Katherine Hall Page is no stranger to Library Land. She is the author of 21 Faith Fairchild mysteries, the latest of which, The Body in the Piazza, just went on sale yesterday. She has been nice enough to agree to share some of her story with us today…Welcome, Katherine!
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Writing for Library Love Fest is truly a labor of love and I’d like to start by asking everyone to thank a librarian today. Or hug one. Especially if you are lucky enough to be a librarian and there are some nearby.
I’m going to write a little bit about my new book, The Body in the Piazza, the 21st in the series and then get back to libraries.
The Body in the Piazza starts where The Body in the Boudoir left off and I think of the books as Volumes I and II of the story that began when my amateur sleuth, Faith Sibley Fairchild, met her future husband, the Reverend Thomas Fairchild, in 1990 at a Manhattan wedding she was catering. Boudoir, a prequel, chronicles their rocky, even perilous road to the altar. The book begins in the present on a plane to Rome for a special anniversary trip. Faith’s thoughts drift back to their courtship for the rest of it, which ends again in the present as they are landing. Piazza takes it from there—and it’s another rocky, perilous adventure!
I have never been able to write about a place I haven’t been. Even the fictitious town of Aleford, Massachusetts where Faith reluctantly moves after her marriage is a compilation of towns west of Boston that I know. Despite many years of Latin (Arma virumque cano), I had never been to the Eternal City itself. Other parts of Italy, yes. Rome, no. Therefore, I had to do the research in person. Not a hardship! The first sentence in Piazza is:
“Faith Fairchild was drunk. Soused, sloshed, schnockered, pickled, potted, and looped— without a single sip of alcohol having crossed her lips. She was drunk on Rome. Intoxicating, inebriating Rome.”
This is an exact description of the way I felt the entire time I was there and continued to feel as I wrote the book. I had my photos in front of me, my journal and wonderfully fresh memories. Plus I had recipes to create and test—pastas, biscotti, panna cottas. My hope was to convey la dolce vita I’d experienced. In its review, Publishers Weekly wrote: “Hungry readers will rush to the kitchen if not to their travel agent to book tickets to Italy.”
And now, having the floor, I can’t resist writing a little about my lifelong love affair with libraries, which started when I was a child growing up in then very rural Livingston, New Jersey. The children’s room had been the kitchen and although it wasn’t in use, the old cook stove was still there. Removing it would have been quite a project. I worked my way around the kitchen walls reading about the March family, the Moffats, All-of-a-Kind Family, Ballet Shoes and the other shoes, Misty of Chincoteague and the other horses, and all the Landmark books.
When I was about nine, I had exhausted the kitchen’s offerings and Ruth Rockwood, the librarian, allowed me to enter the parlor and dining room—the adult section! Books did not line the walls here, but were arranged in floor to ceiling stacks. Each week Mrs. Rockwood would pick out a book for me to take home and read. She favored Bess Streeter Aldrich, Frances Parkinson Keyes, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. My home was filled with books and Ruth Rockwood didn’t instill my love of reading, but fanned the flames of Library Lust.
When my family started going to Deer Isle, Maine in 1958, it didn’t take me long to discover the Chase Emerson Memorial Library. I read all of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books (Blue Castle!) overlooking Penobscot Bay. And when I toured Wellesley College before applying, it was the library that sold me. The Rare Books Room has the actual door to 50 Wimpole Street with the brass letter slot through which Robert Browning slipped missives to Elizabeth Barrett! So it has continued over the years to my own Minuteman Library Network and its libraries.
The access we enjoy in this country is rare worldwide. When I was in Italy, we wandered into the Montepulciano library and were politely ushered out, but not before we saw shelves crammed with books on floor to ceiling shelves. Tantalizing, but not available to the public we were told!
Our librarians are a feisty bunch. In my mind’s eye, I envision them atop barricades, protecting our civil
liberties, guarding our rights to privacy, and unbanning books. Read Marilyn Johnson’s This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save us All and feel hopeful.
Ultimately librarians are matchmakers. They introduce us to new authors and subjects. They connect us with needed information—on average reference librarians in this country answer 8 million questions a week!— and, if we like, will teach us how to find it ourselves. They embrace new technology and draw us in, as well. Traveling to libraries all across the country, I have also been reminded how they also function as gathering places. I take immense comfort in the fact that there are more public libraries in the U.S. than McDonalds and that 68% of Americans have library cards. Courses in ESL, literacy, computer literacy, taxes, writing of all sorts, and book groups for every taste are standard fare. Andrew Carnegie suggested “Let There Be Light” with the rays of a rising sun be set in the stone above the entrances to his free libraries. It’s as apt now as it was in the 19th century. Yes, librarians are keepers of the light as well as matchmakers— and it’s a match made in heaven.
– Katherine Hall Page
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Thank you so much, Katherine, for your contributions to this blog and to our shelves! If you would like a sneak peek at The Body in the Piazza, there is an excerpt available on Katherine's Facebook page.
– Annie