: maple sugaring season, which typically straddles winter and spring. And when I was a reporter, it was part of my beat covering small towns in the western part of the state for the local paper.

Maple sugaring season happens when the weather is warm enough during the day to get the maple trees’ sap flowing and cold enough at night that it stops. A lot of work goes into getting those trees ready and then boiling their sap into maple syrup that is sold in jugs to customers.

Each year, I tried to find a different angle and hilltown maple sugarers were very accommodating. Of course, Mother Nature had a hand in that. My story could be about the season starting early or late. The season was long or short. 

By the way, the official end to the season is when the spring peepers — small tree frogs — begin making a high-pitched “peep-peep.” Yes, I learned that from a sugarer.

Maybe I wrote about the business of maple sugaring, including those folks who have a seasonal restaurant serving breakfast with the syrup they made. 

Then there were those optimistic folks who have been sugaring for decades. Paul Sena in Worthington was one of my go-to sugarers. Hank and I still drive there to buy syrup, my favorite sweetener, from him.

I recall going out with a sugarer as he started tapping maple trees, that is, attaching the tubing that will run sap downhill to a large vat. I hung out when the first batch of sap was hauled back to a sugarhouse and boiled into syrup in a wood-fired flat-panned evaporator that billowed slightly sweet steam.

One story was about a new system that used reverse osmosis to pre-concentrate sap, which shortens the process of boiling and saves on firewood. That was a far cry from the very old days when people used oxen to haul the sap that was collected in buckets.

Maple sugaring was also the inspiration for one of my novels, Northern Comfort. Using what I learned from the maple sugarers I interviewed, I tried to capture the process of stringing lines, tapping trees, and boiling. Miles Potter, one of the main characters, helps his buddy, Dave, a relative newcomer who is enamored by the old-time ways including sugaring. He taps the trees owned by a doctor in town. For Miles, the work is cathartic since he was involved in a tragedy. Here’s an excerpt:

Yesterday, when the temperature rose into the forties and everyone’s houses dripped melted snow, some sap collected in the vats at the bottom of each sugar bush. Today, the run was full-blown with two thousand gallons ready to be boiled into syrup.

Dave was full of local lore as he moved around the sugarhouse after Ruth and the girls went home. He talked about how farmers in New England used to make maple sugar, forming it into hard cakes. Maple syrup became popular in the late 1800s when someone invented the evaporator, which resembles a flat-bottom boat when it’s empty.

Miles glanced up from the firebox’s door. He raised a gloved hand.

“Dave, you’ve told me this story six years straight. Why don’t you tell me this on the third week when we’re so sick of this stuff and pulling all-nighters we vow never to do it again? Or better yet, save it for the doctor. I bet he’d love telling his buddies back in New York all about it.”

Dave studied Miles.

“Shit, you can be such a spoilsport sometimes.” He reached for his leather gloves. “Anyway, around the Civil War people up North began using maple sugar instead of cane sugar and molasses from the South. They used to call it northern comfort.”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember that from last year.”

The sugarhouse, only yards from Dave’s house, was unheated, except for the evaporator’s fire box. Step a few feet outside at night, and the cold had a punch, but next to the evaporator, all was humid and hot like a woman’s mouth. The swirling sap in the pan gave off a bank of steam, which rose to the sugarhouse’s vented roof.

They fired up the evaporator about an hour ago. It’d be another two before Dave could pour the season’s first syrup. As Dave reminded Miles, the first boil sweetens the pan, so it takes longer than the next firings. They’d be here until ten or so and resume boiling the next day.

Miles helped Dave build his sugarhouse seven years ago. They took measurements from an abandoned shack in South Hayward that had collapsed from heavy snow the year before Dave’s was built. Rough-hewn boards nailed vertically covered the rectangular building. On the wall near the shelf for the radio, Dave penciled the starting and ending dates for each season, and how many gallons of syrup they had made. Today’s date was Thursday, March 5.

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North Fairhaven Girl

North Fairhaven Girl 4: Millicent Library

I was a reader before I became a writer. My teachers at Oxford School got me started. But it was the books I borrowed from my town’s Millicent Library that got me inspired.

As I’ve mentioned before, my mother was a voracious reader, who brought us to the library to borrow enough books to last a week. During the summer, the library sent a bookmobile to St. Mary’s parking lot at the bottom of our street, but I preferred going to the library because it was like stepping into a castle, the building was that grand. See the photo above that I took on a visit.

First a little history: The Millicent Library is one of the extraordinarily beautiful buildings given to my hometown of Fairhaven by Henry Huttleston Rogers, a resident who became wealthy thanks to oil. Charles Brigham, the noted architect, designed the Italian Renaissance building, which took two years to complete. The library is dedicated to Rogers’ daughter Millicent, who died at age 17. It appears she once said, “I wish we had a good library.” It was dedicated on Jan. 30, 1893, the anniversary of her birth.

Friends from Taos, New Mexico, where Hank and I lived for 11 years, will recognize the name Millicent Rogers. In Taos’ case, this Millicent was the granddaughter of Henry Huttleston Rogers. She lived a fabulous, artistic life. An art museum, which we visited often, is named for her.

But back to Fairhaven … the children’s room was to the left of the circulation desk, where Rita Steele, head librarian, was in charge. There, I vowed to read the entire Wizard of Oz Series, all 14 books. I don’t recall how far I got. My sister Christine and I got hooked on the Nancy Drew Series, taking turns to read each chapter as we proceeded through the story — believing like most everyone else the author was indeed Carolyn Keene. Books that captured my imagination: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and, of course, The Diary of Anne Frank. There were so many more.

Another memory: the Samurai sword on open display. The 14th century Tachi sword worn in court ceremonies was a gift long ago from the then-Japanese ambassador — in recognition of the town’s connection to his country. Unfortunately the sword was stolen in 1977. The library now has a replacement.

When I stopped using the kids’ room, I ventured into the adult section, including nonfiction. I wanted to read every one, an impossible task, I realize.

By the way, I was happy to learn the Millicent Library carries several of the books I’ve written. I also did a reading there in October 2023, which was a homecoming that included a cousin, classmates, and even my ninth-grade history teacher.

Besides my adult fiction, I write children’s books, specifically for middle grade readers. For my Twin Jinn Series, I created a family of magical beings — jinn or genies — who live among humans. So far, I have published two: The Twin Jinn at Happy Jack’s Carnival of Mysteries and most recently, The Twin Jinn and the Alchemy Machine. 

I wanted to write books that inspire young readers. And I thank the Millicent Library for getting me going on that.

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