“Between you and me, being a lady is a harmful enterprise.”
So says Madam Parks to younger Eliza Ripple, who’s now working as a prostitute in Gold Rush-era California after her brutish husband was killed in a bar combat. Eliza is aware of this fact all too effectively. However as a substitute of letting that fact paralyze her, she leans into the hazard that freedom brings.
When a few of her fellow working ladies go lacking, Eliza and pal Jean take it upon themselves to research the murders — a thriller the male authorities in Monterey are content material to disregard.
Jane Smiley’s latest novel, “A Dangerous Business,” is homicide thriller lite, topped with a hefty dollop of feminist power. Each Smiley and her heroines are impressed by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders within the Rue Morgue,” however in contrast to Poe, Smiley offers her characters a pleasant sense of chance.
This Friday, on Massive Books and Daring Concepts, MPR Information host Kerri Miller talks with Smiley about her ebook, the California panorama offers basis to her ebook, how her fascination with Coveneters and faith, attention-grabbing issues about ladies within the Gold Rush Period, individuals got here and overwhelmed the infrastructure, how motion unknots issues, each in writing and in life.
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Jane Smiley is the writer of quite a few novels, together with “A Thousand Acres,” which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her new ebook is “A Dangerous Business.”
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