It’s Release Day for What Lies Beneath!

 

I’m delighted to present my new young adult historical fantasy novel, What Lies Beneath, out today from Book View Café!

War. Spies. Gossip and lies. Mythical Creatures. Falling in love. And it’s still only July.

It’s 1917, and everyone is doing their bit now that America has entered the Great War—everyone except 17-year-old Emma Verlaine. Her overprotective dad won’t let her go to nursing school while he’s off doing war work; instead, she’s been sent to stay for the summer with her Gran on an island off Cape Cod, and the most she’ll be able to do for the war effort is knit socks. Socks!

As it happens, island life isn’t so bad. There are the seals that seem even more fascinated by her than she is by them. There’s the new Navy Air Station that guards the coast from German U-boats where she’s determined to get a job. But most of all there’s Malcolm, whose family owns a resort hotel on the island and who gives her swimming lessons and delicious kisses.

But danger lurks in the waters off the island. Only Emma can save her new home—if she accepts that everything she thought she knew about her life is a lie, and that the seals are following her for a very good reason…

 

“Malcolm and Emma are appealing characters, and their sea-crossed romance keeps readers turning pages.... Engaging and fun.” –Kirkus Reviews

 

I’ve already talked about how different it was to write a story set firmly in the 20th century… and in a place that I know and love. That second part was especially important—to be able to use home in a story is both a delight and a challenge for any author, I think. There’s the desire to show what is beautiful and compelling about one’s home tainted by the fear that we won’t be able to communicate it to our satisfaction. I hope that I’ve done justice to my home world in What Lies Beneath.

And of course, selkies. You already know they’re my favorite mythical creature; it was exciting and challenging to dive a little deeper into their world and speculate about what might have happened if selkies lived near Cape Cod and how their world might intersect with the human world.

“What Lies Beneath beautifully knits patriotism, self-discovery, and bravery galore into a mystical pattern of young love and legendary lore!” –5 stars, InD'tale Magazine

 

What Lies Beneath is available in ebook direct from Book View Café as well as from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, Google Books, and Smashwords, and in both paperback and hardcover from your favorite bookstore and from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. You can also read a sample on my website.

I hope you'll enjoy it!

Blast from the Past: Getting Down and Dirty in the Garden

For various reasons, I was over two weeks late in getting my garden planted this year...but as of this past weekend, the tomatoes and peppers and zucchini and cucumbers were finally in, and the bush bean seeds I did manage to plant last weekend are popping up like crazy. In honor of (or perhaps relief at) the occasion, here’s a walk down memory lane into 1917 via 2014...and down the garden path.

* * * * * 

With the clarion call to American women to save food at home so that the starving of Europe and the troops fighting the Kaiser could be fed, 1917 could be called the year of the canning jar...sort of. 

It started in the spring. American women were exhorted to plant gardens and preserve their crops, and by July, the women’s magazines blossomed with advice: July’s McCall’s article “Uncle Sam’s Kitchen Brigade” gave a detailed list of how each type of garden bounty could be canned, both fruit (apricots, plums, berries, and cherries) and vegetables (bean, peppers, asparagus, cabbage spinach, cauliflower, carrots, and beets).

The Independent featured an article on dehydrating foods in June as did The Ladies’ World Magazine in August which suggested dehydrating foods--including leafy greens like spinach-- to preserve them (as the lady above is doing, with wire mesh trays and a house fan!) for a very practical reason: because of the success of the canning campaign, there was a national shortage of canning jars! The Ladies’ Home Journal included an article about “the new containers”, primarily different types of coated paper--the forerunner of our paper milk and juice cartons today. 

In addition to all the encouragement to can, preserve, and dry, American women were also encouraged to change the way their families ate. Based on the number of articles and recipes published about salads this summer (in Women’s World and The Modern Priscilla in particular), I have to wonder if anyone actually ate them before 1917.  The salad was a somewhat different creature from today’s greens and chopped veggies: it tended more to be a collection of foods mixed together and served cold, thereby saving cooking fuel and using up not only the garden’s bounty but also anything else that happened to be lurking in the icebox.  How can you resist a tasty Baked Bean salad, presented by such a fetching young lady?

More Hints...a look back at May 1917’s Fashions

I’m back to be a dreadful tease with another Blast from the Past about 1917 and what was going on then...with a promise that in my next post, I’ll stop being mysterious and explain why. Till then...enjoy these wonderful fashions!

* * * * * * * *

So I got hold of a beautiful copy of the May 1917 edition of The Delineator, a magazine published by Butterick, now best known for their sewing patterns. Well, you know that their magazine would have to have gorgeous fashion pages—over twenty of them!--and you’re right. So I thought it was time to have some slightly more recent Fashion Forecasts, which will continue through the summer months.

 

The fashion section begins with a look at the latest Paris fashions, with the headline, “Fleet-Footed are the Fashions that Defy the U-Boats”. Designers mentioned include Georgette, Marthe Wingrove, Magraine-Lacroix, Laferriere, and Parry.

 

One thing you’ll notice that differs from the 19th century prints that I post is that dresses are usually not labeled “Morning Dress” or “Walking Dress” or what have you. What started with this issue of The Delineator was individual breakdowns of the cost of making each pattern, including estimated cost of fabric, trim, findings and patterns, as a result of expected belt-tightening with the newly entered war. The dress at left has a total cost of $4.94, and the dress at right costs a mere $3.37.

 

Silhouettes are interesting in this year: though many of the dresses shown still have waists, the general lines are hinting at the coming “vertical”, straight look of the twenties. Busts are still low, an echo of the previous decade.

Parasols and creative millinery were definitely in. The pink hat at right very definitely resembles a type of military hat known as a “shako”; hardly surprising to see, the month after the US had entered the war.

 

Separates—blouses and skirts, or two piece suits—were also in vogue.

 

What I found especially interesting is that there was a separate section of clothes intended especially for teens, though that exact term is not used. Still, the pattern descriptions are for 16- and 17- and 18-year-olds--a definite change from 19th century fashion.

The biggest difference I can see between these teen clothes and the more grown-up patterns is that the hemlines seem to be a trifle shorter.

More “teen” fashions, along with some younger girl outfits.

 

Children’s clothing is also included, both for girls...

And for boys. Note the ringlets!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you think of May 1917’s fashions?

Retro Blast (and a Future Hint): Doing Their Bit

Life has been very busy these last few weeks for me on several fronts...one of them being related to this post, originally made in 2014. I’ll be telling you more about it soon; accept this as a touch of foreshadowing (mwahaha!)

 * * * * * * * *

Writing a story set in 1917 has been a fascinating experience for me. It’s not a time I knew a great deal about, so there’s definitely been a learning curve...but I’ve been having tons of fun with it (as you might have noticed!)

One thing that has struck me as I do my research to write this story is how much World War I was truly the first BIG media-covered war (though the Spanish-American War in 1898 was in many ways a rehearsal for it). By 1917 the cinema had become an important part of people’s everyday lives; in the newsreels shown in theatres, moving picture footage of actual battlegrounds and armies could be seen. Also, photography was now more easily reproducible in newspapers and magazine, and both of these served to bring the war “home” in ways that just hadn’t been possible before. And let’s face it, war is big news. It sells a lot of newspapers and magazines, so there was plenty of coverage of it in popular media.

That coverage extended to media intended for a female audience. World War I was probably the first war that called strongly on all American citizens, male and female, to help in whatever way possible. For men, it was enlisting, obviously. But women, too, were encouraged—heck, exhorted, as in the editorial above from the June 1917 issue of Ladies' Home Journal—to “do their bit.” The countries at war with the Kaiser not only needed soldiers, but support personnel, war materiél, and food to feed their civilian populations. Belgium in particular was experiencing famine conditions as no one could grow food when large swathes of the country formed the battlegrounds of the war, and cross-Atlantic trade had been severely hampered by German u-boat activity.

So in a very real sense, women did have to “do their bit” for the war effort. Since they were the homemakers, they were the ones in charge of purchasing and preparing food...and they were the ones who could cut down on the use of wheat, beef, and other food that could be shipped overseas to feed troops and hungry European civilians, and learn to make do with other food sources.

But food wasn’t the only place women helped. Since so many young men were being shipped overseas to fight, young women began to replace them on farms and in factories. And let’s not forget medical personnel and other support people, from clerks and secretaries in Washington to ambulance drivers on the western front.

Still Here, Part 4

In celebration of finishing my WWI set story, I'm presenting another set of ads for products and companies that are, remarkably, still here after nearly (or in some cases, more than) a hundred years:

I use it on appliances, not white shoes, but Bon Ami evidently didn’t scratch then, either (Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1917):

Those seem awfully pointy for men's shoes, don't you think? Florsheim Shoes (The Literary Digest, December 1, 1917):

If you didn't can those berries the way you were supposed to, might as well eat cake! Crisco (Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1917):

For cooking and desserts, yeah, sure.  For eggless mayonnaise...no. Just no. Carnation Milk (Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1917):

Ham, ham, ham, ham. Armour Ham (The Delineator, May 1917):

Thank heavens typhoid and cholera are no longer words frequently seen in product advertising. Lifebuoy Soap (Harper’s Weekly, February 22, 1902):

What I would like to know is just what tests the United States Patent Office ran to prove the board's "efficacy!" Ouija Board (Metropolitan, June 1917):

I love this one. It begins with INFECTION in large, ominous letters...discusses killing multiple types of bugs, assures us that it isn't poisonous, and ends by suggesting consumers write for a free fairy story book.  Uh huh. Black Flag Insect Powder (The Delineator, May 1917):

Still Here, Part 3

A few weeks ago we looked at the birth of the supermarket...now let’s see what items that were on the shelves of Piggly-Wiggly that we might still recognize today! Parts one and two of this series are available here and here.

As we head into cold season...Luden’s Cough Drops have been soothing coughs for a long time now. (Women’s World, August 1917)

Of course, if we want to keep germs at bay, we should have reached for the Lysol in the first place...(The Delineator, May 1917)

 Yes, they still make film, even in this digital age.  (The Red Cross Magazine, August 1917)

Spicing up sandwiches since 1867... (Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1917)

Though national Prohibition had not yet arrived, there were enough "dry" counties around... (Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1917)

Hmm. Shampooing with it?  (McCall’s Magazine, August 1910)

I just love this one--6,175 games played with one deck. Someone actually counted?  (Collier’s Illustrated Weekly, March 15, 1902)

And this week’s grand prize winner: I never knew that baked beans could be scientific...did you? ☺ (The Youth’s Companion, September 20, 1917)

The Great Silence

Today we are observing Veterans Day in the U.S....but we’re not the only country to observe a holiday. This day marks the 96th anniversary of the day that hostilities ceased on the Western Front in 1918, marking the end of World War I, and is the 95th anniversary of Armistice Day (now called Remembrance Day) in Great Britain, which was first observed in 1919.

The first World War had an almost incalculable effect on England. A bit over 2% of the population were killed in the war—slightly over 700,000...but those 700,000 were a large chunk of the male population between the ages of 18 and 35...effectively decimating a generation of young men, among them the best and the brightest, the future leaders of the nation. And with the loss of a generation of young men, a generation of young women became spinsters, many of them never marrying, or emigrating elsewhere. Add to that the effects of the global influenza pandemic, and it’s plain to see that England had a great deal to mourn.

Yet when the first anniversary of the 1918 Armistice approached, no formal observation of the day had been planned...until Prime Minister Lloyd George was told about a letter sent to the London Evening News by an Australian journalist named Edward Honey, proposing that the first anniversary of the Armistice be observed by a nation-wide five-minute silence, something that could be done by every man, woman, and child no matter where in Britain they were. Lloyd George was very taken with the idea, and convinced King George V to decree a modified form, a two-minute silence. An announcement from the king appeared in all major newspapers on November 7 stating:

Tuesday Next, November 11, is the first anniversary of the Armistice which stayed the worldwide carnage of the four previous years and marked the victory of Right and Freedom. I believe that my people in every part of the Empire fervently with to perpetuate the memory of the Great Deliverance and of those who have laid down their lives to achieve it. To afford an opportunity for the universal expression it is my desire and hope that at the hour when the Armistice came into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be for the brief space of two minutes a complete suspension of all our normal activities. No elaborate organisation appears to be required. At a given signal, which can be easily arranged to suit the circumstances of the locality, I believe that we shall interrupt our business and pleasure, whatever it may be, and unite in this simple service of Silence and Remembrance.

And at eleven o’clock on the morning of November 11, 1919, all England was silent. Trains stopped running, ships in British waters cut their engines. Motor traffic came to a halt, telephone operators unplugged their switchboards, pedestrians on busy streets halted, workmen laid down their tools, and schoolchildren stood wide-eyed and silent under the gaze of their teachers. For two minutes, everyone remembered.

Although the name of the observation has changed and Remembrance Sunday has taken its place, the two-minute silence is still observed every year...and while the last living veteran of the war died in 2012 (a woman named Florence Green, age 110!), Britons still remember.

Introducing...the Supermarket!

As we’ve seen in previous posts, WWI impinged on daily life in America possibly more than any previous war...especially in terms of what and how Americans ate. We’ve discussed how American women were urged to grow their own food, learn to make substitutions, and observe days without wheat, meat, and other abstentions.

Another aspect of food conservation, interestingly, was how food made it into households in the first place. Before the war, women might have stopped into their local grocers if it was close by and if they needed just one or two things. But more commonly, and certainly for larger orders, the usual thing to do was telephone in your shopping list or send a note to the store. Grocery clerks would gather together your order, which usually involved weighing out measures of dry goods like beans or flour and packaging them up, and sometime later, a delivery truck would appear with your groceries, complete with a boy to fetch them into your house. And of course, payment was handled by account—no cash exchanged hands at delivery.

But in 1917, part of the campaign for food conservation was also fuel conservation: as the cost of fuel rose, so did the cost of grocery deliveries...which of course got added into the price of items. Ladies’ magazines of the time had several suggestions, as can be seen in the article above from October 1917's The Delineator: buying larger amounts of staples to reduce the number of deliveries (and as a corollary, going in with neighbors to do the same), doing your own marketing every few days and carrying your purchases home rather than having groceries delivered; buying produce, eggs, and meat directly from farmers (and again, clubbing with neighbors to do one big weekly trip to nearby farms.) Some stores also tried changing how they did business, encouraging patrons to come in themselves to make their purchases and to pay on the spot, rather than purchasing on account.

Meanwhile, in Memphis, Tennessee, a quiet revolution was taking place. In the fall of 1916 a man named Clarence Saunders opened a new kind of grocery store. There were baskets at the door for customers to use. All the merchandise was laid out on open shelves, and prices were clearly marked. Nary a grocery clerk was in sight, until you were ready to bring your purchases to the counter to be paid for...in cash, right there on the spot. And then you carried your purchases home. Saunders called his store Piggly Wiggly (no one is quite sure why)...and the idea took off as the country went to war, the cost of fuel rose, and the former grocery clerks all enlisted.

Saunders franchised hundreds of independently owned stores operating under the Piggly Wiggly name...and while produce and meats weren’t sold in them (meaning that independent green-grocers and butcher shops would stay in business for decades longer), the prototype of the modern supermarket was born.

Fashion Forecast: October 1917

This will, alas, be the last 1917 fashion report, as the research for my story didn’t really need to go much past early autumn of that year. I’ll miss watching the clothes evolve, though—fashion changed much more quickly in 1917 than it did in 1817.

So what was the well-dressed young woman wearing in October 1917, according to The Delineator?

“PARIS STRAIGHTENS OUT THE LINES IN ITS NEW FASHION OFFENSIVE" is the headline for a page of designs from French houses (including one from Chanel, at far right.) Though the barrel skirt still appears, more hints of the coming twenties are apparent, though busts are still visible.

Coats and suits in darker, quieter hues are the big thing in this issue, as is appropriate for fall wear. Details remain subdued as well, with groups of pleats on skirts seeming to be en vogue.

Dresses too are simply adorned. Large collars in both self and contrasting colors and lapels are the big thing, as are tiered skirts. Fabrics mentioned include charmeuse, satin, silk crepe, serge, chiffon, and gabardine--while the styles are simpler, most of the fabrics are still very feminine and luxurious.

Is it just me, or do those very high collars on coats look uncomfortable?

Skirts and shirt-waists remain popular...

And look! Nursing couture!

Clothes for teen girls...not very different from the "older fashions, are they?

More teen fashions...note the girl at far left, with her knitting!

Clothes for younger girls:

More clothes for girls...and check out the mother-daughter pajamas at lower right!

Clothes for small boys, with a few of them decidedly resembling "Campbell Soup Kids!":

What do you think of October 1917's fashions?

Girls and World War I, Part 3: Getting Down and Dirty (in the Garden)

With the clarion call to American women to save food at home so that the starving of Europe and the troops fighting the Kaiser could be fed, 1917 could be called the year of the canning jar...sort of.

It started in the spring. American women were exhorted to plant gardens and preserve their crops, and by July, the women’s magazines blossomed with advice: July’s McCall’s article “Uncle Sam’s Kitchen Brigade” gave a detailed list of how each type of garden bounty could be canned, both fruit (apricots, plums, berries, and cherries) and vegetables (bean, peppers, asparagus, cabbage spinach, cauliflower, carrots, and beets).

The Independent featured an article on dehydrating foods in June as did The Ladies’ World Magazine in August which suggested dehydrating foods--including leafy greens like spinach-- to preserve them (as the lady above is doing, with wire mesh trays and a house fan!) for a very practical reason: because of the success of the canning campaign, there was a national shortage of canning jars! The Ladies’ Home Journal included an article about “the new containers”, primarily different types of coated paper--the forerunner of our paper milk and juice cartons today.



In addition to all the encouragement
to can, preserve, and dry, American women were also encouraged to change the way their families ate. Based on the number of articles and recipes published about salads this summer (in Women’s World and The Modern Priscilla in particular), I have to wonder if anyone actually ate them before 1917.  The salad was a somewhat different creature from today’s greens and chopped veggies: it tended more to be a collection of foods mixed together and served cold, thereby saving cooking fuel and using up not only the garden’s bounty but also anything else that happened to be lurking in the icebox.  How can you resist a tasty Baked Bean salad, presented by such a fetching young lady?