Spotlight on Leslie Budewitz and All God's Sparrows -- a trek back in time

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  Whoa! It's bright in here, with the Mystery Lovers' Kitchen Spotlight turned on me! Must be all the fairy lights and holiday candles shining, as we wend our way through the darkest part of the year in the northern hemisphere.

I love writing about Christmas -- I’ve written two Christmas mysteries, one in each series, plus a short holiday mystery. More about them in my last two posts, including this Christmas Cookie Roundup and this recipe for yummy Medjool Date Turtles. 

So with 16 published cozy mysteries, all safely tucked in the food-loving world, what prompted me to take a totally different path with my latest book, All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection?

The collage I made while writing "A Bitter Wind,"
the novella that anchors the collection. 

The same thing, really. Passion. My family came to Montana in waves, from 1915 to 1952. I was born and raised here, and though I left for a while – I went to college in Seattle and spent my young adult years there – I am deeply passionate about the place and its history.

I don’t remember how I first learned about Mary Fields, but I do know that like so many, I was instantly fascinated. Mary was born into slavery in Tennessee in about 1832 – she never knew the year or day, but chose to celebrate it on March 15. In her later years, she threw a party for herself and invited the children of the town of Cascade. Montana, where she lived from 1895 until her death in 1914. 

In 1870, Mary worked as a cabin attendant on the steamship Robert E. Lee, which plied the Mississippi River. From there, she went to work in the household of Judge Edmund Dunne of Akron, Ohio. That’s where she met his youngest sister, Sarah Theresa, an Ursuline nun better known as Sister Amadeus, later Mother Amadeus – the Mother Superior of the order, who were primarily teachers.

In 1884, Amadeus and a group of nuns came to Montana Territory at the request of the Jesuits to start schools for girls at their missions, both white and Indian girls. In early 1885, while starting up the schools at St. Peter’s Mission west of the small town of Cascade in central Montana, Amadeus became deathly ill with pneumonia. Mary and three nuns came west, by train, steamboat, and stage, to nurse her. They succeeded.

St. Peter's Mission, taken before 1908

And Mary stayed. 

In those early years, Mary fished, hunted, grew a garden, raised chickens, and hauled people and freight by wagon. She did, one of the nuns wrote, “everything we couldn’t do ourselves.” She was an integral part of their community, and of mission life.

All was not easy, though. Life on the untamed prairie was hard. Prejudice came west with the settlers. Mary was “overbearing and troublesome,” to quote an entry in the nuns' annals. There were clashes. Contrary to the myth, no shots were fired. But in 1894, the bishop ordered Amadeus to dismiss Mary from the Mission, and decreed that the Ursulines have no more contact with her.

Mary moved into Cascade, ten miles away, and opened a restaurant. When it failed – cooking was one thing; running a business another – that crafty Amadeus arranged for her to get the mail route between Cascade and the mission, making her the first African-American woman in the country to do so and leading to her nickname, “Stagecoach Mary.”  Mary delivered the mail until 1904, when she retired, taking in laundry and babysitting local children -- including the future actor, Gary Cooper, who grew up in Cascade.

Mary Fields, ca. 1897 (studio portrait)

I think Mary is appealing because she brings together three aspects of the history of the American West that are inherently intriguing: the Black experience during westward expansion after the Civil War, the missionary era, and the woman on her own. Too, she’s been the subject of much myth-making, even caricature, that I wanted to explore and counter. I took the stories of her big heart and amplified them, using my research and my own heart. 

And it turns out that many of the same themes echo through my stories, no matter which shelf you find them on in the bookstore: women’s lives and choices, especially in times when society imposed great restraints; women’s friendships; the search for justice and the nature of forgiveness; how our physical surroundings, the landscape, influences us. 

The result: three short stories and a novella, each with a mystery slant, telling stories of the forgotten past. Remembering matters. And I know each of you knows the power of story to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts. 

I hope you’ll take the trek back in time, with Mary and me. 

Plus -- look at all these holiday books by all of us here at Mystery Lovers' Kitchen!

ALL GOD'S SPARROWS AND OTHER STORIES: A STAGECOACH MARY FIELDS COLLECTION, now available in in paperback and ebook 

Take a step back in time with All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection of historical short mysteries, featuring the Agatha-Award winning "All God's Sparrows" and other stories imagining the life of real-life historical figure Mary Fields, born into slavery in 1832, during the last thirty years of her life, in Montana. Out September 17, 2024 from Beyond the Page Publishing.  

“Finely researched and richly detailed, All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories is a wonderful collection. I loved learning about this fascinating woman . . . and what a character she is! Kudos to Leslie Budewitz for bringing her to life so vividly.” —Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of Crow Mary

Available at Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * and your local booksellers!

TO ERR IS CUMIN:A Spice Shop Mystery (Seventh St. Books, out now in paper, ebook, and audio)

From the cover: One person’s treasure is another’s trash. . .

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for a change, running her shop and working with customers eager to spice up their cooking. But when she finds an envelope stuffed with cash in a ratty old wingback left on the curb, she sets out to track down the owner.

Pepper soon concludes that the chair and its stash may belong to young Talia Cook, new in town and nowhere to be seen. Boz Bosworth, an unemployed chef Pepper’s tangled with in the past, shows up looking for the young woman, but Pepper refuses to help him search. When Boz is found floating in the Ship Canal, only a few blocks from Talia’s apartment, free furniture no longer seems like such a bargain.

On the hunt for Talia, Pepper discovers a web of connections threatening to ensnare her best customer. The more she probes, the harder it gets to tell who’s part of an unsavory scheme of corruption—and who might be the next victim.

Between her quest for an elusive herb, helping her parents remodel their new house, and setting up the Spice Shop’s first cooking class, Pepper’s got a full plate. Dogged by a sense of obligation to find the rightful owner of the hidden treasure, she keeps on showing up and asking questions.

One mistake, and she could find herself cashing out. . .

Available at Amazon  * Barnes & Noble  * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * And your local booksellers!

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest books are To Err is Cumin, the 8th Spice Shop Mystery and All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection, in September 2024. 

A past president of Sisters in Crime and former national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by Leslie's website and join the mailing list for her seasonal newsletter. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.