Mixed Emotions - 25 Years After the Fact

by Toni L.P. Kelner

This month is my twenty-fifth anniversary of being a published mystery writer. In June of 1993, Zebra Books (now known as Kensington) published Down Home Murder, the first in my Laura Fleming series set in a small North Carolina mill town. There's an eccentric extended family based on my own, and in combating my own homesickness at the time it was written, I included a lot of local color and Southernisms.



I bring this up for a triple of reasons. First, I'm both delighted and amazed to still be in the mystery-writing game twenty-five years later. I haven't achieved all my writerly goals, but I've hit quite a few plus some I didn't ever expect.

Second, in commemoration of this, JABberwocky and I will be hosting a giveaway of the Kindle ebook edition of Down Home Murder starting on Thursday, June 21, and ending on Monday, June 25. That's a FREE download!

Third, I find myself with very mixed emotions about Down Home Murder.

On the good side, I'm proud of the characters and the setting and the language, and fairly satisfied with the plot. Most of the themes still ring true to me: finding one's place in one's family, love/annoyance relationships with relatives, the fact that the South and Southerners are not the stereotypes one might expect. And I couldn't write about the South without talking about racism, which is just as much an issue as it ever was. And therein lie the mixed emotions.

Full disclosure here. I was raised in a family that had some serious issues with racial prejudice, particularly involving people of color. I recognized this as wrong very early on, and continue to try to move away from it. In Down Home Murder, I thought I was being very modern and liberal. And maybe for the time, I wasn't too bad. But when I read some of those scenes with an older and I hope more knowledgeable, eye, I'm extremely embarrassed.

Early on in the book, Laura Fleming--Laurie Anne to her family--meets up with her Aunt Nora at the hospital to visit Laura's grandfather. Aunt Nora mentions that they paid for a private room so Paw wouldn't have to share because you never know who you're going to get in a room with you. And she looks significanty at a woman of color. Laura bristles, but says nothing because she knows Aunt Nora didn't mean any harm.

Let me reiterate. The woman was freaked by her father possibly sharing a room with a person of color, but Laura understood she didn't mean any harm. And at the time, I understood, too. But now... Nope, I don't understand. In fact, I want to tell Aunt Nora that she was being a racist jackwagon.

That's not even the worst of it. Later on, Laura finds out that her favorite cousin Thaddeous has joined the Klan in reaction to a white girl's body being found dead in a traditionally black section of town. Laura is horrified, which soothes me somewhat, and she tells him so. But she still socializes with him and talks with him, and doesn't tell anybody what he's doing. Later on, Thaddeous does see what a racist jackwagon he's been, and opposes the Klan publicly. But still... I'm mortified by that plot point. I would like to think that Laura was enlightened for the time, but I know darned well that for today, she was at the very least normalizing horribly racist behavior.

So it is with trepidation that I offer this book to modern audiences. I'm still proud of a lot of the book, and goodness knows, if I were writing it today, it would be a very different book. I hope that readers will forgive me my earlier ignorance as an artifact from a quarter of the century ago.

 

 

Comments

[Mark]

So Laura tells Thad what she thinks. And Thad eventually realizes the error of his ways and takes a stand against them. I'm not seeing the problem. Actually, if she called him out publically and refused to interact with him at all, I think the result would have been that he'd dig in his heels and refuse to see how horribly wrong he was for joining the Klan in the first place.

Sorry, but I'm going to hijack the post for a minute. I honestly think one of the issues we are having in this country right now is that we are too ready to call names and cut people out of our lives when they don't agree with us. You will never win people to your point of view if you don't interact with them. And if you are labeling people and yelling at them, it is just going to entrench them in their way of thinking. You will get further with people with love and communication than you will with hatred (name calling) and ostracizing them. All you'll get with that are two sides ready to shout past each other but not listen to each other.

[Elaine Viets]

It's proof you've grown as a writer, Toni, and you were true to your character. Congratulations on your re-issue.

[Storyteller Mary]

You've grown and our society has grown. I've ordered the book, and I'll read with open mind and heart.
I remember my high school class ('66) having shocked conversations about the very idea of inter-racial dating, and at that time, mixed marriage was illegal in Missouri. We have come a long way . . . with much further to go.

[Toni LP Kelner]

The giveaway is live now and through Monday. (Would have posted this sooner, but I've been out of the country.)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FJ6EC18/?tag=publishmarket-20