Pick Your Poison by Barbara Ross

 Jenn McKinlay: I'm delighted to be hosting one of Jungle Red Writers' favorite guests, the brilliant Barbara Ross, here to tell us all about her latest release. Take it away, Barb! 

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Barbara Ross: Torn Asunder, the twelfth book in my Maine Clambake Mystery series, releases on Tuesday. I am so happy to be there with the Reds to celebrate! The Reds supported me for the release of my first book, The Death of an Ambitious Woman, and for Clammed Up, the first book in this series. It’s kind of amazing that we are still all here together.

To celebrate the release, I’m giving away signed copies of Torn Asunder to two lucky commenters below.

Readers often ask me if I outline or “just write.” The answer I always give is, “A bit of both. I have to send a synopsis to my editor for approval before I begin writing so I have a general idea of where the book will go. But in truth, the synopsis is a hand wave. Once I’m actually drafting there are still so many decisions to be made, each one affecting the other.”

For example, a six-to-eight-page, single-spaced synopsis might refer to a character called, “the son-in-law.” But what is his name? What does he look like? How long have he and the daughter character been married, which will surely affect his relationships with her and the other relatives? Most of all, what kind of person is he? I know generally how he will move through the story, but not how he will react to the situations unfolding around him.

Another example is a synopsis that says, “So-and-so drinks a glass of brandy that has been poisoned.” You see the issues. What poison? How did it get in the brandy? Who had access to the glass and when? It’s a mystery so multiple characters must have been able to do the deed. And, always a tricky one, how did the poisoner make sure the target drank the poison instead of some other person? You get the picture.

I haven’t used poison much as a weapon in my cozy, culinary mysteries. There’s a cliché about poison being a woman’s weapon and a cliché about it being a cozy murder weapon. Those twin beliefs have kept me away from it, in a sort of reactive, rejection mode. Up until Torn Asunder, I had only used poison once, and that was in non-fatal way.

I don’t know exactly why I decided on poison as my murder weapon in Torn Asunder. It may have been because in the first eleven books I had never had someone die from a massive allergic reaction to shellfish, something someone who runs a clambake like my protagonist, Julia Snowden, would worry about all the time. But this was a murder, so I needed a poison that would look like an allergic reaction but would not be one and would not respond to treatment for one.

As I wrote, other conditions emerged. How would the poison be administered? How long would it take for symptoms to show? How long to die? As the portrait of the killer emerged, I had to figure out how a person in those circumstances would have gotten ahold of the poison.

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Luckily for me, I had a resource at hand, Luci Zahray, renowned in the mystery community as the Poison Lady. In a series of emails, I described the circumstances of my murder. Luci made suggestions. Through the first draft and revisions, more detailed questions emerged. I wrote more emails and go more answers. Luci was a fan of my series which made it fun for me and I hope fun for her. Others have sung Luci’s praises here. Truly, she is a wonderful resource. It takes a village to write a cozy mystery.

I’m sure I still got things wrong. If you have murder in mind, please don’t follow the directions in Torn Asunder. Your results will certainly vary. But gaining an understanding of my poison gave me confidence. And confidence is what makes good writing possible.

Readers: How do you feel about poison as a weapon? Over-done or not-nearly-done enough? Do you want the descriptions and uses of poison in a work of fiction to be accurate or is near enough, good enough to suspend disbelief? Answer the question below or just say hi to be entered to win the giveaway.

Barbara Ross is the author of twelve Maine Clambake Mystery novels and six novellas. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara lives in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com 

About the book:

A short boat ride from Busman’s Harbor, Maine, Morrow Island is a perfect spot for a wedding—and a Snowden Family Clambake. Julia Snowden is busy organizing both—until a mysterious wedding crasher drops dead amid the festivities . . .

Julia’s best friend and business partner, Zoey, is about to marry her policeman boyfriend. Of course, a gorgeous white wedding dress shouldn’t be within fifty yards of a plate of buttery lobster—so that treat is reserved for the rehearsal dinner. Julia is a little worried about the timing, though, as she works around a predicted storm.

When a guest falls to the floor dead, it turns out that no one seems to know who he is, despite the fact that he’s been actively mingling and handing out business cards. And when an injection mark is spotted on his neck, it’s clear this wasn’t caused by a shellfish allergy. Now, as the weather deteriorates and a small group is stranded on the island with the body—and the killer—Julia starts interrogating staff, family members, and Zoey’s artist friends to find out who turned the clambake into a crime scene . . . 

With a Little Help from my Writer Friends and a Giveaway from Barbara Ross

LUCY BURDETTE: We love having our pal Barbara Ross visit the Reds because it means another book is coming soon! She has a giveaway too--that will be happening over at our Reds and Readers Facebook group. So after reading the post, pop over to the group to leave a comment and be entered in the drawing!

BARBARA ROSS: Hello, Jungle Red community! I am so happy to be back here. I’m especially pleased to be celebrating my most recent release, Easter Basket Murder, a novella collection, containing stories by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and me. My contribution to the collection is the novella, “Hopped Along.”

I’m especially pleased because one of the Reds—Julia Spencer-Fleming—was instrumental in the story’s origin.


In the early fall of 2022, I was invited on a weekend writing retreat. The participants included Maine writers Brenda Buchanan, Julia, and our hostess, Robin Facer. The house where we met was spacious with several writing spaces with wonderful lake views. The plan was to work on individual projects during the day, and then meet in the evening for food, wine, and conversation. After dinner we would read from the day’s work, or talk through a knotty plot problem, or discuss, endlessly, the crazy publishing world in which we found ourselves. And as is always the case when crime writers get together, we would laugh and laugh.

One of the reasons I committed to the retreat—besides, you know, fun—was that I was sitting on a time bomb. I had a contract to write a novella. It was due in seven months. At any moment my editor at Kensington was going to ask for my synopsis.




I’d known of the theme, Easter Basket Murder, for over a year at that point. In all that time, I hadn’t come up with a single useable idea. My first thought was, “severed head in an Easter Basket.” I maintain you can do pretty much anything in a cozy if you write it right. In Boiled Over, the second book in my Maine Clambake Mystery series, a foot comes bouncing out of a clambake fire. No one has ever complained. But think as I might, I couldn’t figure a way to make the head in the Easter basket anything but gruesome. That I was getting nowhere told me I wasn’t inspired by the idea.


My novellas are always third in these collections. That means the obvious murder, in this case a murder caused by some item or substance in an Easter basket, will have been used by the time the reader gets to my story. So, I try to come at the theme a little sideways. Another consideration was that Kensington novellas are contracted for between 25,000 and 35,000 words. At that length, only one of my first five novellas was structured like a classic whodunnit. The others were much more like short stories with more of a whatisgoingonhere or whattheheckhappened sort of thrust, and then—twist!

So that is what I knew when I arrived at the retreat. Come at the theme sideways. Surprise the reader with a twist. But I had none of these things, especially not a twist.

When I sat down that first day to write, I found, as writers almost always do, that I knew more about my story than I thought I did. I knew the opening setting—the newly renovated mansion on the island where my protagonist Julia Snowden and her family run their authentic Maine clambakes. I knew the occasion—Easter lunch. And I knew the attendees—Julia’s family and friends, most of the regulars in my cast.

I had one bright image of the opening scene, which I often do when writing, especially when writing a short story. There was a man, an older man, dressed in a morning suit, lying in a vegetable patch, a top hat, and an Easter basket nearby. Julia’s six-year-old nephew finds him while hunting for eggs. He runs to tell the grownups that the Easter bunny is dead in the garden.

Now there was plenty to explore. Why was the man dead in the garden? Why was he dressed like that? I knew he was an old-fashioned butler, not a participant in a wedding for example. I only have one regular character wealthy enough to have ever had a butler, so now that character was in the mix. Complicating things, I discovered as I learned more about the man in the morning suit, I liked him. I wanted Julia to get to know him when he was alive. But how if he was dead in the vegetable garden in the very first scene? Flashbacks? No, because if Julia had met him before, she would recognize him and that would cause all kinds of complications.

It was in this hopeless muddle I reported in that evening. Everyone jumped into the spirit of the challenge, tossing out ideas. (It’s much easier and more fun to write someone else’s book than your own.) We kept going, and in the nature of brainstorming, a lot of the ideas weren’t ones I was going to use. But if you generate enough ideas…Eureka! There it was. My twist. And the solution to the mystery. And the solution to the problem of Julia meeting the man while he was alive. Or did she?

I don’t remember who came up with what. It was definitely a group effort. A very talented group. I am forever grateful.

Readers: Have you ever had a knotty problem someone with an outside perspective helped you solve? Tell us about it. To be entered in the drawing for a hardcover copy of Easter Basket Murder, leave a comment in the Reds and Readers Facebook group.

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara’s Maine Clambake novellas are included along with stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis in six holiday anthologies from Kensington Publishing. Her twelfth Maine Clambake Mystery, Torn Asunder, will be published on April 23. Barbara and her husband live in Portland, Maine. Visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com

Buy Links for Easter Basket Murder

Easter Basket Murder Book Description

Put on your springtime best and grab a basket, because Easter egg hunting is to dye for in this delightful new collection of Easter-themed capers set in coastal Maine and featuring fan-favorite sleuths from the long-running, bestselling cozy mystery series by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross!

EASTER BASKET MURDER by LESLIE MEIER

Tinker’s Cove businesses are clashing over a new Easter Basket–themed promotion to boost in-store sales, with tensions boiling over the grand prize—a mysterious golden egg crafted by a reclusive Maine artist. When the one-of-a-kind art piece is stolen, it’s up to part-time reporter Lucy Stone to investigate three struggling entrepreneurs who stick out in the local scene. But a huge town scandal comes into focus when a harmless shopping spree turns deadly, leaving Lucy to stop a murderer from springing back into action . . .

DEATH BY EASTER EGG by LEE HOLLIS

As Bar Harbor’s annual egg hunt approaches, Island Food & Spirits columnist and restauranteur Hayley Powell is thrilled to introduce her grandson, Eli, to local springtime traditions. Turns out, keeping up with a rambunctious toddler isn’t always sunshine and rainbows—especially when a decadent peanut butter treat kills the Easter bunny himself during the festivities! Now, with a clear-as-cellophane case of murder on her hands, it’s up to Hayley to crack the clues and scramble deadly plans before it’s too late . . .

HOPPED ALONG by BARBARA ROSS

Julia Snowden’s Easter Sunday at Windsholme, a sprawling mansion tucked away on a remote Maine island, looks like it’s been borrowed from the pages of a lifestyle magazine. But when a dead body is discovered in the garden—then vanishes soon after without any explanation—an innocent hunt for eggs becomes a dangerous hunt for answers. With no clues beyond a copy of The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, Julia must find out if April Fool’s Day came early or if she’s caught in a killer’s twisted game . . . 

Inspiration by Barbara Ross #giveaway

LUCY BURDETTE: Today I'm so pleased to welcome a great friend and one of my favorite cozy mystery writers, all wrapped up in one package! I'm very lucky to have lured her into serving with me on the Friends of the Key West Library board. Mostly, I can't wait for the new book...

BARBARA ROSS: Thank you so much for having me, Lucy and the Jungle Reds!

For writers, inspiration comes from everywhere, and often seemingly out of nowhere. It may come from a snippet of overhead conversation, an image, a place, a person, or event. Inspiration can come from a combination of things, taken out of context, maybe half-remembered or not consciously remembered at all. Things the writer didn’t even know were there.

The eleventh Maine Clambake Mystery, Hidden Beneath, is about a summer enclave on an island in my fictional Busman’s Harbor. The island is ringed by a hundred summer houses that have often been passed down in families for generations. The story begins when a woman disappears and is presumed drowned.

Five years later, after the woman has been declared legally dead, my sleuth Julia Snowden and her mother arrive for her memorial service. The first floor of the woman’s home on the island is strangely empty and sterile, not at all the way Julia’s mother remembers it. But on the second floor, behind mountains of furniture and household furnishings, the dead woman has left a wealth of clues about her disappearance in the form of murals on the walls.

Unusually, I do know where the inspiration for this part of the story came from.

In October of 2021, after Tina Pesce died at the age of seventy-four, her older son, who lived on the other side of the country, had her house in Stockton Springs, Maine cleaned out in preparation for sale. On her way past, her neighbor, Noelle Merrill, noticed the work and decided to peek inside. (As one does. At least if one is a deeply curious, nay nosy person—like a mystery writer for example.)

What Noelle saw stunned her. The house was filled with murals painted on the sheetrock on the walls. Thinking it was a positive story in a fraught time, Noelle posted about the murals on Facebook. Those posts were circulated eventually picked up by the media, including this story in the Boston Globe, where I probably originally saw it. (The following photos are all credited to Noelle Merrill.)

I love this story for two reasons. The first is the surprise of it. Imagine walking in, expecting a little look into a neighborhood house, and finding those murals. I love it when people’s expectations get turned around in an instant.

The other reason is the persistence of the artist. Tina Pesce had always made art. She had a ceramics studio in Massachusetts and then a small gallery when she moved to Maine. When health and circumstances largely confined her to her home—she just kept going. Isn’t that the way human beings are? The drive to create never goes away.

Also, I love the murals. I do love primitives and representational artwork.

Of course, the murals in Hidden Beneath are completely different from the ones that inspired them. For one thing, they contain human figures that tell stories from the artist’s childhood in order to give clues to my sleuth. In my head, fully imagined, the murals also are quite different in style, although they are also primitives. I’ll be interested to hear what kind of pictures readers build in their heads from my descriptions.

An inspiration is a starting point only. The rest we build from our imaginations.

Readers: Do you ever go peeking where you maybe, sort of aren’t invited? Have you ever been surprised by what you found! (Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for a copy of the new book.)

About the book

In Barbara Ross’ award-winning series featuring sleuth Julia Snowden and her family’s coastal Maine clambake business, two mysteries rock the colony of Chipmunk Island after a suspicious memorial service has Julia and her mother shifting into some family sleuthing.

Serving up mouthwatering shellfish, the Snowden Family Clambake has become a beloved institution in Busman’s Harbor, Maine. But when new clues rise to the surface five years after the disappearance of Julia Snowden’ s mother’s friend, the family business shifts to sleuthing. 

Julia and her mother, Jacqueline, have come to the exclusive summer colony of Chipmunk Island to attend a memorial service for Jacqueline’s old friend Ginny, who’s been officially declared dead half a decade after she went out for her daily swim in the harbor and was never seen again. But something seems fishy at the service—especially with the ladies of the Wednesday Club. As Julia and Jacqueline begin looking into Ginny’s cold case, a present-day murder stirs the pot, and mother and daughter must dive into the deep end to get to the bottom of both mysteries . . . 

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About Barbara Ross

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara and her husband live in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com 

Two Irish-Themed Stories from Maddie Day and Barbara Ross

Jenn McKinlay: Having just returned from Ireland myself, I can not tell you how happy I am to welcome -- Fàilte -- two of the  Jungle Reds fave mystery writers with their Irish-centric mysteries! Yay!

Hello to all. Maddie Day (then known as Edith Maxwell) and Barb (aka Barbara Ross) have traveled a lot of the same roads on this publishing journey. Our first books were published by small presses. Our first series with Kensington debuted in the same year. We’ve been blogging together over at Wicked Authors for nine years. We already knew each other from Sisters in Crime New England and the New England Crime Bake. And both of us have been mentored and supported by several Reds. 

 

And this month we have books with the same theme coming out on the same day. We’re giving away two each!

 

In Four Leaf Cleaver, by Maddie Day, a cooking competition on Saint Patrick’s Day at Robbie Jordan’s Pans ‘n’ Pancakes goes seriously awry.

 

 

In Irish Coffee Murder, a collection of novellas by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross, the holiday is Saint Patrick’s and the signature drink of the day is murder.

 

 

To celebrate, Maddie (L) and Barb (R) sat down at the (virtual) kitchen table to talk writing, research, mysteries, and series.

Maddie: Barb, your novella solves a cold case, a crime from the past. Have you written other cold cases in your Maine Clambake series? Is it easier or harder than having your protagonist evade a criminal lurking in the present?

 

Barb: In mystery novels, it’s not unusual to have a crime in the distant past informing a crime in the present. What’s different about this novella is there is no crime in the present. (Is that a spoiler?) Therefore I had to really work at maintaining suspense and keeping the reader interested in a very cold case. The novella length is part of what made that feasible.

 

Barb: Maddie, why did you choose to write about St. Patrick's Day?

 

Maddie: I usually come up with my own book idea, unless I’m asked to write a Christmas novella, for example. For this book, my (and Barb’s editor) at Kensington suggested I could do a cooking competition. Or, he said, “What about a St. Patrick’s Day theme?” I found the combination irresistible, so I did both! Batter Off Dead, the previous book in the series, takes place in July, but after that was “Scarfed Down,” a Christmas novella. A mid-March story slotted into book time perfectly.

 

Maddie: This is your fifth novella, and you've said before you like writing that length. Would you consider writing only novellas in the future? Why, why not?

 

Barb: I do love writing these 25,000 to 30,000 word stories. I’m writing one now to be published in the spring of 2024. (Red Julia Spencer-Fleming was part of a brainstorming session for this one.) I’m very lucky my publisher, Kensington, has offered me the opportunity to be a part of these collections of stories. However, I wouldn’t write only novellas for two reasons. 1) I would miss the opportunity to tell longer stories, And 2) getting novellas published outside the confines of these anthologies is very difficult.

 

Barb: This is the 11th book in the Country Store Mysteries. What do you find more challenging and what is easier when writing this far into a series?

 

Maddie: I’m writing book 12 now and have a contract through  book 13, which is kind of astonishing. What’s easier is that I know the world. I’m pals with my chef’s staff, hugely fond of her Aunt Adele, and adore Robbie Jordan’s husband Abe almost as much as she does. I know how hilly Brown County is and what fictional South Lick looks like. I love when it comes time on my rotation to write a new Country Store book so I can plunge back into that world and hang out with my imaginary friends.

 

As with any long-running series (looking at more than half the Jungle Reds right now), the challenges come in keeping the stories fresh. Making sure protag Robbie Jordan keeps changing and growing in her personal life and in her sleuthing. Finding plausible new people to murder and that Very Good Reason for Robbie to have to investigate. 

 

Maddie: Do you have Irish heritage? Or doesn't it matter for writing about an American holiday with little resemblance to actual Ireland? 

 

Barb: “Perked Up” takes place entirely in Maine, though Julia and friends do go on a roadtrip to the middle of the state while investigating the mystery. I knew next to nothing about the Irish in Maine and found a marvelous book, They Change Their Sky: The Irish in Maine, a collection of scholarly  essays edited by Michael C. Connolly. When we think of Irish emigration to the United States we tend to think of famine-driven immigration to big cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago. But that is only a part of the story. Did you know the oldest surviving Catholic church building in the US is in Newcastle, Maine? (Next town on the coast from where the Clambake mysteries take place.) Still in use, Saint Patrick’s was built  in 1807 by Irish immigrants who became wealthy shipbuilders.

 

As for me, last summer in Dublin, I had a really fun visit with a genealogist at EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum. I have Irish ancestry, somewhat distantly, on both sides. My father’s great-grandmother, Eleanor Armstrong, was born in 1843 County, Armagh, now in Northern Ireland and my mother’s great-great-great grandfather was born in 1812 in Dublin.

 

Barb: How about your Irish heritage? What kind of research did you do to write this book?

 

Maddie: My maternal grandfather, Richard Flaherty, was a classic bullheaded Irish-American in San Francisco who didn’t speak to my mother from shortly before I was born until he died, as stubborn as ever and with a full head of dark hair, at ninety-four. He had twin brothers who didn’t speak to each other. On the other hand, one of those twin’s sons, my mom’s cousin Bill, is a sweet and devoted family man I’ve gotten to know a bit. I look forward to finally getting to Ireland sometime soon and digging more deeply into the Flahertys of my great-grandparents’ generation.

 

Unlike you, Barb, I didn’t dig too far into the Irish in Indiana, and my Maxwell family roots there are Scottish. For research, I adapted and tested lots of Irish-flavored recipes, and otherwise went full-on American interpretation of the holiday (except green beer). 

 

Maddie and Barb: Thank you to Jenn for hosting us! We hope you’ll all join us at the Wicked Authors blog every weekday, and find us at our web sites and on social media. We wish you happy Irish-styled reading.

 

Readers: What’s your favorite holiday to read about? Do you celebrate any obscure holidays nobody writes about? Do you have a St. Patrick’s Day tradition? We’ll each give away a copy of our new book to two commenters (that is two commenters, two books each).

 

In Four Leaf Cleaver, there’s no mistaking Saint Patrick’s Day at Pans ’N Pancakes, where  the shelves of vintage cookware in her southern Indiana store are draped with Kelly-green garlands and her restaurant is serving shepherd’s pie and Guinness Beer brownies. The big event, however, is a televised Irish cooking competition to be filmed on site. Unfortunately, someone’s luck has run out. Before the cameras start rolling, tough-as-nails producer Tara O’Hara Moore is found upstairs in her B&B room, a heavy cleaver left by her side. Now, not only does Robbie have a store full of festive decorations, she’s got a restaurant full of suspects . . .

 

In “Perked Up,” Barb’s novella in Irish Coffee Murder, It’s a snowy St. Patrick’s night in Busman’s Harbor, Maine. When the power goes out, what better way for Julia Snowden to spend the evening than sharing local ghost stories—and Irish coffees—with friends and family? By the time the lights come back, they might even have solved the coldest case in town . . .

 

Maddie Day pens the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the new Cece Barton Mysteries. As Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell, she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and award-nominated short crime fiction. Day/Maxwell lives with her beau and cat Martin north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com, Wicked Authors, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and on social media: BookBub,Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

 

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara’s Maine Clambake novellas are included along with stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis in holiday anthologies from Kensington Publishing. Barbara and her husband live in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com, on her blog at Wicked Authors and on BookBub, Goodreads, Facebook, and Instagram.

 

 

Barbara Ross's MUDDLED THROUGH: Miss Rumphius and Lupines

 

HALLIE EPHRON: It's a very happy day indeed when we get to welcome the lovely and talented (and funny an super-nice...) Barbara Ross to Jungle Red with a new book - the tenth in her delicious Maine Clambake Mystery Series, MUDDLED THROUGH. The series is great fun and you can't find a more authentic Maine experience, short of being there.

Welcome Barbara!

BARBARA ROSS: Hi Reds and Reds-readers! I am so happy to be here. Many of you will already know that several Reds have been friends and mentors to me over the years, especially the New England crew. Lucy and I share a birthday (same year, one week apart) so we celebrate together in Key West. This year we celebrated our January birthdays in March due to babies who arrived later than expected, covid, and the general messiness.

My latest book, released Tuesday, is Muddled Through, the tenth Maine Clambake Mystery series. One topic while researching for this book, I particularly enjoyed was discovering more about Barbara Cooney and her classic children’s story, Miss Rumphius. In the book, published in 1982, Alice Rumphius tells her grandfather that when she grows up, she will go to faraway places, and when she gets old, she will live in a house by the sea. Her grandfather tells her she must do one additional thing: She must do something to make the world more beautiful.

Alice does go to faraway places. An intrepid, self-directed single woman, she travels around the world. Then she goes back to Maine to live in a house by the sea. Once there, she makes the world more beautiful by dropping lupine seeds wherever she goes.

I based my contemporary character, Alice Rumsford, on Miss Rumphius. My character also travels the world, returns to her family’s cottage on the Maine coast, and endeavors to make her community more beautiful.

Barbara Cooney was born in 1917 in Brooklyn. She went to Smith College, married, had two children, discovered her husband was a “cad” and a “womanizer” and divorced. Her father and brother had disowned her when she married, so she supported her family as a children’s book illustrator. She later remarried, happily, had two more children, and traveled widely to gain inspiration for her art. She won two Caldecott Medals and a National Book Award (for Miss Rumphius). She eventually lived in Damariscotta, Maine, which is, happily, the next town north of my fictional town of Busman’s Harbor.

Cooney almost certainly based the character of Miss Rumphius on Hilda Edwards Hamlin, born in 1889. Hamlin arrived in Christmas Cove, Maine, very near Damariscotta, to visit an uncle in 1904. Like Barbara Cooney, she graduated from Smith College, thought a generation earlier, married, had children, and divorced.

(In perhaps a coincidence, or perhaps an illustration that the world of educated New England WASPs was very small, Barbara Cooney’s second husband was Charles Talbot Porter. Hilda’s ex-husband was Talbot Faulkner Hamlin. In another coincidence, in typing this, I just realized Hamlin must have been at Smith with my grandmother. I will look for her in the yearbook)

Like Miss Rumphius, Hamlin traveled widely and then settled in the little cottage in Christmas Cove. In Maine, she made the world more beautiful by scattering lupine seeds wherever she went. She didn’t drive and neighbors who gave her rides would discover her surreptitiously tossing seeds out their car windows. Yankee magazine ran an article on her in 1971 that included the quote, “If friends of Hilda Hamlin would tote a few sticks of wood to her cottage they would be doubly welcome.” In a later issue, they had to print a plea for people to stop visiting her.

The lupines that Hilda Hamlin seeded are not native to Maine. They come from the west coast. Even though their beauty on roadsides and meadows between Father’s Day and the Fourth of July has come to symbolize Maine, they didn’t start appearing until the 1950s, when Hilda Hamlin was in her sixties. These new lupines have crowded out the more modest local variety and in so doing extirpated the Kargan Blue Butterfly.

The lupines are an excellent metaphor for incomers to Maine. The investment, enterprinse and support for local businesses they bring is welcome, but the non-natives are difficult to cultivate and impossible to contain. The natives worry about being crowded out, swallowed up by the wolves for which the lupines are named.

Dear Reds and Readers: What do you think? Native plants only, or can you beautify the world with non-natives? Feel free to treat the question literally, as a metaphor, or both.

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries and the Jane Darrowfield Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara’s Maine Clambake novellas are included along with stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis in holiday anthologies from Kensington Publishing. Barbara and her husband live in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com

My Grandmother’s Oyster Plates @maineclambakemysteries

LUCY BURDETTE: It's always a happy day for me when Barbara Ross's next Maine mystery comes out. Sadly, I've already read SHUCKED APART. But I highly recommend the series to you, and know you'll enjoy her blog post today too. Welcome Barb!

BARBARA ROSS: Shucked Apart, the ninth Maine Clambake Mystery, is about oyster farming on the Damariscotta River. I loved doing the research, especially the part that started with a Damariscotta River Cruise, which takes you on a tour of the beautiful river, where you can see eagles, seals and lobster pots, and several oyster farms. On the trip they offer oysters from each farm and explain the difference in growing methods and taste. I recommend the tour to anyone who finds themselves in mid-coast Maine in the summer.

The subject of oysters brought me naturally to the subject of my grandmother’s oyster plates. It brought me there naturally because the plates were under my coffee table, which had also been hers, staring me in the face.

I first remember the coffee table, with the plates on its bottom shelf visible through the glass top, at my grandparents' house in Watermill, Long Island. That house was built in 1954 and following a tradition in our family, once the furniture was placed in the house it was never moved again. Sometimes, during my grandparents’ frequent cocktail parties, the crab you see in the corner of the photo above was on top of the coffee table filled with peanuts, which my brother and I found very exciting.

When my grandparents died the coffee table, plates, crab, and lobster-on-a-shell went to my parents’ sunporch in Dallas, Pennsylvania, where my kids and my niece and nephew grew up seeing them. When my parents downsized, the table ended up in their smaller home’s basement, as did the oyster plates, packed in a box. When it came time to empty that house, I grabbed them both. Now they’re at my house in Portland, Maine, where we clear them off that bottom shelf whenever my toddler granddaughters come to visit.

Thinking about the oyster plates I wondered: Do we keep things because they have meaning, or do they have meaning because we keep them?

The only plate I’ve done any research about this this one.

The design was specifically commissioned by Lucy Hayes, the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes and made by Limoges for his inauguration in 1877. And if my plate said that on the back, it would be worth, according to Christies, $8,000 to $12,000. Surprise, surprise, it doesn’t say that on the back. The design was very popular and offered to the public, so my plate is probably worth more like $8.00 to $12.00.

I don’t know if that plate was in the family from 1877 onwards. It is plausible. My grandmother’s family were famous cabinetmakers in New York City. They made the chairs for the US House of Representatives in 1857, and later collaborated with the architects McKim, Mead and White, and with Louis Comfort Tiffany. In the next generation, they were among the founders of interior design as an industry. We have a lots of their stuff around, though I often suspect most of we have was rejected from paying commissions.

Or, it could equally plausibly be that one of my grandmother’s friends spotted the plate at a yard sale in the 1950s and bought it for her. You know how it is when it gets around that you’re collecting something.

Barbara's grandmother

Whichever it is, the value to me is that the plates have been around all my life and remind me of happy times and people I loved. And now I’m imprinting them on a new generation.

Readers: What do you think? Do we keep things because they have meaning, or do they have meaning because we keep them? Is there something you treasure, even if it has value only to you? Tell us about it.

About Shucked Apart

The Snowden Family Clambake Company has a beloved reputation in Busman’s Harbor, Maine. Almost as famous is the sleuthing ability of proprietor Julia Snowden, which is why an oyster farmer seeks her out when she’s in trouble.

 

When Andie Greatorex is robbed of two buckets of oyster seed worth $35,000, she wonders if somebody’s trying to mussel her out of business. Could it be a rival oyster farmer, a steamed former employee, or a snooty summer resident who objects to her unsightly oyster cages floating on the beautiful Damariscotta River? There’s also a lobsterman who’s worried the farm’s expanding lease will encroach on his territory and Andie’s ex-partner, who may come to regret their split. Before Julia can make much headway in the investigation, Andie turns up dead, stabbed by a shucking knife. Now it’s up to Julia to set a trap for a cold and clammy killer . . .

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About Barb

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries and the Jane Darrowfield Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com 

On Birthdays

LUCY BURDETTE: I grew up sharing a birthday “season” with my sister Sue, and I don’t remember ever minding that. We each got our own cake, mine on January 14 and hers on the 27th, but we always shared parties. We were less than a year apart – can you imagine? What were my parents thinking?

But I digress…As long as I can remember, the birthday tradition in my family has been choosing the cake of your dreams:). This chocolate lovely is the one most of my family prefers these days.

My father always chose yellow cake with mocha icing. My older sister and I always had angel food cake with whipped cream as the frosting. My mother didn't like cake, so we made her tapioca out of a box.

A couple of years ago, our daughter and her hub were in Key West for our son-in-law's birthday, which falls on New Year’s Eve. He loves carrot cake. Now I am not a big fan of carrot cake--in fact I had never made one. And if faced with a supermarket carrot cake, I will always pass a slice by. However, I do believe that the birthday person should have the homemade cake of his or her dreams. So here was his cake.

As for gifts, the best ones I've ever gotten came in orange stripes. Tigger was an orange tiger cat who joined the family when I was 13. I lobbied hard for him and he was an excellent family member for many years. (This is my mother with Tigger and Schatze the dog.)

Two years ago this week, I decided I’d been pet-less too long (4 months!) and went to the Key West humane society to pick out a kitty. You can read all about T-bone’s gotcha day right here--he's a wonderful guy...

Lately in Key West, I've been sharing a birthday celebration with friend and writer Barbara Ross, who's a week older than I am.

Obviously, we can't have a party this year, but you can imagine us eating this cake...at a good social distance on their back porch.

How do you feel about birthdays Reds? Is there cake? Any other special traditions?