Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. On Tuesday, the reissue of the third book in my Diana Spaulding 1888 Quartet, No Mortal Reason, came out in trade paperback and e-book formats. Reissuing books requires rereading them to make any necessary changes and/or corrections. Rereading this one reminded me just how many details I borrowed directly from real stories about ancestors on both sides of my family. For finding source material for the late nineteenth century, genealogical research is right up there with reading old newspapers and local history books.

In No Mortal Reason my sleuthing couple, Diana Spaulding and Ben Northcote, stop in rural Sullivan County, New York, on their way back to Maine from Colorado, to meet relatives Diana never knew she had. I grew up in Liberty, New York, where John Gorton, my paternal great-great-great-grandfather was one of the earliest settlers in 1797. My mother’s maternal great-grandfather, Matthew Hornbeck, moved to nearby Hurleyville almost that long ago. Between them, the Gortons and the Hornbecks had lots of family stories to tell and my grandfather, Fred Gorton, also wrote his autobiography. When his manuscript came to me, I edited what he wrote and published it as (his title) The Life of a Plodder.

I didn’t set out to use any particular family stories when I started to write No Mortal Reason. Well, I never do, since I don’t outline or otherwise plot my novels in advance. I did know that Diana’s uncles would be running a hotel, since Sullivan County in 1888 was already becoming a mecca for families wanting to escape the heat of New York City in the summer. The Hornbecks had a farm/boardinghouse (sometimes advertised as a hotel) until my grandmother’s death in 1958, so I remember spending time there first hand.

The original Hornbeck farm in the 1880s

I’ve often borrowed character names from my family tree, especially surnames. In this case, Diana’s uncles are Myron and Howd Grant. Myron (or M.H.) and  Howard Hornbeck were my great uncles. The Grant comes from the Gorton side, where a Mercy Grant married a Samuel Gorton in Connecticut in the 1800s. Mercy Grant is Howd Grant’s daughter in my novel. In the previous Diana Spaulding mystery, Fatal as a Fallen Woman, I gave Diana’s mother another favorite family name—Elmira. I’d already used Jerusha and Parmelia for secondary characters in the first book, Deadlier than the Pen.

For No Mortal Reason I did more than borrow names. I also lifted a couple of stories straight out of family lore. According to my mother, the Hornbecks once owned a map to a lead mine located in the area around Sundown, New York. It was kept in “the blue trunk” and one summer in the 1930s her grandfather and uncles (that would be M.H. and Howd) attempted to follow the map and find the mine. They had no luck, but they apparently terrified the local residents because they were dressed in their Sunday suits and driving a big black car. Everyone thought they must be mobsters, since Sullivan County was where Murder Incorporated had a habit of dumping bodies. My characters don’t find the mine, either, but searching for it added a nice wrinkle to my plot.

The grandfather who wrote his autobiography was born in 1876 and included many details about his childhood. I used a lot of them in my second published novel, Julia’s Mending, a book for ages 8-12 set in Liberty Falls, New York in 1887. The title character, Julia Applebee (two more family names, one each from my mother’s maternal and paternal lines) has a cousin named Simon. Like my grandfather, he was nicknamed “Scorcher” because of the speed at which he could ride his bike. I couldn’t resist having Scorcher reappear in No Mortal Reason as the telegram delivery boy.

There is, however, one drawback to using things that “really happened.” Even if they are true, they may not be believable. In Julia’s Mending, Scorcher boasts of hitting a rut in the road while riding his bike too fast, flying over the handlebars, and landing on his feet, unscathed. Since that really happened to my grandfather (at least according to him), I didn’t hesitate to use the incident in the book. Naturally that was the detail one reviewer decided to single out as being too unrealistic.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.