New Book!

I’ve finished the book I started pre-Covid days! The Cranbury Troublemaker was inspired by my friend and fellow author, Jane Steen, simply with the gift of a title. So my Cranbury characters have Jane to thank for all the trouble this new tale brought to town.

But if you know me at all, you’ve already guessed there’s a happy ending.

Here’s the scoop:

Can a tavern keeper win the heart of a temperance worker? Perhaps, if she didn’t already hate him for the grievous mistake he made when they were young.

When Dane Wardman returns to Cranbury, all he wants to do is offer a place of rest and comfort to the hardworking men in town, a barroom where they can share a drink or two.

All Meli wants to do is warn people about the danger of alcohol. Cranbury is no place for a saloon!

Soon the whole town is quarreling. Can Cranbury ever again be the peaceful haven it once was?

And in spite of their differences, can Dane and Meli make room for the love growing between them?

Here’s a peek behind today’s scoop:

While writing Troublemaker, I was surprised to learn how long America’s temperance movement has been alive, starting with our early Puritan days. Come to think of it, who should be surprised by that? Along with the scarlett “A” that Nathaniel Hawthorne made so famous, there was also a “D” patch for those known to be drunkards.

Nowadays the idea of banning something so much a part of our culture probably wouldn’t earn many votes. But despite prohibition being an impossible idea today, I had to ponder what my spiritual take really was. Culture should never be the basis for theology. Prohibition was pretty popular a long time ago—right up to its passage, remaining powerful enough to keep it in place for at least a decade. But while the Bible does condemn drunkenness, it doesn’t exactly condemn alcohol (of course, there are those who say otherwise).

So it was a bit of a balancing act not to bring modern-day attitudes to a historical setting, something historical writers do with every book.

By the way, it may surprise you to know it wasn’t women who voted out alcohol, at least not technically. Nope, prohibition was the 18th amendment to our Constitution, voted on in 1919 when so many young men were still in France with the aftermath of the First World War. Women’s right to vote was #19, passed the year after prohibition, in 1920. Even though the temperance movement was largely carried on by women, there were obviously plenty of men who supported the idea, and the ones who made it happen were in Washington. I suppose you might think they voted in favor of the “women’s war on alcohol” to try to garner their vote, which they surely must have seen coming. Either way, the temperance movement was certainly an interesting part of our past!

I’ll close with a final plug:

May your summer take off with some happy reading!