The Darling Dahlias Backstory, Part 2

BookScapes 15, October 2024

In the September BookScapes, I made good on my promise to write about the Darling Dahlias series backstory. Here’s the second part of that post: more about the series, with plot synopses and some publishing history. And—for supporting subscribers—a few questions about how and why and what we read and (drumroll please!) the October Book Bundle drawing!

Dear Reader,

We realize that this book comes hot on the heels of our latest book about the Voodoo Lily. But things have been a little heated around Darling in the past few months and it seems like there’s a lot to tell. Mrs. Albert invited us to sit down, take deep breaths, and try to put it all together for you so we wouldn’t forget what happened, which was quite remarkable and which got connected to an even more remarkable happening over in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

It started with a little bonfire and went on to bigger and more spectacular blazes, while the citizens of our little town slept with one eye open and kept glancing over their shoulders and got more and more scared and suspicious as the weeks went by. Of course, it didn’t help that the Hot Dog fire chief election went off the rails the way it did, and that somebody got elected who didn’t have the least idea in his head of how to put out a fire and didn’t care to learn. There was an arsonist in our little town, bound, bent, and determined to burn us down to the ground. It was the only thing we talked about. It was the only thing we thought about.

Well, except for the exciting news about Senator Huey P. Long making a campaign stop in Darling, which isn’t something that happens every day of the week.

Or the heartwarming news that the Magnolia ladies’ corner garden of red hot pokers, sunny orange dahlias, hot pink cosmos, fire-red salvia, and artemisia won the August garden prize. Hooray for us!

That’s the letter-to-readers that opens the latest (and likely the last) book in my 10-book Darling Dahlias series. As I said in the September BookScapes, I began the series during 2008, the year the unregulated shadow banking system crashed. November of that year brought the heartening and hopeful election of Barack Obama, and the days seemed brighter. But many of us still wondered whether things could get as bad as they did in the Great Depression of the 1930s, a desperate decade that my parents never forgot.

The brink of a possible 21st century Depression might not be the best time to jump off the cliff and into a new book project. But I had delivered the manuscript of my memoir (Together, Alone) and was just wrapping up An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, a journal book documenting the events of 2008. I was reading about American life in the 1930s, thinking ahead to the project that would become the Depression-era novel, A Wilder Rose.

And I was beginning to imagine Darling, the big-hearted little Southern town with a dedicated garden club, a courthouse on the town square, a bank on the brink of ruin, a newspaper full of stories, a diner, a mercantile, a grocery, a movie theater, Beulah’s Beauty Bower—and a young sheriff whose job it is to keep the peace and solve the occasional crime. These were mysteries, after all, and life in Darling during the 1930s was more than pink lemonade and pretty flowers. There was moonshine and bank fraud and dirty dealings at the nearby prison farm and the CCC camp. Somebody was always getting into trouble, often serious, sometimes fatal.

You can read more of the background of the series and synopses of the first six mysteries in the September BookScapes. Those books covered the years 1930-1934, through the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the gold crisis, the New Deal, John Dillinger, Shirley Temple, and the Dust Bowl. All six were published in Berkley’s Prime Crime imprint, with my editor, Natalee Rosenstein. Natalee and Berkley were also publishing my other continuing series (the Pecan Springs mysteries and the Cottage Tales). That is, until 2015, when Natalee retired and Berkley underwent a major makeover.

But by that time, I had created my own imprint (Persevero Press) and had already published the first book (A Wilder Rose) in my Hidden Women’s series. While I finished the books that were under contract to Berkley, I thought about what I wanted to do. Was it better to keep the continuing series (Pecan Springs and the Dahlias) at Berkley or move them to Persevero and publish them myself? The downside risks of becoming an independent author/publisher seemed pretty daunting, and it seemed a lot more prudent to stay in my comfortable niche with my legacy publisher.

But the idea of flying out of the nest and becoming a full-fledged indie author/publisher was exciting. What to do?

So I put the next Dahlias project on hold and spent several months figuring out where I was going. By then, I had finished the first three books in the Hidden Women’s series, publishing all three of them via Persevero Press. I had built a team that helped get those books into print and audio and ironed out most of the wrinkles in the indie-publishing process.

So aside from the scary part—no publishing-house safety net to drop into if things didn’t work out—adding the two ongoing mystery series (both the Pecan Springs books and the Dahlias) to the Persevero list seemed like the right thing to do.

And that’s what I did. Here are synopses of the Dahlias mysteries.

Books 7-10. 1934-1935

• Book 7. The Darling Dahlias and the Four Leaf Cover. October,1934. FDR is in the second full year of his first term, the New Deal is in full swing, and everybody’s celebrating the end of Prohibition. But when the Lucky Four Clovers run into a string of bad luck, it looks like the music has ended for Darling’s favorite barbershop quartet—just when the Dixie Regional Barbershop Competition is about to take place. It doesn’t help that newspaper editor/publisher Charlie Dickens is facing a crisis of confidence in his new wife, Fannie. Or that Liz Lacy (the Dahlias’ president) has to decide whether she’s ready for a do-over in her ill-fated romance with Grady Alexander. And while liquor is legal again, moonshine isn’t. As brand-spanking-new Sheriff Buddy Norris discovers when he confronts Cypress County’s most notorious bootlegger, a little luck can be a very good thing.

• Book 8. The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle. Christmas, 1934, and the citizens of Darling, Alabama, are unwrapping a big package of Christmas puzzles. Mildred Kilgore and Earlynne Biddle are about to open a bakery on the square—if they can come up with the right recipes. Charlie Dickens faces two of the biggest puzzles of his career as an investigative reporter, and one of them involves his wife. Cute little Cupcake’s talent as a singer and dancer makes her a tempting target for an unscrupulous exploiter, and her two moms, Myra Mae and Violet, must enlist Liz and the Dahlias to protect her. And Sheriff Norris is forced to reopen a puzzling mystery that the town thought was solved and follow a string of clues that lead to a deadly situation at the nearby prison farm. But at home in Darling, Christmas is a celebration of friendship and community. There’s nothing puzzling about that.

• Book 9. The Darling Dahlias and the Voodoo Lily. Spring, 1935 finds Darling buzzing with excitement about their new local radio station, WDAR. But there are problems brewing at the newspaper, where a trio of new hires causes triple trouble for editor Charlie Dickens. And that’s not the worst of it, as the Dahlias discover when the newest resident at Bessie Bloodworth’s Magnolia Manor turns up dead. She had overindulged in a large and very rich chocolate cake—but was something else baked into that cake? If so, one of the Dahlias is likely to find herself at the top of Sheriff Buddy Norris’ suspect list. That would give Darling something to gossip about! And there’s plenty more to keep the tongues wagging. Will the ladies at the new bakery ever learn to bake bread? What’s going on in Liz Lacy’s love life? And can Voodoo Lil’s special brand of magic keep Violet Sims from taking Cupcake off to Hollywood to become a Shirley Temple look-alike? But the Dahlias learn, once again, that while money might be scarce, there’s plenty of magic to go around.

• Book 10. The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker. It’s Labor Day weekend, 1935, and members of the Dahlias are trying to keep their cool at the end of a sizzling summer. This isn’t easy, though, since there’s a firebug on the loose in Darling. He (or she?) strikes without apparent rhyme or reason, and things have gotten to the point where nobody feels safe. What’s more, a dangerous hurricane is hurtling in Darling’s direction, while a hurricane of a different sort is making a whirlwind campaign stop: the populist senator from Louisiana, Huey P. Long, whom President Roosevelt calls the “most dangerous man in America,” who is just days away from his own violent death. Add Ophelia Snow’s secret heartthrob, Liz Lacy’s Yankee lover, and the Magnolia Ladies’ garden of red hot pokers, fire-red salvia, and hot pink cosmos, and you have a combustible mix that might just burst into flames at any moment.

I had originally intended to write 12 books in this series. But in the same year that I finished Red Hot Poker, I wrapped up Forget Me Never, Book 29 (would you believe?) in the Pecan Springs series. The COVID-19 pandemic was winding down and we were just beginning to pull ourselves together after that difficult experience. I didn’t feel like devoting another full year to one single project. I wanted to play with shorter work and get back to interests that I’d shelved when the mysteries beckoned. And anyway, I had written more than my share of books in the past five decades. I was ready for something new, but it wasn’t another novel.

And then, as it has often happened in my life, the Universe opened a door. I found Substack, which offers a great deal of flexibility and support, as well as a way to have a conversation with a community of interested readers, like many of you. So here I am, and here for the duration.

I’d like to tie up some of the loose plot threads left at the end of Red Hot Poker, though. Maybe I’ll do that in a couple of short stories next year, although I’m pretty involved with the Zodiac project right now and wondering whether it belongs in a book.

After all, I’m only 84, and there’s always another chapter . . .

In next month’s November BookScapes, I want to do another “backstory” post—this one on the process of writing a series: how that works, what’s wonderful about it, what’s not-so-great, and why publishers love it.

In the meantime, look for me on Monday, November 4, with the November issue of All About Thyme.

Supporting subscribers, please hang around for some thoughts and a few questions about series fiction and (of course!) the October Book Bundle drawing. On Saturday, Nov. 2, I’ll choose the winner (randomly) from everybody who comments on this post. Congratulations to Patricia Parcells, who won the September drawing and received signed copies of Forget Me Never (Pecan Springs), Loving Eleanor (Hidden Women), and Death at Blenheim Palace (Robin Paige).