An Interview with Alicia Beckman (Leslie Budewitz) By E. B. Davis

 

He was not here to impose judgment, but to bring a man before society’s

judgment. Render unto Caesar and all that. If he crossed into God’s

territory in the process, tough luck for the Big Guy.

Alicia Beckman, Blind Faith, Kindle Loc. 1367

 

Long-buried secrets come back with a vengeance in a cold case gone red-hot in Agatha Award-winning author Alicia Beckman’s second novel, perfect for fans of Laura Lippman and Greer Hendricks.

For decades, the unsolved murder of Father Michael Leary has haunted Billings, Montana, the community he served. Who summoned the priest late one autumn night, then left his body in a sandstone gully for the ravens and other wild scavengers?
 
And it’s haunted no one more than Lindsay Keller, who admired and confided in him as a teenager. Compelled by his example to work for justice, she became a prosecutor. But after a devastating case left her shattered, she fled the rough-and-tumble for the safety of a desk, handling real estate deals and historic preservation projects. Good work, but not what she’d dreamed of. 
 
Now Lindsay finds herself in possession of the priest’s wallet, the photo of a young girl tucked inside. She’s sure she knows the girl, and that it’s tied to his death. But how?
 
Detective Brian Donovan, a hot-shot Boston transplant, would like nothing more than to solve the county’s coldest case. Probing the life and death of Father Leary takes Lindsay and Donovan deep into long-simmering tensions in this seemingly-peaceful place.
 
Then another woman far away digs up unexpected clues about her own family’s past—a history rooted in a shocking truth—and her questions bring her to Lindsay and the detective. But the dangerous answers could rock the community to its very core.

Amazon.com

 

This was one of the hardest interviews I’ve ever written. Why? Alicia Beckman presents a long, dark tale involving three families. The story starts in 1972 (actually before that) and ends in 2016. The story is shown through five characters throughout those years. It’s hard to say who is the main character. I enjoyed getting to know all of them, but particularly Lindsay Keller, Brian Donovan, and Michael Leary. There are two murders. The first in 1972, which was solved, but without a known motive—a key to the second murder—one yet to be solved—the 1995 murder of Father Michael Leary. The perpetrator of the first killing isn’t talking and couldn’t have killed the second victim because he was in prison.

 

I’ve focused on characters and all things Montana in the interview because I don’t want to spoil the plot. I hope the interview will spark your interest to read this page turner. Please welcome Alicia Beckman aka Leslie Budewitz to WWK.           E. B. Davis

What’s a Green River?

 

It’s a lemon-lime soft drink that was hand-mixed at diners and soda fountains when I was a kid in the 1960s, in Billings, Montana. I fondly remember a man in my parents’ bowling league stepping behind the counter at the bowling alley café to mix them for the kids and his happiness in seeing our joy. No doubt the color and name came from a colored syrup.

 

Why is Billings, Montana called the Magic City?

 

City boosters promoted the nickname in the 1950s and ‘60s, claiming the town “grew like magic.” Now Billings is called Montana’s Trailhead.

 

What’s a sensei?

 

A martial arts teacher. The term carries a sense of wisdom and trust.

 

When Lindsay gets the wallet of Father Leary, whom she knew and liked when he taught at her high school, she ends up withholding evidence by keeping a photo of a young girl out of the wallet before turning it into Detective Donovan. Why did she do that when she knew it could get her into disciplinary trouble with the state bar?

 

This is a tough moment for Lindsay. She prizes honesty and prides herself on her own, but something about that photograph tugs at her. She knows she should recognize the face, that it’s the key to unlocking a memory she’s more than half forgotten, and keeps the photo to study it. She also fears that the girl’s connection to Father Leary—whatever it is—will be a problem and tarnish his memory. She isn’t thinking about her career; that worry comes later. It’s one of those stupid things we do instinctively, and then have to hope don’t have major consequences. But of course, for Lindsay, it does.

 

In high school, Lindsay stood up to a nun who belittled an American Native girl. Although Lindsay never got in trouble because of the incident, she ended up telling her parents. Why did she do that?

 

Lindsay was a good kid who wasn’t going to lie to her parents, especially when she expected she’d get in trouble at school and they’d find out anyway, making them even angrier that she hadn’t told them. While her parents tussle over how to respond, they are actually proud of her for standing up to injustice. And yes, this incident does foreshadow the adult Lindsay’s conflict with her boss and her conflict with her own daughter, Haley.

 

The day of that high school incident, Lindsay befriended a new girl, Carrie, whose grandmother was the housekeeper for Father Leary. While visiting Carrie at her house nearby the church, Lindsay waits and watches as Carrie drags her little sister out of the church where she was playing, followed by Father Leary, who was clearly upset. Why did the scene stay in Lindsay’s mind all those years later? Are there significant times that we somehow know are important, but we don’t know why?

 

Lindsay and Carrie, seventeen at the time, each saw and heard bits and pieces of a confrontation that stuck in their minds for different reasons. Lindsay had never seen the priest she admired so rattled and wondered how it was connected to Carrie and her sister. Carrie thought they were in Billings to stay, after a lifetime of being continually uprooted; instead, they left the next day, and no one would tell her why.

 

And you’re absolutely right: We often sense that an event is a turning point, without knowing why or how it will play out. We may get necessary perspective over time, or learn the rest of the story later. For Lindsay, the tragedy that occurred that evening shoved the incident at the church out of her mind. Carrie, on the other hand, resented Leary and her grandmother making a decision that deeply affected her without including her or telling her what was really going on. The adults felt compelled to act as they did to protect the girls. As a storyteller, I’m intrigued by the consequences of attempting to protect the people we care about by withholding uncomfortable truths.

 

Lindsay turned state’s evidence when she turned in her prosecutor boss for knowingly providing unreliable evidence in a murder trial. Again, she stood up to authority. But she also undermined her own career, which she very much loved. Why can’t doing the right thing be a win-win situation, but it never seems like it is?

 

Ah, humans. We’re blinded by our own desires sometimes, aren’t we, especially when other people’s goals become our obstacles.

 

In Blind Faith, it seems that Lindsay should be understanding about her daughter’s choices, but I could understand how Lindsay felt. Her daughter hides that she dropped out of college during her sophomore year to pursue a career in the culinary arts. The girl wasted a lot of money, didn’t get a degree (even if it was one she didn’t want to use), and then lied to Lindsay and her husband. Why shouldn’t Lindsay be mad? I think she had every right.

 

Parenting is complicated, isn’t it? Lindsay is more upset by Haley’s deception than by her change in direction, and she wanted to see herself as the parent a kid could talk to about difficult choices. But Haley—who doesn’t know about the difficult choices Lindsay made in her own career—fears her smart, successful mother will judge her as a failure. It’s a trust issue, on both sides, and they work through it, coming to understand each other and themselves a little better as a result.

 

After Lindsay turns in the wallet, Detective Donovan must reopen the cold-case murder from 1995. His first thought is to wonder if Father Leary was a pedophile. Does this correspond to the time when stories broke of sexual scandals within the Catholic Church?

 

Absolutely, though it took years for the scope of both the sexual abuse and the coverups to become clear. I do want readers to know that this is not a book about pedophilia or sexual abuse; that’s simply one theory the police investigate when dealing with the murder of a priest.

 

Although his wife is after him to clean up his diet, Detective Donovan refuses to drink coffee without cream. As soon as he opens the cold case, he downs two Cokes. Why the stress when twenty-one years have gone by without the case being solved? Or is this his excuse?

 

Ah, the paradox of caffeine: It can both calm and energize us. What Donovan’s really dealing with is the emotions triggered by the conjunction of the cold case and another case he’s investigating, that of the PGA—Parking Garage Asshole—who attacked a woman that morning with a knife. The attack brings back an incident earlier in his career, when he was forced to shoot and kill a man. He too had a Catholic upbringing, and as a bit of a hotshot, wants to be the guy who solves the Father Leary’s murder. Together, the two cases remind him of his own uncomfortable truth: the hunter and the prey aren’t always very different.

 

Carrie’s mother and grandmother kept secrets and covered up Carrie and her little sister’s real identities as Carrie discovers when trying to trace a genetic disorder that threatens her grandson’s life. Did neither the mother nor the grandmother have any idea that their genetic heritage was fraught in health issues? Would it have made a difference even if it did? Why do people tell lies in the name of protection?

 

No, neither of them knew about the genetic disorder, first identified in the late 1930s. Neither actually lies; they simply let the girls believe what appears to be true and close the door on the past. It’s common, and driven by a huge range of motives. Rich ground for fiction.

 

I was surprised at the discretion Carrie and her little sister used after knowing the truth. Is lying by omission better than lying to protect?

 

Carrie and Ginger decide not to publicly disclose the conclusions they’ve reached but can’t prove. Those directly involved are long gone; disclosure would do no good, and privacy will do no harm, unless they kept the truth from Carrie’s daughters. I am certain, though, that they will tell the girls everything, because it is part of their story. And that’s what both Carrie and Ginger have always wanted: to know their own story.

 

Does everyone have secrets, even real-life everyday people?

 

Of course we do, whether it’s a secret resentment or what really happened when the car bumper got dented. Some deeply affect our relationships or our view of ourselves; others are trivial at best. More story potential!

 

What is burning sweetgrass?

 

Sweetgrass is a wild grass that is sometimes braided and burned like sage, to clear or sanctify a space. Lindsay’s high school classmate, Charlene, mentions her family, who are members of the Crow tribe, burning it in the hospital as a blessing. It’s got a lovely, slightly sweet fragrance, much like the palm fronds burned in the Easter season. Sweetgrass can also be woven into baskets.

 

A couple of questions about the topography. What are:

 

The Rims: The Rims or Rimrocks are a long sandstone cliff formation that runs along the north side of the Yellowstone River Valley. Billings sits at the junction where the Rims meet the river, and the Rims are a defining feature of the area. 

 

Butte: A butte is a hill or rock cropping, usually standing alone, with a flat top. Lindsay and her high school pals, Jana and Mary Ellen, used to drive north of town to the base of a big butte and park the car, to get away and do things they weren’t supposed to do, like smoke and drink.

 

I’d expected this book to be a follow up on what evidently was a stand-alone, Bitterroot Lake. What are you writing now? 

As Leslie Budewitz, my real name, I’m continuing to write cozy mysteries and just turned in the seventh Spice Shop mystery, set for publication in July 2023. As Alicia Beckman, a name that honors my mother and grandmother, I’m writing moodier suspense – so far, all standalones. The WIP is tentatively titled The Birdwatcher’s Daughter and follows a young reporter, a teenage girl, and the girl’s father as they uncover a hidden past that connects them. It’s set in Seattle and in the Flathead Valley in Northwest Montana, where I live.

 

Thanks for a great conversation!

 

 

One Writer, Many Stories

One Writer, Many Stories by Leslie Budewitz

 The universe is made of stories, not atoms.

— Muriel Rukeyser

A writer’s heart holds many stories. Some are drawn to a particular type of story, mining the vein a little deeper each time, digging up more gold with each effort. Other writers find that the stories they want to tell are best described by a variety of labels.

Readers can be described much the same way, with some reading deeply in one or two genres and others reading more broadly.

Turns out that as reader and writer, I’m a little of each.

My first published novels were culinary cozies, the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries set in a small town in NW Montana, followed by the Spice Shop mysteries, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. I love to read cozies and to write them. They are, in many ways, the perfect prescription for difficult times.

The cozy gets a bad rap now and then, as fluffy and frivolous. That’s unfair. At heart, it’s the story of one woman’s effort to restore the social order of a community damaged by an unexpected crime. There may be food, and cats, and festivals, but ultimately, a good cozy shows the powerful impact one

person can have, healing the wounds inflicted on the people and places that matter to her.

But while I was writing those cozies—six in Village series and five Spice Shop mysteries, with the sixth coming in July and the seventh spread out on my desk—I was also writing short crime fiction. One story, maybe two, a year. Traditional, noir, police-based, and yes, cozies. Short stories are perfect for experimentation. They don’t take as long—well, okay, one did take sixteen years, but hey, it won a Derringer Award, so time well spent. They let us play with points of view, era, and location, as well as genre or subgenre.

Along the way, I realized that much as I love the cozy, I like a darker, moodier story, too. One best called suspense.

That led me to start a stand-alone with four point-of-view characters and two intersecting timelines, a contemporary cold case investigation interspersed with a story that unfolds over thirty-five years. It’s not an unfamiliar structure, but it’s very different from the first-person cozy mystery wrapped up in two or three weeks. I immersed myself in reading that kind of narrative, working on the manuscript between other projects. At one point, my office closet doors were covered in sticky notes in multiple colors, present action on one bi-fold door, past on the other half, newspaper clippings on the next panel.

It took four years. In Blind Faith (written as Alicia Beckman, October 2022), two women whose paths crossed decades ago as teenagers in Montana discover they share the keys to a deadly secret that exposes a killer—and changes everything they thought they knew about themselves.

During that time, I kept writing cozies. I proposed a traditional mystery series, and my editor thought the first would make good standalone suspense. That led to Alicia’s first novel, Bitterroot Lake (2021). While it’s a straightforward narrative told by one POV character, the shift in subgenre was a challenge because it varied so much from my original conception. In a mystery—and I’m oversimplifying here—a crime occurs, and our sleuth, whether amateur or professional, solves it. More crimes may happen along the way, but the path is clear.

In suspense, our protagonist is unexpectedly confronted by danger from a source she can’t identify. Nothing like this has ever happened to her, and it takes her time to realize she’s got the skills and resources to fight back—even if no one believes she’s in trouble.

My challenge in writing suspense wasn’t shifting from cozy to moody. Jokes, word play, recipes—they never entered my mind. They simply weren’t part of the story. Like you don’t reach for the garlic when you’re making chocolate cake. It’s just not on the menu. In Bitterroot Lake, Sarah’s goal wasn’t to figure out who killed Lucas Erickson. It was to figure out who was sending threatening letters and how to stop her recurrent nightmares. Naturally, killing and letters end up being connected, but what drives the protagonist differs in mystery and suspense.

Of course, every mystery has elements of suspense and every suspense novel has its mysteries. I’m talking subgenre, not the details.) 

So what unites my cozies and suspense? I discovered the answer when a friend who read Blind Faith said “I could hear your voice throughout.” Another friend had said of Death al Dente, my first Food Lovers’ Village mystery, “it sounds just like you talk.” And I’d heard similar comments about Pepper in my Spice Shop mysteries.

Turns out it’s not so much the rhythm of my main characters’ sentences, or how they swear or talk to themselves, though there is some of that. What unites my stories is what the characters care about. How they think of the world.

My characters are concerned about community. About their relationship to their physical surroundings, whether it’s their home, the land, or the historic building they work in. If an issue arises in my life, it might show up in theirs, because I want to explore it.  My main characters are interested in the world around them, even though they don’t all read or watch movies or garden. They do all love food and art! They’re interested in friendships, especially between women. In starting over. In healing the wounds injustice causes.

They sound like me because there’s a little bit of me in each of them. And that’s a good thing, because no matter what the genre and tone of the story, that’s how we make our characters come alive.

~~~~~~

Leslie Budewitz blends her passion for food, great mysteries, and the Northwest in two cozy mystery series, the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, set in NW Montana. Watch for Peppermint Barked, the 6^th Spice Shop mystery, in July 2022. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody suspense, beginning with Bitterroot Lake in April 2021 and continuing with Blind Faith in October 2022. A three-time Agatha-Award winner (2011, Best Nonfiction; 2013, Best First Novel; 2018, Best Short Story), she is a current board member of Mystery Writers of America and a past president of Sisters in Crime. She lives in northwest Montana.

www.LeslieBudewitz.com

www.Facebook.com/LeslieBudewitzAuthor

www.Instagram.com/LeslieBudewitz

 

 

An Interview with Leslie Budewitz by E. B. Davis

 

In her Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, Agatha Award-winning author Leslie Budewitz introduces us to Jewel Bay, a tight-knit Montana community that thrives on tourism and farm-to-table fare. Featuring Erin Murphy, beloved proprietor of the Merc—a century-old general store converted into a local foods market—each book brings us closer to the folks who call Jewel Bay home, and the cunning culprits in their midst.

 

In this delicious new collection of five short stories and one novella, she takes us further into the heart of Jewel Bay—from the playhouse to the Merc, from funerals to food festivals—with equal parts humor, suspense, and compassion, and no shortage of murder to spice up the menu . . .

 

In Carried to the Grave, a long-hidden family secret refuses to be put to rest.

 

Jewel Bay’s community food festival serves up the perfect opportunity for a devious killer with an appetite for murder in Pot Luck.

 

In The Christmas Stranger, a small gesture by a mysterious man turns out to change lives . . . and much more.

 

A romantic getaway to a secluded beach town in Mexico provides a deadly remedy for a couple’s trouble at home in A Death in Yelapa.

 

As the local playhouse opens for the season, it’s curtains for a stage manager with a secret in Put on a Dying Face.

 

And in An Unholy Death, when Kate and Paddy Murphy open Murphy’s Mercantile in 1910, they know making a go of it in rough-and-tumble Montana will be hard work, but for a local preacher, it’s murder.

Amazon.com

 

Leslie Budewitz’s collection of short stories and a novella, Carried To The Grave and Other Stories, shows different aspects of the characters and the town of Jewel Bay, the setting of the Food Lovers’ Village mystery series, and the series’ basis.

One short story, “The Christmas Stranger,” gave me goose bumps. It is a story of unexplainable coincidences, but it also answers a question that main character Erin has about her father’s death. My reaction is the sure sign that the story teller did her job well.

 

I never expected the last novella. “An Unholy Death,” set in the early twentieth century, provides readers with the origin of the Mercantile (Merc) and shows the integrity of Erin’s ancestors, Paddy and Kate, from whom Erin inherited her crime solving abilities.

 

Please welcome Leslie Budewitz (whom we last spoke to about her suspense debut, written as Alicia Beckman) back to WWK.                                                               E. B. Davis

“Carried To The Grave”

 

Are huckleberries sweet or tart?

Ah, the wild huckleberry, a fruit worth the considerable effort of hunting and gathering. It’s tart with a hint of sweetness. Imagine a wild blueberry, one you had to hustle to pick before the bears beat you to it.

 

When the truth is obvious, why stick with a lie?

In this particular case, the older generation of Taylors, the family of Erin’s friend Wendy, knew the truth because they’d been eyewitnesses, but it wasn’t obvious to everyone. What happened---and I’m trying to avoid spoilers---was not uncommon in that era;  I know of several instances, including one a few generations back in my own family. Thank goodness attitudes have changed.  

 

Do extreme times, such as during wars, change morals or social acceptability? If so, then why hide truths originating from that time?

I suspect they do, although the importance of keeping the secret in this instance has less to do with the war itself than with the family’s desire to protect Gwendolyn and Corinna from gossip and shame. When we look through the modern lens, we think “oh, people would have understood.” But it’s clear from real-life accounts that that was not always true.

 

“Pot Luck”

 

Do you have a recipe for Elk Medallions with Mustard-thyme Cream Sauce? Does elk taste like deer? Is it tougher? How does buffalo compare to beef?

Elk is delicious! Much tastier and more tender than venison. Buffalo is a lot like beef, but leaner and more flavorful. Sadly, I have never made the dish Nan brings to the festival, but when I spotted a similar recipe in a local community cookbook, I thought it would be perfect.

 

Okay, now I’m hungry!

 

Do you believe in divine intervention?

You have to wonder sometimes, don’t you?

 

Bunny Easter Burns—Bunny is just a nickname, right?

Readers of the Food Lovers’ Village novels may remember the Easter twins, Bernadette “Bunny” Easter Burns and Polly Easter Paulson. They are Erin’s old classmates, still friends, and delightful women with fingers in all the town’s pies. I’ve enjoyed playing with character names in this series.

 

“The Christmas Stranger”

 

If there are enough coincidences do they add up to miracles?

Or do those who don’t believe in miracles dismiss them as coincidence? It’s clear to me that there is much in this world we can’t explain. Erin’s encounter in the UPS store actually happened to me; I’d been reading Anne Perry Christmas novellas and then watched It’s a Wonderful Life, and I suspect readers will pick up on both influences.

 

Who would drink a beer called Moose Drool?

You’d be surprised! It’s a tasty brown ale made by Big Sky Brewery of Missoula, where the brewers enjoy word play as much as I do.

 

Is taxidermy still big in Montana?

That I couldn’t say, not being a hunter, but mounts ranging from a small red fox to a bull moose adorn the walls of the local restaurant that inspired the Jewel Bay Inn---the original, destroyed by fire in 1937, makes a brief appearance in “An Unholy Death”---and at Christmas, they do get into the holiday spirit.

 

“A Death in Yelapa”

Have you spent time in Yelapa? Where is it?

Yelapa is a small town on the southern end of the Bay of Banderas, about an hour’s boat ride south of Puerto Vallarta, and yes, I have been there with my own Mr. Right. As Erin says, it’s a taste of paradise.

 

Do you paddleboard?

Not on your life!

 

Do you like cilantro?

Absolutely! There’s a pot growing on the back porch right now.

 

“Put on a Dying Face”

 

Is the Merc the oldest business in Jewel Bay? Is it the heart of the town?

The bank predates the Merc, although in both Jewel Bay and Bigfork, its inspiration, the bank long ago outgrew its 1908 building, which is now a restaurant. But the Merc’s history adds to Erin’s sense of mission and her determination to keep it going. Old buildings are a constant challenge to keep up, and I’ve tried to make that part of the story, particularly in the novels Death al Dente and As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles.

 

Who said that laughing in the middle of tragedy shows humanity?

 

Erin is musing about the tragedy and remembers Sheriff Ike Hoover’s comment to her, years ago, that “if violent or untimely death didn’t bother you, you were a poor excuse for a human being.” Something funny occurs, and she flips his observation to say that laughing is equally important, and I think she’s right. Hoover was the deputy who investigated her father’s death in a hit-and-run when Erin was seventeen, a case that went unsolved until she identified the culprit in Butter Off Dead, the third in the series, and the two share a deep respect.

 

“An Unholy Death”

 

What was the Great Fire of 1910?

In August of 1910, wildfire swept through the Northern Rockies, burning more than 3 million acres of heavily timbered land in Idaho, Washington, Montana, and British Columbia, and killing 87 people, mostly firefighters. The Great Fire, also known as the Big Burn, increased support for the fledgling US Forest Service and led to major developments in fire management and conservation. Scarred mountain slopes are still visible in these parts. Several books and documentaries cover the fire, most notably The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan (2009) and “The Big Burn,” in PBS’s American Experience series.

 

I know licorice is an old-fashioned candy, but doesn’t it taste awful and gives the eater a black mouth? Clear Toys or peppermint sticks are far better!

Licorice sticks were a great treat in pioneer days, and I imagine for some kids, the black mouth was part of the attraction! But like you, I’d probably have chosen something else.

 

Paddy immediately sees the dog Buster as protection for his wife and orphan Grace. But Buster is more than protection, he’s smart, isn’t he?

You’re right. Like many dogs, Buster senses when someone might pose a danger to his girl, Grace, and it doesn’t take long for him to extend that protectiveness to Kate. A protective man, like Paddy, can spot that instinct in a heartbeat.

 

Those with physical deformities or other impairments are seen as bad or criminal in the early 1900s. Was it fear of their differences that caused people to assume the worst?

Fear does seem to be part of such cruelty, doesn’t it? The physically or mentally disabled have been seen as touched by angels in some times and cultures and touched by the devil in others.

 

What’s next for Erin and Adam?

They are planning to go skiing at a historic lodge in a still-unnamed short story that will be part of Murder in the Mountains: A Destination Murders Short Story Collection edited by Karen Cantwell and Cathy Wiley, slated for February 2022. After that, who knows?

 

An Interview with Alicia Beckman (Leslie Budewitz) by E. B. Davis

 

When four women separated by tragedy reunite at a lakeside Montana lodge, murder forces them to confront everything they thought they knew about the terrifying accident that tore them apart, in Agatha Award-winning author Alicia Beckman's suspense debut.

Twenty-five years ago, during a celebratory weekend at historic Whitetail Lodge, Sarah McCaskill had a vision. A dream. A nightmare. When a young man was killed, Sarah's guilt over having ignored the warning in her dreams devastated her. Her friendships with her closest friends, and her sister, fell apart as she worked to build a new life in a new city. But she never stopped loving Whitetail Lodge on the shores of Bitterroot Lake.

Now that she's a young widow, her mother urges her to return to the lodge for healing. But when she arrives, she's greeted by an old friend--and by news of a murder that's clearly tied to that tragic day she'll never forget.

And the dreams are back, too. What dangers are they warning of this time? As Sarah and her friends dig into the history of the lodge and the McCaskill family, they uncover a legacy of secrets and make a discovery that gives a chilling new meaning to the dreams. Now, they can no longer ignore the ominous portents from the past that point to a danger more present than any of them could know.

Amazon.com

 

Bitterroot Lake is a murder mystery. But it also combines with the historical and women’s literature genres, both with mystical elements. I’m beginning to look forward to these combined genre novels because they add dimensions to the story.

 

The book is dedicated to Ramona DeFelice Long. A long time ago, Ramona blogged here at WWK, and later, I employed her as my editor. Writing mystery is a small world, so I thought I’d know the writer, but I’d never heard of Alicia Beckman. When I turned the last page, the author was revealed—Leslie Budewitz was writing as Alicia Beckman. Blow me down!

 

I’ve interviewed Leslie here on books from both of her cozy mystery series. I know Leslie lives in Montana and went to school in Seattle, the settings of her series, but the writing and combined genres was so different from her usual writing, I didn’t put the two together.

 

For the first time, please welcome Alicia Beckman to WWK. For about the fourth time, please welcome Leslie Budewitz to WWK.                                                                                      E. B. Davis

 

Why this book—so different from your other series?

 

I love both my Food Lovers’ Village and Spice Shop series, and a few of my short stories form a historical series as well. As writers, we all have many stories to tell, and sometimes, they take a different tone or require a different structure. I’d long wanted to explore how women’s friendships evolve over time, something that’s been central in my life. I do that in my cozies, particularly in The Solace of Bay Leaves, the 5^th Spice Shop book. But while I think the cozy is pretty flexible and can touch on social justice issues and difficult emotions, I also wanted to take a deeper dive beneath the surface of a family and a community to sometimes-uncomfortable places, into the fractures and the scars, and the ways we find to live with them.  

 

The book is structured by days of the week, a week in which the murder is solved, but in which many stories are revealed. Why that structure?

In the fall of 2019, I read Strangers at the Gate by Catriona McPherson, which uses a similar structure. When I start a book, I often think about what’s struck me in recent reads, and I realized that structure would work well here. It implies from the start that we’re going to dive right into the problem, whatever it is; that time element helps raise the stakes and, I hope, adds a bit of drive and compulsion to the story.

 

Main character Sarah McCaskill Carter is a new widow at the age of forty-seven. Do you have friends that are widows? Did you use them for researching what widows feel and face in the earliest stages of their grief?

 

I am a big advocate of emotional research, mining our memories and observations for insights into human experience, as well as reading books and articles about loss and grief. Though, fortunately, I have no close friends who were widowed at Sarah’s age, I’ve certainly watched older women, including my mother, sister-in-law, and friends who’ve been through the experience. A dear friend’s husband was diagnosed with cancer when their children were about the age of Sarah’s children—he’s doing quite well, thank goodness—but I saw the fear and the rawness that evoked, and imagined what the next stages might bring. Writing fiction requires the practice of empathy, which can be wrenching but is also deeply gratifying. If you do it well, and truly connect with the characters, then readers will connect with them, too, and have a satisfying emotional experience—which is, after all, one of the reasons we read.  

 

Historically, Sarah’s family—the McCaskills—have been wealthy sawmill owners and employers, wealthy enough to have predecessors who willed them a lodge with cabins and acreage on the other side of Bitterroot Lake from their hometown of Deer Park. The camp started as a summer home and continued in that capacity for generations. Although Sarah wants to help her mother inventory the lodge and plan its future, she isn’t prepared for the cleaning. Why haven’t the lodge and cabins been maintained over the years?

 

Sarah and her siblings’ lives have gone in different directions, with the sisters leaving Deer Park and the brother busy with the business and his own family. I suspect that their father’s death a few years before our story begins affected their connection to Whitetail Lodge as well, since it had been his family’s place. Peggy, their mother, has had some disquieting experiences in the lodge over the years, which have also contributed. Family property can be a great joy and connecting force, but it can also be a burden, especially financially. Here in Montana, some historic lodges have become commercial properties while others have passed into the control of community preservation groups. A few, happily, remain in family hands or have found other owners who treasure them. 

 

Sarah also isn’t prepared to run into her old friend Janine, who she finds camped out in one of the cabins, on the run from a murder scene. Even though Janine left Deer Park, where she, too, grew up, her history is well known there. In small towns, does history forever label you? Does trying to maintain privacy aid and abet the gossip mongers? 

 

Oh, yes, both those things can happen. Deer Park is a truly small town, well under 5,000, although it expands with tourists and summer people in season, which brings a different set of tensions. Small towns can have long memories.

 

Because of her history, Janine is afraid to go to the authorities after finding the body of a man the women knew when they were college age. Was it the attempted rape of her by the victim or her mother’s history that made Janine run from the scene?

 

Both. Janine is keenly aware that society dismisses some people, and that social labels can be passed from one generation to the next. She’s not sure how much she can trust Deer Park to have changed. That’s not an unreasonable fear, I think, when the past is so tragic and has so deeply scarred her. Of course, this is part of the burden Renee Harper carries as well.

 

Much like Janine, Sarah finds her history also hinders her, an unexpected slap. She’s looked upon as perfect, had it easy, married a man who became wealthy, had perfect children—and when others put Janine down for her poor history, others put Sarah down as being too high and mighty—even her younger sister Holly. How can it go both ways, and in each case, they are innocent? Cases of schadenfreude?

 

The biggest rift is between the sisters. Each knows she’s judging the other harshly, and wonders if that’s fair. Do they justify their actions—and their words—to themselves? They have in the past, but now that they’re face-to-face, they’re forced to acknowledge that they haven’t lived up to their expectations, in Sarah’s case, or been fully honest, in Holly’s. I’m fascinated by the layers within a long-term relationship, and the sometimes-profound impact of misperception and miscommunication.

 

The other three women seem to have kept more in touch with each other than Sarah has kept close to them. She feels guilty, but then she also lived in Seattle. Did she isolate herself or did the others exclude her?

A little of both, I think. It’s often the case that within a small cluster of friends, some bonds are stronger than others. Janine and Nic were united by being the outsiders, and of course, they both lived in Montana and saw each other, although Janine left for a while. And sometimes, physical distance becomes an excuse and emotional distance a habit.

 

Without spoilers, it’s fair to say that Sarah’s brother, Connor, and her late husband, Jeremy, make an important decision affecting her without telling her. They don’t seem particularly sexist, and yet their actions are troubling in a way. Why the secrecy? 

 

Quite simply, they think they’re protecting her, both by sparing her the decision and by the decision they make. When we try to protect people from painful emotions, we often create another layer of pain, missing an opportunity to connect on a deeper level and implicitly telling them we didn’t trust them to make good decisions.

 

Being human can involve some painful ambiguity and contradiction at times, can’t it?

 

Sarah finds two situations that she believes are mystical or self-invented to be real. The first are her dreams that she believes are warnings, and they may be that. The second are signs from her late husband. Do many new widows receive tangible proof from a dead spouse?

 

Turns out they do. After my sister-in-law’s husband died shortly before Christmas a few years ago, she often found an ornament from the holiday tree sitting on the floor, too far away to have simply fallen, or elsewhere in the room; she interpreted the incidents as a sign that he was thinking of her, and occasionally, that he wanted her to reach out to the person who had given them that ornament, which she did, always discovering that her call came at an important time. Other widows have told me similar stories. And it isn’t just widows—the story in the book of the artist who painted the angel clouds her murdered sister sent her was told to me by the artist. And I choose to believe that my mother, who adored bunnies, had a hand in the surprising number of snowshoe hares we saw around our house in the months after she died. (My pen name, by the way, is a tribute to her and her mother’s family.)

 

Bastet, the cat, Janine’s baking, and wine seem to be the only sources of creature comforts for the women. Do those shared comforts assist in keeping the peace among the women?

 

What a lovely insight! Those things, along with poring over the newly-discovered journal, albums, and letters from a century ago help them reconnect and restore their friendship. Those moments remind them that they have much more in common than the memory of the tragedy that tore them apart, and reassure them that their bonds are not hopelessly severed, that they can depend on each other again.

 

When Sarah finds her great grandmother Caro’s journal, she discovers that Caro and her friends had founded the Lakeside Ladies’ Aid Society, a group of wealthy women who loaned money to poorer women in need before social security and welfare were promulgated. Were there groups such as this around during the 1920s through the Depression era?

 

Women’s social and community clubs were hugely important from roughly the 1880s through the 1960s and ‘70s, but especially in new towns and rural communities in the west. Pioneering was often lonely and isolating, and farm and ranch women sometimes went weeks or even months without seeing another woman. I remembered my own mother’s involvement in church groups and the ways that good deeds were often done behind the scenes. It wasn’t much of a stretch to create the Lakeside Ladies’ Aid Society, a sort of secret “good works” club.  

 

Sarah also learns that she isn’t the only one suffering nightmares. Is this a true haunting since it’s recurred over the last 100 years?

 

One theory about such visitations is that they are tied to the site of an unsolved or unrectified death. That’s very much the case here, though I think I can say without giving too much away that what the spirit—if I can call it that—wants is not revenge, but a sort of fulfillment.

 

Is Bitterroot Lake the first in a series?

 

The book came about in a bit of an unusual way. My agent and I pitched a traditional mystery series, and got some interest, but Terri Bischoff at Crooked Lane thought the first in the series had the potential to be a standalone. I’d been very much interested in that, and after working with Terri at Midnight Ink, I trusted her judgment. Writing a standalone is different from writing a series—each decision, from setting to tone to subplots and more, can be made with just the one story in mind, and all the story questions need to be answered, since this is the one time your reader will meet these characters. And the tone and voice are different from my series books, which is probably why you didn’t recognize me as the author—I love that, by the way! So while the series potential exists, I have no plans for a series now.

 

What are you writing now?

 

I’m finishing edits for Carried to the Grave, a collection of Food Lovers’ Village short stories slated for summer; it includes a historical prequel set in 1910 featuring the contemporary protagonist’s great-grandparents. And I’m writing the next Spice Shop mystery, which should be out in spring 2022.

 

Thanks for having me here today, Elaine, and for great questions!