Of Attics, Inspirations, and Secrets by Molly MacRae

I had a banner day a week before Christmas. My Kensington editor emailed and gave the okay to the massive outline I pounded out for him for the second book in my Haunted Shell Shop mystery series (he asked for 20-25 pages. Yikes! I gave him 32). I finished my 1,111-mile pretend hike from John O’Groats, Scotland, to Land’s End, Cornwall (I walked the full distance but did it here at home). And I finished writing my 20^th book. What a day! So then I had a few days to get ready for the holidays. What a mad dash!  

The book I finished also happens to be the 20^th book in a continuity series I have a hand in with four or five other writers. The books, for Guideposts, are super-gentle cozy mysteries set at the fictional Whistle Stop Café in real-life Dennison Ohio. This particular book (no firm title, yet, though I think of it as Wait Till the Sun Shines) involves a trunk found in an attic. The Guideposts editor handed me that prompt (after turning down my suggestion of a home-grown witness protection program, which might not have been cozy enough) and I developed the story from there.

I’ve always wanted to find a trunk in an attic and had a lot of fun filling this one (also hiding it in a crawl space under the eaves). There’s a recipe box in the trunk, kind of like the one I have in one of my desk drawers. My box is full of recipes my grandmother wrote out or clipped from newspapers starting in the early 1900s. My granny’s recipes tend toward savory dishes but I put a recipe for Dream Bars in the box in the book because of the café setting. Dream Bars seemed appropriate because Dennison was called Dreamsville, U.S.A, by the World War II troops whose trains made water stop in the town. Volunteers in Dennison fed the troops and gave them bag lunches to take with them. The recipe for Dream Bars was first published on Friday, May 4, 1934, in the Lincoln Star, by Mrs. Edna Whitmus of Sargent, Nebraska. If my granny had read that paper, maybe she would have clipped the recipe and kept it with her many recipes for boiled fish, sweetbreads, and braised celery.

Something from Granny's recipe box I've never made.

I also put an apron made of flour sacking in the trunk. It’s exactly like the fragile apron, that belonged to my great-aunt Bess, that I have in another drawer. Aunt Bess’s apron is from the late 30s and has a few holes and stains. The colors, though, are exactly right for the Whistle Stop Café with its sunny yellow walls and red wainscoting. 

Many of the books in the series feature dual timeline stories—one taking place in the 40s and another in the present day. With that in mind, the editor asked for the characters to find clothes from the 40s in the trunk. To do that right, I read articles about fashion during the war years and learned how styles changed as part of the war effort. I looked at ads in magazines and newspapers from the early 40s, at Butterick sewing patterns, and the trove of photographs available on the internet. I chose some of the clothes I read about for the trunk, but I have something else in a drawer that gave me the best inspiration—a few black and white snapshots of my mother and father. They married in June 1941 and had the luxury of time together before Dad shipped out for the China, India, Burma Theater in late 1942. They look so young and happy in the pictures (and Mom looks darling). One of the pictures is of their small wedding. Is there a wedding dress in the trunk? Yes, there is. 

I had great fun weaving a mystery or two around the trunk, and there’s more in it besides the recipes, apron, and cute clothes. I can’t give away all its secrets here, though.