{"id":5728,"date":"2024-05-21T07:24:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T14:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5728"},"modified":"2024-05-21T07:24:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T14:24:16","slug":"author-interview-patrice-mcdonough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/author-interview-patrice-mcdonough\/","title":{"rendered":"Author interview: Patrice McDonough"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I really loved Patrice McDonough’s debut mystery,\u00a0Murder by Lamplight<\/a>,\u00a0<\/strong>set in 1860’s London, and featuring a female doctor as the main character.\u00a0 Much like Anne Perry, she’s not afraid to tackle social issues, and also like Perry she supplies the reader with some wonderful characters (hard to believe this was a debut!).\u00a0 I am very much looking forward to more in the series, and Patrice was nice enough to answer some questions.<\/em><\/p>\n

Q: I loved the main characters \u2013 as I think there are two, but let\u2019s start with Julia.\u00a0 Talk about making her a doctor at that time.\u00a0 How many female doctors were there in London in 1866?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Julia Lewis is a role-breaking groundbreaker, and creating her was fun. In 1866, she would have been a rare bird indeed. No medical school in Britain admitted females, so Julia earned her degree from a women\u2019s college in Philadelphia. In 1858, when Parliament added doctors with foreign degrees to the medical register, it unintentionally opened the door to female physicians. The fictional Julia would be one of three on the register in 1866.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Patrice McDonough<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1849, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell<\/a> became the first woman in the U.S. to earn a medical degree. Ten years later, she was the first woman added to the British medical register. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson came next, exploiting another loophole by passing the Society of Apothecaries exam. In 1866, she opened a charity clinic and treated cholera patients during the London epidemic. So, there are bits of Blackwell and Garrett Anderson in the fictional Julia Lewis.<\/p>\n

Some readers may find Julia\u2019s attitudes too modern, but \u201cstrong-minded women\u201d (I love that Victorian phrase for early British feminists) emerged in the 1850s and 60s. They demanded reforms to the legal system, the vote in Parliament (first proposed in 1867), and access to university education (Girton College, Cambridge<\/a>, founded in 1869). Julia\u2019s debates with Tennant about women\u2019s roles are spot on for the novel\u2019s 1866 setting.<\/p>\n

Q: The other main character is Inspector Tennant, and you\u2019ve gifted him with many challenges to work through. Can you talk about what went into creating his character?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I wrote Richard Tennant as a contrast to Julia in personality and personal history. Yet, he and Julia share things that draw them together. Julia was orphaned early but reared by loving grandparents and a caring, sometimes peppery, great aunt. Tennant is the product of an unhappy marriage and a cold, withholding mother. Other personal disappointments closed him down. I enjoyed writing Tennant\u2019s gradual thawing and opening up.<\/p>\n

Julia and Tennant bond over their \u201coutsider status.\u201d Julia is a female physician in Victorian England; Tennant has an elite background that alienates him from Scotland Yard\u2019s working-class coppers. Yet, they soldier on, slowly winning each other\u2019s respect. They also harbor past traumas that haunt them, and each has an inkling of the other\u2019s inner struggles.<\/p>\n

Q: I also appreciated the different parts of Victorian London you\u2019ve shone a spotlight on, none of them too delicious \u2013 cholera, workhouses, \u201cMolly\u201d houses, abandoned children. What went into your research?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: Ah . . . cholera. Here is where I confess to an odd fascination with disease in history. Name one\u2014the black death, smallpox, cholera, the 1918 flu, polio\u2014and I\u2019ve read the book. (A cousin, aware of this, recently sent me a copy of Pox<\/em>. I now know an awful lot about syphilis.) As for cholera, Steven Johnson\u2019s The Ghost Map<\/em><\/a> tells the fascinating story of how Dr. John Snow solved the mystery of cholera\u2019s spread.<\/p>\n

I read two wonderful books about music halls: Richard Anthony Baker\u2019s British Music Halls<\/em><\/a> (his father was a performer) and Lee Jackson\u2019s Palaces of Pleasure<\/em>.<\/a> Fewer work hours and higher wages gradually gave Victorians the time and means to enjoy themselves. Baker filled his book with stories about the leading performers, quotes from popular songs, and details about famous acts.<\/p>\n

The literature on workhouses, both online and in print, is extensive. Parliamentary investigations and reports often followed workhouse scandals. The documents are sobering. And Dickens was a great resource. Readers will recall the scene in Oliver Twist<\/em> when the young Oliver, \u201cadvancing to the [workhouse] master, basin and spoon in hand,\u201d asks, \u201cPlease, sir, I want some more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: What did you leave out of your research? I know it\u2019s probably difficult not to head down an interesting rabbit hole.<\/em><\/p>\n

A: It may sound contradictory, but cholera got the ax. My original idea was to set the novel in the middle of the epidemic. The disease faded into the background as I worked on the manuscript. Fever hospitals and scenes of Julia treating victims at her clinic disappeared. The epidemic is over when the book begins, but its aftermath lingers and is an engine for the plot . . . or a giant red herring. (I\u2019m dodging a spoiler here.) I began writing Murder by Lamplight<\/em> in the fall of 2019\u2014about six months before COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. Then six months into the pandemic, I was happy the book\u2019s focus had shifted. When people live a nightmare, they probably don\u2019t want to read about a similar one.<\/p>\n

Q: I also liked the family you\u2019ve surrounded Julia with. If you\u2019re setting up a series, she has a good surround of community.\u00a0 Each one draws out different parts of her character \u2013 her aunt, her grandfather, the boy she finds work for and looks out for.\u00a0 Do you have a favorite?\u00a0 Plans to feature any\/all of them in upcoming books?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I have two favorite supporting characters: Paddy O\u2019Malley and Aunt Caroline (Lady Aldridge). Both characters return in the upcoming books. As I wrote them, I had the faces and personalities of two people in my head.<\/p>\n

Tom Davis was my father\u2019s NYPD partner before he became a detective and left the uniform branch. Like O\u2019Malley, Tom was a \u201cgentle giant,\u201d big, kind, and soft-spoken. I slapped a bushy mustache on O\u2019Malley, but he\u2019s Tom Davis, through and through.<\/p>\n

Mary McDonough Condon was my father\u2019s sister, the oldest girl in a family of nine children. After she reared her brood of seven (including her two youngest twins!), she worked as the assistant to a New York hospital\u2019s chief of staff.\u00a0 Like Julia\u2019s Aunt Caroline, my Aunt Mary was handsome, elegant, smart, sometimes steely, and no-nonsense. She played golf into her late eighties and had a killer short game.<\/p>\n

Q: I liked the blend of grimness \u2013 Victorian London, and the gruesome murders \u2013 and Julia\u2019s loving family. There has to always be a spark of something not completely bleak, for me as a reader at least, or I\u2019m not engaged enough to keep reading.\u00a0 Can you talk about setting up your story?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: I wrote some scenes to take readers away from Whitechapel and the murders. The Wednesday night dinners, especially the second one that Tennant attends, allow playful moments\u2014some banter, Julia messing about with Tennant\u2019s tie. And I tried to give Julia a sense of humor as relief from her grim experiences.<\/p>\n

Conversations with Aunt Caroline force Julia to grapple with what she wants from life. Work-life balance is still a problem for women, and Julia is at the dawn of it\u2014at least for well-off females. Working-class women have always struggled with the juggling act of family care and wage earning.<\/p>\n

A short scene I wrote and rewrote takes Tennant away from London and the investigation. Over Christmas, he walks the Kentish downs, exploring and clarifying his feelings for Julia. It\u2019s one of my favorites.<\/p>\n

Q: What do you feel you learned as a writer on your first book? What lessons are you going to take forward with you?<\/em><\/p>\n

A:<\/p>\n

1. That historical fiction requires a disciplined balance of reality and make-believe. Novels set in the past require \u201cworld-building\u201d\u2014 or why not simply write the book in the present? But you can get carried away. It takes fortitude to tap the delete button and rid the manuscript of details you love but get in the way.<\/p>\n

2. To make the supporting cast memorable. That was a big contribution from my wonderful literary agent, Jim Donovan, a gifted writer. Early on, my supporting characters were plot devices, not people. Jim said I could do better.<\/p>\n

Q: What\u2019s your favorite part of sitting down to write? Your least favorite?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A: Unless it\u2019s \u201cbucketing down,\u201d as my Irish constable Paddy O\u2019Malley would say, I start my writing day with a morning walk. I love it when I\u2019ve talked some promising ideas into my phone\u2019s notes and return home to write. And I love rewriting . . . a little too much. Is fiddling with chapter five for the twentieth time an edit too far? Not to me: I see nothing odd in the quote (attributed to Wilde and Flaubert), \u201cI spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out.\u201d Yep.<\/p>\n

My least favorite is writing myself into a dead end and knowing I have to throw away a bunch of pages\u2014or chapters\u2014 and start over.<\/p>\n

Q: Can you name a book that was transformational for you as a reader or writer? A book that set you on a path you wanted to explore?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: They were \u201cbooks\u201d to me in the 1960s and 70s because they arrived, bound in white hardback covers, every two months: my father\u2019s American Heritage<\/em> magazines. And I read them, white cover to white cover, eager for the next edition. They planted the seeds of my love of history. Undergraduate and graduate degrees followed, and I taught high school history for over three decades.<\/p>\n

Q: And what\u2019s next for Dr. Julia? What\u2019s up your sleeve for the next book?<\/em><\/p>\n

A: A Slash of Emerald<\/em>, the second book in the Dr. Julia Lewis Mystery series, is set in the Victorian art world. A vandal targets the studios and galleries of London\u2019s female artists, slicing canvases and splashing \u201cParis Green\u201d paint. Then their models disappear and turn up dead.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Patrice!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really loved Patrice McDonough’s debut mystery,\u00a0Murder by Lamplight,\u00a0set in 1860’s London, and featuring a female doctor as the main character.\u00a0 Much like Anne Perry, she’s not afraid to tackle social issues, and also like Perry she supplies the reader with some wonderful characters (hard to believe this was a debut!).\u00a0 I am very much … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1704,1705,1706,162,1528,1524,1276],"class_list":["post-5728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-1860s-london","tag-historical-research","tag-influences","tag-kensington-books","tag-murder-by-lamplight","tag-patrice-mcdonough","tag-robin-agnew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5731,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5728\/revisions\/5731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}