An Interview With Linda Norlander

by Grace Topping

One of the pleasures of reading books in a series is seeing how the author handles the recurring characters and how the main character grows from book to book. The latest book in Linda Norlander’s A Cabin by the Lake Mystery Series, Death of a Fox, follows Jamie Forest on yet another adventure in which the skills she has developed over the course of her career as an editor help her solve a complex mystery that reaches far into the past. 

 

Death of a Fox

Back Cover Copy

Jamie Forest, transplanted New Yorker, is enjoying her first spring in the Northwoods of Minnesota when her octogenarian friend Clarence introduces her to an elderly recluse, Nella Fox. Nella wants help writing her memoirs. She is the owner of an estate that was once a TB sanatorium. The hospital is long abandoned and crumbling. Rumors abound that the neglected building carries the secret of a long-ago murder. When one of the cousins who cares for Nella is found dead in the old hospital, Jamie is drawn into its dark history. Instead of enjoying the spring awakening, Jamie finds herself piecing together the story of the estate and trying to solve two mysteries—one in the past and one in the present.

                                 www.amazon.com

 

Welcome back to Writers Who Kill, Linda.

 

Jamie Forest is a former New Yorker who moves to a cabin in a remote area of Minnesota. Why?

 

In a case of mistaken identity, she was ripped out of her apartment in Queens and arrested for drug dealing. This happened on the eve of her divorce and shortly after the death of her father. She decided she needed a fresh start, and the old family cabin on Lake Larissa in Minnesota was the place to be. I created Jamie as a native New Yorker so she could give an outsider’s perspective to Northwoods living.

 

Jamie is convinced to ghostwrite the memoir of Nella Fox, an elderly local woman. The project turns out to be more of a challenge than she anticipated. Have you ever ghostwritten anything? What do you think would be the biggest challenge a ghostwriter would face?

 

I have never been a ghostwriter. I recently read an article in the New Yorker by J. R. Moehringer, who was the ghostwriter for Prince Harry’s Spare. He talked about the challenges, including developing a relationship with the author and understanding that, in the end, it’s not your story, it’s your author’s story. Jamie struggles because Miss Nella tells her in the beginning that she wants her audience to be “the families of the people who lived and died here and the seekers of truth.” And yet, she’s reluctant to tell the truth. 

 

Why is it important to memoirists that their stories be told? Some subjects want their memoirs to be written, but they don’t want to remember key experiences. 

 

In Nella’s case, she is conflicted. She’s wracked by guilt over what happened in the past and also proud of the hospital and what it accomplished. As painful as the truth might be, in her old age, she wants to leave a legacy and right some wrongs.

 

As a professional editor, Jamie has experience working with people on their memoirs. She states that if the subject’s goal is to make the bestseller list, she turns them down. Why?

 

Jamie’s memoir clientele are not famous people like Prince Harry. They are ordinary people wanting to chronicle their lives or the lives of loved ones. In her past experience with memoirs, she has found the stories to be too mundane for anyone but the author to be interested in. She feels she is setting herself and the author up for failure if they think the end product will sell. 

A theme throughout Death of a Fox is that the past can stretch out its long arms and affect the present. We see this in Jamie’s work with Nella Fox and also with Jamie’s ex-husband, who turns up, making financial demands on her. Jamie feels his presence like a storm cloud hovering over her, ready to burst. Can we ever truly escape the past?

 

I don’t think we can escape what’s happened to us in the past. Jamie has tried by moving out of the big city to the tranquility of her cabin by the lake. However, for her and for anyone else, the past is always there. (More to come on the past haunting her in the next book.)

 

You shine a light on Native American children being forced into boarding schools with disastrous results. Is that area of Minnesota still seeing the fallout of that?

 

Definitely. The purpose of the schools was supposedly to help Native children assimilate into the white culture—“kill the Indian and make the man.” However, an even darker purpose was to destroy the tribes and grab the land. Many who attended the schools lost their identity, language, and heritage. I met a Native American who told me his mother went to boarding school and never talked with him about the experience or about her heritage. He is among the many who are now working to recover their roots.

 

It is said that setting can be another character in a book, and if the book were set elsewhere, it wouldn’t have the same impact. Your setting, which includes a deserted sanatorium used to treat patients with TB, adds a touch of the Gothic to your novel. What inspired you to use a sanatorium in your story?

 

I love the concept of old buildings and the secrets they hold. One day I was having tea with my 93-year-old British neighbor. She’d survived the London blitz only to later contract TB as a young adult. She told me about the treatment and her experience in a sanatorium. It sparked an idea. What about an old TB sanatorium in the Northwoods? I did research and found out hospitals like that existed all over Minnesota, and many of them were privately owned. Thus, Gooseberry Acres was born.

 

The storyline of how contagious TB was and the need for sanatoriums is a reminder of the spread of Covid. Was TB as contagious?

 

While TB is contagious and spread through the air, it is not nearly as contagious as Covid. TB affected the rich and the poor but was more common in impoverished circumstances with overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. Until the development of antibiotics, there was no cure for TB and no way to effectively prevent it. We are fortunate with Covid that a vaccine was developed so quickly, and people were willing to wear masks to prevent the spread.

 

Nella Fox says that with new antibiotics, people with TB no longer needed the sanatorium her father ran. Was that the only reason for the sanatorium closing?

 

The development of medicines to treat TB was the main reason for the hospital to close. People could be treated in the community. Nella’s father, Dr. Fox, considered trying to turn his hospital into a health spa, but he was getting old and his health was failing. Gooseberry fell into ruin when the last patient was discharged. Historically, as the sanatoriums in the state closed, some were repurposed as nursing homes and other healthcare facilities, but many were eventually razed.

 

Death of a Fox is a traditional mystery with a dash of humor. I loved the excerpts from a book Jamie is editing that recounts the adventures of a potbellied pig, Apple Pie, who is the narrator of a cozy murder mystery. It provides some comic relief. Have you ever thought of writing a humorous cozy mystery?

 

Great timing on this question! I have a new series coming out in the fall that takes a more humorous and whimsical tone. I’m not sure it would qualify as a cozy because of some controversial subject matter, but it does involve an elderly neighbor, a ghost, and a cat. Moreover, the cat does not get along with Liza, the main character. It’s the first of the Liza, Mrs. Wilkens, and the Ghost series.

 

You state that potbellied pigs are as personable as dogs but are more intelligent and make good pets. Do you have any experience with pigs as pets?

 

No, but it was interesting to read about potbellied pigs. Their owners swear by them. I am currently without pets but enjoy the “grand cats and grand dogs.” They are nice to visit, but I don’t have to feed them, walk them, or clean their litter boxes!

 

What is the most valuable thing you’ve learned since you started writing?

 

I've learned that, as writers, we have our ups and downs. Our rejections and our acceptances. The important thing is to keep on writing.

 

What’s next for Jamie Forester and the people of her area of Minnesota?

 

Death of a Dreamcatcher is scheduled for release in May of 2024. We find Jamie on a camping trip with Jim, the love of her life. She learns that his older brother presumably drowned twenty years ago, but his body was never found. She’s launched into another adventure to find out what happened to him.

 

Thank you, Linda. I look forward to following more of Jamie’s adventures.

 

You can learn more about Linda Norlander and her books at https://www.lindanorlander.com

 

 

 Grace Topping is the author of the Laura Bishop Mystery Series.