The Testimony of Sister Karita, Seventh Wife
July 10, 1862, Sweetville, Morning
I am hungry. I am thirsty. I go to the water bowl. I drink deeply as if there is no tomorrow.
I have been talking much to Lannon, the Eastern writer, about our Sisterdom and the past. I want him to write about me, for my story is the most interesting of the Sisters. I am the most noteworthy of the golden, Celestial wives. Mother Evangeline is too aged. Sister Prudence is but a writer. Sister Hannah just speaks in tongues. I am the ideal Sister, the ideal wife. The Patriarch comes to me willingly, I who satisfy him.
“I am the golden one,” I attest to Lannon, “Build a tale around me.”
Eugene Lannon
In a sequel, Eugene Lannon travels to the Mormon West to escape Civil War New York. He is accompanied by his wife. He is a bit lost, unsure of what he is looking for. He seeks material for a book possibly about the Mormons or Native Americans. He finds murder hidden within a polygamous Mormon family headed by a fiery Patriarch. What are the secrets of this family? How do the secrets relate to Mormon history?
Patriarch John Sweet
Patriarch John Sweet is an up and coming Mormon who will do anything to get ahead in the Church’s hierarchy. He is charged with negotiating with the Shoshone. Even one of his eight wives is Shoshone. He is searching for a scribe to help him publish Mormon prophecy. Unfortunately someone seems to be killing off his wives.
Twin Spirit
Twin Spirit is half man, half woman, a transgender figure who is in love with a Mormon man. She/he gives Eugene sage advice on life, love, and murder.
Eight Wives of John Sweet
John Sweet has managed to convince eight women to join him in a polygamous family. How did he convince them? What stories have they to tell?
Walt Whitman and the Phrenology of Murder
The journalist Eugene Lannon has not seen his friend and colleague, Walt Whitman, for some time. They meet up at Pfaff’s, a local watering hole. Whitman is at a critical juncture as he contemplates expanding and revising Leaves of Grass. Lannon is ensnared in some sort of a relationship with his landlady. Eugene and Walt are soon caught up as participants and would-be detectives in a series of gruesome murders. The killer is marking the victims. What is the story the murderer is trying to tell? What in the past has launched the killing wave? Set against the backdrop of antebellum Manhattan and Brooklyn, this historical mystery mixes sexual mores, politics, music, poetry and the science of Phrenology in a compelling portrait of a transitional time.
He was forever following him, searching for nuggets of connection to the forsaker, finding in the echoes of others he who had abandoned him. He had read the forsaker’s portrait and knew which aspects he must seek out.
I went to Pfaff’s that sticky July evening a few years before our most uncivil of wars, choosing a night of hops and gentle, perhaps remarkable, conversation instead of one of hashish and heightened imagination. Some two years before, in 1855, Charlie Pfaff, a fat, genial, Swiss German—some said a refugee from the European Revolutions of 1848—had opened his basement beer hall on Broadway, a few doors south of the Winter Garden, in the midst of the theater district. I descended into the dimly lit Rathskeller, a smoke-filled, underground cave. Pfaff’s boasted good coffee and decent sausages, and was well-stocked with adequate European wines, but was most famous for its German style lager. I ordered the lager.
Eugene Lannon
Eugene Lannon is a journalist in pre-Civil War New York City. He is based in part on the author Fitz Hugh Ludlow. Like Ludlow, Eugene has a hashish habit. He frequents Pfaff’s, the Bohemian meeting place for writers and politicians. He is at the center of a series of odd murders where the murderer is marking his victims with a peculiar set of clues. What are these markings and what do they signify?
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman is at the height of his poetic powers. Somehow murder seems to be stalking him. Who is the killer? How do the deaths relate to the poet?
Mike Walsh
Ex-Congressman Mike Walsh, rabble rousing Irish politician, is drunk once again at Pfaff’s. He asks to be taken to a nearby whorehouse that he owns. He is being stalked by someone. Why?
Marietta Alboni
Marietta Alboni, famed Italian contralto, is trying out one of her signature operatic roles, Norma. Her tenor colleague is having a rough night. Why are his high notes going astray?
in research
Addressing the Wound
I am researching a third Eugene Lannon mystery that I've tentatively titled Addressing the Wound. Eugene is assigned to Civil War Washington D.C. He meets up with Walt Whitman who is nursing young soldiers.
Eugene Lannon
Eugene Lannon is assigned to cover the Civil War and the health care crisis in the hospitals of the Nation’s Capital, Washington, D.C. He reconnects with Walt Whitman who enlists him to help soldiers that are near death. Is someone helping them along towards death?
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman is nursing Civil War soldiers back to health. His own health is failing. It is stress of continuing death. Can he continue with this mission? How is death-filled nursing affecting his poetry?