My Weblog: Facts Behind the Fiction!

Hank Phillippi Ryan: You know Hallie Ephron, of course. If you don't, go to her website RIGHT NOW and see what youre missing! (Of course, now, you're no longer missing it!)(She's third from left,(after mysterious blonde, and Jan Brogan) then me, then Bill Landay, and Barbara Shapiro and Chris Castellani.)

The storied and glorious Hallie has a new book out--fascinating suspense fiction, as always, with a tether in reality. She's getting asked about it all over the country--check her website for when she's visiting near you! But here's the scoop--before anyone else!

Facts Behind the Fiction:

Hallie Ephron's Inspirations for THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN

Hallie Ephron: Yes, THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN is completely fiction. I made up Mina Yetner, the 90-year-old woman who helps her neighbor's 30-year-old daughter figure out why her mother's house has turned into a hoarder's nest. And yet, and yet... both characters have a fair amount of me in them.

I made up Sparkles Variety where many scenes take place. And yet, and yet... there was a Sparkles Variety around the corner from where I live; it closed a few years ago (there were spangles in the sign.)

Over and over, writing this book, I drew from fact to create fiction. Here are some of the questions readers ask me:

Did a bomber really crash into the Empire State Building in 1945? Yes. It did.

Here’s an excerpt from a vivid account of the moment in an excerpt from Hilton Obenzinger’s “New York on Fire:”

B-25 Bomber Crashes into the Empire State Building July 28, 1945

Colonel Smith lowered the landing gear of the B-25 thinking he was about to land in Newark when through the fog he saw that he was heading directly for Radio City Music Hall. Quickly he began to raise his landing-gear tilting his nose up almost to a stall veering just past the buff-colored Salmon Building.

They say one of the secretaries in the Catholic War Relief Office on the 79th floor of the Empire State Building could see Colonel Smith’s Clark Gable mustache as the cockpit filled up with limestone and chrome mullions from around the building’s windows. Streams of molten high-octane fuel cascaded down the side of the building.

The GIs on the deck of the troopship on the Hudson shouted, The Japs are bombing New York with V-2s!

Why do so few people remember that crash?

Just a week later, the U.S. bombed Hiroshima.

Did an elevator operator survive an 80-story fall?

She did. The photo is of her recovering in the hospital. Here is an excerpt from Betty Lou Gower Oliver’s obituary: "As a young 20 year old bride, Betty Lou Oliver was the elevator operator of elevator #6 in the Empire State Building when Lt. Col. Willian F. Smith’s B-25 hit the north side of the building between the 79th and 80th floor on July 28th, 1945. Seriously injured, she was put in an elevator for evacuation to medical help. … "

The car and elevator operator plunged 1,000 feet (75 stories) into a sub-basement. The freefall of the elevator was broken by the massive coils of cables that had fallen to the bottom of the shaft. Despite suffering a broken back and legs, the operator survived. She had to be cut from the mangled wreckage. July 28th was supposed to be her last day on the job.   

She recovered in less than eight months, and returned to Ft. Smith, AR, with her husband Oscar Lee Oliver. She had three children and seven grandchildren. She died November 24, 1999.

Was there a second survivor in the elevator?

Uh, no. I made that up. And to tell you why would spoil it for you.

Higgs Point in the Bronx, with its view of a marsh and Manhattan sky line -- is it a real place?

The details of the neighborhood are entirely fiction but geographically the place exists. Higgs Point is based on a neighborhood the Harding Park neighborhood in Clason Point at the southern tip of the Bronx.

It's across the water from LaGuardia, where the East River meets the Long Island Sound, and roughly where the Bronx Whitestone Bridge connects Queens and the Bronx. Like Higgs Point in the book, the real neighborhood has a tidal marsh, lagoons, and an anomalous collection of 1920′s bungalows and summer houses lined up on narrow streets, and a fantastic view of the Manhattan skyline.

A huge bonus was the neighborhood’s history. The indigenous Siwanoy Indians, who were driven from the area in the 1700′s, called it Snakapins, meaning “land between two waters.” At the turn of the 20th century, ferries brought summer-weary visitors there from Queens to swim on its beaches and enormous swimming pool (called The Inkwell because the water piped directly from the East River was that dark), play at its amusement park, and gamble, carouse at its saloons and casino, and rent tents on platforms lined up at the water's edge.

Did you draw from your own experience, writing a young woman whose mother is dying?

My mother died when she was 56; I was 23. Like the mother in the book, she'd been an alcoholic for decades, sadly at a time before treatments for depression had been developed and at a time when there was so much shame associated with being a woman and an alcoholic. I wanted to write about how complicated it is, losing a mother who, on the one level you love and admire enormously, and on another level you feel so relieved that finally "it's over."

Guilt, grief, anger -- they get all mixed up together. So yes, I drew plenty.

Comments

THANKS, Hank! Love that picture you dug up... taken in my very own kitchen. That's Jan Brogan, Me, you, Bill Landay, Barbara Shapiro, and Chris Castellani all celebrating THE OTHER WOMAN and Lucy Burdette's DEATH IN FOUR COURSES. Such a pleasure being in the company of other authors, especially mystery authors ... a great supportive community. Happy to be here on Femmes Fatales!

Posted by: Hallie Ephron | April 10, 2013 at 06:25 AM