The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
Sara DiVello: Broadway Butterfly
In this episode, I chat with my friend and fellow author interviewer, Sara DiVello. Sara is a thriller author, and creator and host of Mystery and Thriller Mavens, a popular author interview series and interactive Facebook group. We met at the San Diego Writers Festival and have since become friends. Sara's boundless energy and verve for life and literature are contagious. Sara is a gem!
Have you ever stumbled upon the ruins of a castle in suburban America? For Sara DiVello, that chance discovery sparked a decade-long journey to uncover one of the Jazz Age's most fascinating unsolved murders.
Sara shares the remarkable story behind her historical thriller, Broadway Butterfly. The book resurrects the forgotten 1923 murder of Dot King, a case that implicated one of America's wealthiest families and exposed the complex social dynamics of Prohibition-era New York.
With candor and warmth, Sara reveals her own compelling journey from corporate burnout to published author. After a pivotal moment watching her mother face terminal illness, Sara confronted the question we all eventually face: if time were limited, would you spend it as you are now? This revelation led her to abandon her stable but unfulfilling career to pursue writing, with yoga teaching providing both financial support and the mental clarity essential for creativity.
What makes this conversation truly exceptional is Sara's deep dive into her meticulous research process. Drawing from over 1,800 primary sources, she reconstructed not just the crime but the textured world of 1920s Manhattan—from the cigarette-littered floors of newspaper offices to the complex racial dynamics facing Black Americans who had migrated north. Her approach to writing characters outside her own experience, particularly Ella Bradford (a Black woman in 1923), demonstrates remarkable care and ethical consideration.
Sara illuminates the eerie parallels between 1923 and today. "How much has changed and how little has changed," she observes, noting society's persistent fixation on controlling women's bodies and choices, and our collective reluctance to confront uncomfortable historical truths.
Ready to discover why forgotten stories like Dot King's matter now more than ever? Listen now, and consider what voices from our past still deserve to be heard.
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 308. And eight, hi, I hope you're having a great week.
Speaker 1:My goodness, the world is a crazy place right now, and I certainly find solace within the books I'm reading. It's hard to believe that here we are in 2025. And people are still scared. They're still fearful of what they can learn in books. It's mind-blowing to me, and not in a good way. What we read, what we watch, what we listen to is our business. I don't think it's anybody else's, and I, for one, certainly like to have the choice of what I can read or watch or listen to, without anybody having to tell me what to do or what to listen to or read or watch. The real fear is not that this could happen, but rather it is happening now in the United States of America. Here's a reminder of the words in the First Amendment Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. A reminder that my special guest at the Lunch with an Author Literary Series event in Santa Barbara on October 16th is Bruce Holsinger. Bruce and I will chat about his latest novel, culpability, and what he's been up to since his last visit to the Santa Barbara Lunch with an Author Literary Series in 2023. I highly recommend reading Holsinger's Backlist, starting with the Displacements. It's a well-written, fast-paced, fabulous and timely novel. Okay, now let's get on with this week's conversation.
Speaker 1:Sarah DiBello is a true crime writer and the creator-host of Mystery and Thriller Mavens, a popular author interview series and interactive Facebook group. Her most recent book, broadway Butterfly, a Thriller, was a CBS New York Book Club pick. An Entertainment Weekly Most Anticipated Book, was featured in Vanity Fair and earned starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal. Divello also serves as the co-chair of the Nantucket Book Festival and on the board of the Nantucket Book Foundation, on the Literary Committee of the Boston Book Festival and on the board of Friends of the South End Library, where she curates the Author-Speaker Series For her weekly Mystery and Thriller Mavens live events. Sarah has interviewed over 400 authors, ranging from the best-selling and world-renowned to the buzziest debuts. In her spare time she loves to teach yoga, cook and eat, garden and go for leisurely walks with her husband and their beloved rescue mutt Paluda. Hi, sarah, and welcome to the show. It's great to see you again.
Speaker 2:I'm so thrilled to be here, mandy, I'm so excited to chat with you.
Speaker 1:Well, I have so many questions to ask you, so let's get started. I'd like to begin with learning about you and your university life. Studying communications with a semester abroad at City of St George's University of London in 1997, followed in 1998 with a semester abroad at the University of Queensland, in my home country. Did you have fun in Australia, oh, Mandy?
Speaker 2:I loved Australia so much that I tried to move there and the citizenship was. It was tough to get at the time but I loved Australia so much that I even considered getting a tattoo of the Australian flag over my heart and ultimately didn't do that. But Australia resides in my heart as such an incredible, magical place and I loved every bit of it, from the red sands in the middle to the beautiful waters in Port Douglas, the Cairns, up and down the coast, melbourne, the Gold Coast, brisbane, where I lived, sydney oh my gosh, I hiked the Olgas, I went to Arras Rock, uluru. I mean, I love Australia so much and I continue to see the family that I lived next door to have become lifelong friends and I talk to them all the time and see them all the time and I love my Aussies. They're my Aussie family.
Speaker 1:I think you and I need to go down there and plan some kind of a I don't know a book festival down there. Wouldn't that be fun, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Yes, at UQ, at UQ, let's go.
Speaker 1:I'm in. Okay, let's get back to you. You worked in public relations, marketing and as a yoga instructor before pivoting to the realm of books. Did you feel your identity evolve across these different careers?
Speaker 2:That is such a great question. And you know, mandy, I knew from the time that I was five years old that I wanted to be a writer and actually it's probably more like eight, because I thought that was when I figured out that those books on the library shelves didn't just appear there, they were written by actual people. But I grew up in a super poor family and books were luxury items, which is why we went to the library, because we couldn't afford to buy books. So every two weeks we went to the library, we filled our grocery bags with books, I took them home, I read them all and then two weeks later we go back and repeat the process, and when I ran out of books I would reread the entire children's section, then the adult section, ya section, and work my way into the adult section. And I love books. I was a voracious reader and then I wanted to write books.
Speaker 2:But because I grew up in such challenging circumstances, I didn't feel like someone like me could be a writer. And I was the first one in my family to go to college and I worked my way through college in the university's public relations office and when I came, and in spite of working my way through, I still had to take out a ton of student loans because, unlike Australia, education is not affordable in the United States. Australia has an incredible education system where they really make it accessible and affordable for all of their students, which is one of the many, many things that I love about Australia. And so I came out and I had a ton of students' debts and I needed to get a reliable and high-paying job to pay those student loans back and eventually to be, able to afford a car payment and a mortgage and all of those real life expenses that most of us have.
Speaker 2:So I took that experience that I had garnered working my way through college and went right into the corporate world working in public relations and marketing. Now I knew on day one, by 9.15 am, that this was not for me, but it didn't feel like I had a choice because I had the student loans and rent and all the other expenses of living to pay. So I stayed and I worked that job and jobs like it for 13 years and I knew all the while that my heart yearned to write, but it didn't feel possible with bills to pay. And finally, a couple of things coalesced in my life where I turned 30, which is the age that my teenage self and my young 20 self thought was the magical age that I would have everything figured out. I would have a great wardrobe, obviously, a great boyfriend, obviously, and a great career that I loved. And I turned 30 and none of those things were really happening.
Speaker 2:I had a great boyfriend, who eventually became a great husband, but I didn't have a great wardrobe, mostly because I realized I was terrible at style and I hated my job. At the same time, my mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and given six months to live, and this was such a shock because no one in my family had ever had cancer, and it was so systemically shocking that she had to stop and think about what did she want to do with those last six months. And I started thinking oh my God, what would I do if I only had six months to live? As I was watching her wrestle through these decisions and then it occurred to me that none of us really know how much time we have left. I could step outside after this interview and get hit by a bus. So how will I have spent the last six months or last six minutes or six years of my life? And if I'm not doing what I would want to be doing in those last hypothetical six months, why?
Speaker 2:am I doing it at all, when I could get hit by a bus in five minutes, and it was this huge wake-up call. The third thing that happened that was really motivating was that I worked in financial services, which at the time was a super male-dominated field, and I worked in public relations and marketing, which was the one little enclave where there could be a woman in leadership and I would walk in. I was usually the only woman in the room. There'd be 90 guys, one me, and sometimes there would be one other woman and she would be my boss. So in my mind I'm thinking, hey, sister, let's be here together in this world of men. And she was thinking I hope you die, oh my goodness, and I'm going to stab you with the sharp point of my stiletto and step over your dead body to get myself to the next level.
Speaker 2:And I happen to work under a parade of what can only be described as stupendously bad female bosses. And so these three things of dealing with this backstabbing and bitchery in a male-dominated workplace, with this backstabbing and bitchery in a male-dominated workplace, my mother having only six months to live, and this secret lifelong desire to become a writer, really started to coalesce around the age of 30. And I thought I got to get out of here. I got to make a change and I got to live a life that's authentic to me and eventually I started saving my money and I started making a plan and eventually I was able to quit my corporate job and start writing my book and, as an additional source of stable income, I started teaching yoga. So it took me five years to write my first book. I was teaching yoga the whole time and that book is where, in the MMI, it came out in 2013. And it is about exactly this the you know, finding your path and stepping away from what is familiar, convenient, easy, expected, lucrative all of these reassuring words to what is real and terrifying and exciting and thrilling and authentic to you.
Speaker 2:Then I started writing my second book, which was Broadway Butterfly. That took me 10 years, kept teaching yoga and then I actually took those skills of PR and marketing. Because I quickly realized that most took those skills of PR and marketing, because I quickly realized that authors most authors are really struggle with PR and marketing and I started putting them to use doing marketing for authors and organizations and book festivals. And so the identity itself never changed I always wanted to be a writer. I always yearned to be a writer. I always saw myself first and foremost as a writer, but the external circumstances didn't let that happen for a while.
Speaker 1:But it ended up being okay, because the skills that I garnered along the way ended up coming in quite handy when I finally was able to make that leap to author and I think it's great when you reach a certain stage and you can look back and understand why you were learning these other skills that at the moment, you might have thought. I don't know what I'm doing here, but okay, I'll do it, Because, as an author especially in 2025, the skills you've learned are now essential for authors, right? Yes, In 2013, your book when in the Om Am I? One Woman's Journey from the Corporate World to the Yoga Mat was published. Did you find that spiritual practices like yoga and mindfulness transformed not just life choices but narrative style and discipline?
Speaker 2:And that is why you are the renowned interviewer that you are. Mandy Jackson, beverly, yes, and in my you know how long has it been? 15 years of doing this or however long it has been? No one has ever asked me that, and I love that you asked me that and the answer is a resounding yes, because when you are writing, there's a lot to worry about. Will I sell this book? Will I find an agent? Will my agent be able to sell this book? Will I get a publisher Assuming all of that happens when the book comes out? Will I get good reviews? Will people like it? Will I sell copies?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of clutter and a lot of worries that could really bog a creative person and a writer down, but you can't create in that state of chaos and worries. A calm mind is a creative mind and I use yoga as a tool to calm my mind and enter a state of groundedness and focus and calmness and clarity, so that I can put aside all of those worries and just write the story. And so that's the first way in which it helps. The second way in which it helps is that writing is often uncomfortable because of these worries and because you don't know what's going to happen. Will you be able to finish the book, will you be able to sell the book, will you be able to tell the book in a way that will garner good reviews or sales, or whatever it is. So sitting in that discomfort is hard, and yoga is a tool that helps you to sit in discomfort, be present in it and keep going.
Speaker 1:And plus, it keeps you healthy mind, body, spirit. Exactly Now, because you've traveled quite a bit and lived in other countries, how has travel and global perspectives influenced your storytelling? And let's face it, you can get on the internet now and look up what a particular street looked like in 1650 or something like that in London. But I feel that visiting other countries, and especially living in other countries, even if they are English-speaking countries, allows you to get a feel of the culture of that history, how things smell in the street. You know all that kind of thing, absolutely yes in two specific ways.
Speaker 2:The first is that it's very easy for all of us to stay where we are comfortable, where it is familiar, convenient and easy. And when you stay in a place where everyone looks like you, sounds like you, speaks your language, has your food, has your same accent, has your same products, your same brands, where you know where everything is, where you know where the pharmacy is, you have your doctor, you have the grocery store, you know where everything is and you're comfortable there, it's very easy to stay there. And I think there is nothing more valuable than getting out of your cozy corner and out into the world to help you to realize that A there is a big and beautiful world out there. There is a big and beautiful world out there and it helps you to realize your unique place in it and to cultivate empathy for those who are different. And I think that empathy is key not only to writing, but also just to living a wholehearted, open-hearted human life.
Speaker 2:And it's very easy to think that everyone is like you when you never leave your little cozy corner of the world, that everyone thinks like you or looks like you or votes like you, or that this is so obvious or this is how it's always been or this is how it should be.
Speaker 2:But when you get out in the world and you are other, you are different. You're the one who looks different, you're the one who sounds different, you're the one who doesn't speak the language. You're the one who has to ask for help and you can't speak the language, you can't remember the word and you're looking for the translation. And it's humbling and it's hard, and it makes you kinder and more empathetic to those who, when you're back in your corner of the world, are having that same struggle. And it also makes you just realize that when you know, specifically as a writer, when you're writing people who are not like you, that you can imagine and start to viscerally feel what that would be like. So, as a creative, but also just as a human, it's so important to get out in the world, it's so important to just go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. Something that stood out to me while I was reading your novel Broadway Butterfly is how well you set scenes, and I was wondering if you'd like to read the paragraph from page 97, starting with back at the news.
Speaker 2:Oh, I would be so honored. And thank you for your very kind words, mandy. This is one of my favorite, one of my favorite paragraphs. I can't believe you picked it. So here we go Back at the news. The city desk bustled, as always, a cacophony of ringing phones and overlapping conversations. Press agents lurked, waiting for their chance. Reporters rushed out in pursuit of a source or rushed back in fresh off a tip, everyone always in a hurry. The floor, as usual, was filthy, littered with detritus, ash, cigarette butts, scraps of paper, containers of coffee and remnants of sandwiches left in a hurry and never disposed of. The old building's army of mice would be scurrying toward the feast later and the copy boys would reach for their makeshift rubber band slingshots and paperclips to wage their war against the vermin. Julia took her seat and tucked into writing her story.
Speaker 1:Seedlessness. Now you know why I love that paragraph. I mean, it completely sets the mood. The scene came alive. I saw it in my mind as if I was watching a film and the camera was panning around the room. An important part of writing is to be able to center yourself so that you are in the mind of the person you're writing about. The way Julia looks around the room and this is what she sees and you can tell by the last sentence that you read about Julia sitting down to write is that she, like the author you, has actually centered herself, and now she's about to start writing. So let's get back to yoga. Would you say that yoga practice helped cultivate presence, the moment and imagination in your writing?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, 1000 times yes. And what I really love about this paragraph that you picked is that every single one of those things that I mention are 1000% historically accurate and drawn from the historical record. So I had found a memoir by one of the other reporters that Julia had worked alongside, as well as a biography of Philip Payne, her editor, and they talked about how filthy the floor was and how you know that they people, of course they smoked like chimneys, all of them. You know lung cancer, never heard of it, and they would just throw their cigarettes on the floor and they would just, you know, ball up the paper and throw it on the floor and ash their cigarette you know their cigarettes on the floor, or just put the sandwich on the floor.
Speaker 2:And of course, there was a mouse problem, which is just so disgusting I mean, it's just filthy. And they talked about the copy boys who would sit on the benches and chase these mice. And as someone who's scared of mice, I mean there's nothing more horrifying than picturing myself like Julia trying to type her article and little armies of mice are scurrying around her feet. That would be very hard for me to work in that situation, mandy, but I can picture it. I can smell the cigarette smoke, I can hear the scurrying and the squeaking and the shouts of copy boy and the copy boys running over their little leather shoes, pounding on the floor, you know, to get the copy and run it out to the printer. I mean, it's just it's. I can transport myself there imaginatively and visually, and I want to transport my readers there too, which you do beautifully.
Speaker 1:You spent years researching and writing Broadway Butterfly. I'm interested to know what initially attracted you to the story and what kept you going. Let's face it, it takes a lot of courage and determination to finish a novel. So for anyone who's writing a novel and they're into year three and you're thinking to yourself, oh my God, when am I going to finish this thing I think it's helpful to know what kept other writers going. So that's my question to you.
Speaker 2:You're three years in. Okay, perfect, you're a third of the way there. Keep going, keep going. Take a snack break and then keep going. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It's exactly what you have to keep doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So I was home for Thanksgiving in Philadelphia visiting my aunt and the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, not a lot happening if you're not out hitting the sales which I am not, because I hate crowds, and that would be a nightmare almost as bad as the mice running around my feet in Julia's newsroom at the city desk. So we're sitting around, we're having our leftover turkey sandwiches and mashed potatoes and whatever. And my uncles start reminiscing that back in the 1960s they used to cut classes and sneak out of high school and they used to go over to the old castle and they would sit on the stairs of the castle and they would sneak cigarettes and sneak beer. And my first thought was you know, these are my stately uncles. I was so shocked to think of them, as you know, truant students cutting class and smoking cigarettes. And I said, oh my, you guys were really bad. You were the bad boys of Catholic high school. And then my second thought was wait, did you say castle? I'm sorry, castle, what castle? And they said, yes, it's been torn down.
Speaker 2:Now, it was torn down in the 1980s, but back in the 60s there was a grand estate, a castle, an actual, a veritable mansion half a mile away and my aunt lives in a very normal, very modest suburban neighborhood where everything is a split level ranch circa 1950, six steps up, six steps down, and every house kind of looks the same. And so the idea that there was a castle around was so crazy. So, needless to say I needed to go take a look at this castle. So all 11 of us pile into three cars and we caravan over to the next suburban development, you know, half a mile down the street where in the between the Subarus and the tulip beds and the split level ranches, Mandy, are the ruins of an actual castle. That's crazy. And there are headless statues of Diana and Zeus and the remnants of a fountain that once gurgled, and in the middle of a soccer field is a grand curving staircase going to nothing, coming from nothing. And in someone's backyard are these six 50-foot tall pillars up to the sky, to nothing. And it's so eerie, it is so bizarre to stand on what you know was the foundation of this house, this enormous mansion, 147 rooms, and no, you could just feel in the same way that when you visit a battlefield all the hairs on the back of your neck go up. You're like some stuff happened here. Okay, Some stuff went down, and so I went home and I learned everything about this castle the 147 rooms, 28 bathrooms, 24 fireplaces, its own ballroom, its own gymnasium, its own radio station, its own movie theater, its own ballroom, 70 full-time gardeners just to maintain the property. These incredible statistics you're like, well, that's really cool, but I'm not in the castle raiding business, so I moved on.
Speaker 2:But then I couldn't stop thinking about this castle and this family and I could feel in the marrow of my bones that there was a story here. And so I went back around Valentine's Day, so three months later, and I found this 1952 book and it was something like Scandalous Philadelphia, the 100 most shocking things to ever rock the Quaker city. Now, obviously it doesn't take that much to rock a Quaker. Bless their hearts. But this was scandalous because there was one page and one paragraph that said you know, oh, the Stotesbury family, who lived in this castle, who was one of the 50 wealthiest families in the world and whose the father was the founding partner of JP Morgan, with Mr Morgan himself, with JP himself, found themselves in an uncomfortable situation when the son-in-law's mistress turned up murdered in her bed in Midtown Manhattan, and I got goosebumps all over my body and I said that's my story and I dove down the research hole and it just kept getting crazier. And Dot King, who is the murdered scandalous flapper found on West 57th Street wearing a lace negligee that barely reached her knees, you know was fascinating. And then Julia, the lead reporter that covered the case at a time when less than 20 percent of American women worked outside the home and 1 percent of newspaper people who worked in the newspaper world were women. Of people who worked in the newspaper world were women. There were 3,500 members of the New York Newspaper Union, 35 members of the Women in Newspaper Club, and she's my main point of view, my main character.
Speaker 2:And then Detective John D Coughlin, who's the head of the NYPD detectives unit, with 1,200 men reporting to him. And the New York, who's the head of the NYPD detectives unit, with 1200 men reporting to him. And the New Yorker did a profile of him in 1926 and called him the cop in the silk shirt because he would only wear silk shirts and he had this incredible photographic memory. Now we would call him neurodiverse.
Speaker 2:Then they said back then they called him that poor jerk burdened with a terrible memory because he couldn't stop remembering things. So if you named an address, he would start spouting out every crime committed around there without being able to control. He would just start spouting out this long list of crimes because he had it all in his head, which I think is so fascinating, but they were like. That poor guy is odd. He's the second lead creation and the world wake of the civil war who came north and east to escape legalized racism and discrimination down south. And she's my third point of view, and then Frances Stotesbury is my fourth point of view, and it's what kept me going for those 10 long years is, first of all, I didn't know it was going to take me 10 years, so I kept thinking I'm almost done.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh Like a greyhound, reaching for that bone, racing around the track. I'm almost done. But it was also learning how extraordinary these people were and feeling the solemnity and the burden and the honor of being the one to tell their stories, these real people, and I just kept thinking if in 100 years, someone wanted to tell my story and they won't because I'm not that interesting but I would be like don't rush. Don't rush, like you know, don't get me on my best day, don't get me on my worst day. Capture the fullness of my humanity, the complexity of my humanity, and honoring them and trying to do that was what kept me going.
Speaker 1:And that brings up another question for me Can you speak about the ethical responsibility in writing? True crime inspired fiction and balancing fact, speculation and sensitivity, for example, changing names etc.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for raising that that is so important. And because they are real people, you really want to take the time to get it right. So for once, my good old anxiety and OCD came in handy, because I was going to get it right, mandy, and if it took me 10 years, I was going to get it right. So I accumulated over 1800 pieces of original research and I stand firmly on the shoulders of my research and I can tell you exactly the cost of daycare is accurate. I mean, everything down to the cost of daycare per day is factually accurate. Because I really took the time to get it right, because these are real people and you have to hold their humanity gently and carefully and really take the time and care to get it right.
Speaker 2:And when you are telling anyone's true story, you want to invest that time and don't take the shortcuts. True story you want to invest that time in there. You don't take. You know, don't take the shortcuts.
Speaker 2:I didn't change anybody's name, except for the sort of non-necessary characters in the police station, because I didn't have another 10 years to make sure that I was capturing them in the wholeness of their humanity, because they only had three lines or whatever. But I think that you know again, it's really about taking the time and the care and holding yourself to the highest ethical standard that you would want a stranger to hold themselves to if they were writing your story. The other thing that you want to be really careful about is when you are writing in characters and voices that are outside of your own experience as I was you want to go to expert sources for them. So specifically, I'm thinking about Ella Bradford, and Ella Bradford is a black American woman and I will never know what that experience is like to be black in America, because I have the privilege of walking through life as a white woman and so I will never know personally the depths of that experience. So I went to expert sources. I worked with my honorary aunts Bernadine Nash-McClam Dr Bernadine Nash-McClam, phd, mdiv, mba from Harvard who is the most learned and brilliant woman I know, who holds a PhD and a master's in divinity from Harvard and an MBA from Harvard and who is a black American woman. And I said I have no ego about this. Tell me how to tell Ella's story. And I worked with her over the course of nine years to get it right. And I think you have to honor that.
Speaker 2:When someone who is in that person's experience, who's telling you this is how it is, you have to say yes, absolutely, and thank you and not get defensive and take your ego out of it and never think that your imagination is better than their lived experience. And when she says you know, this is not how a black woman talks, I say thank you, tell me how a black woman talks and really take the time to get it right. And then I hired my own sensitivity reader because I don't ever want one person to have to speak. It wouldn't be fair to ask you to speak, for what is the experience?
Speaker 2:What's it like to be an Australian woman? You can only speak to your experience of being an Australian woman. What's it like for me to be a white woman in America. I can only speak to my experience of being in the Northeast, you know, so I can't speak for that whole experience, and so I would never ask a person of color to say you know, tell me what it's like to be black in America. It's like, tell me what your experience was like. And then I got to hire, spend my time and energy and money to hire a sensitivity reader. I hired two because, again, I'm taking care, and then my publisher also hired a sensitivity reader because I really wanted to get it right and to honor the truth of this experience.
Speaker 1:And honestly I think it matters to the readers. Most of my friends, who are readers anyway, we appreciate the research that goes into historical fiction. Sarah, why is it that forgotten stories like Dot King's matter, and what's at stake in resurrecting history's silent voices?
Speaker 2:Oh, my God, I love this question so much. So if I could, mandy, I would write books like this for every single unsolved crime in the world, because I believe that every single person who has been harmed and wronged in this way deserves to have justice, and their families deserve to have justice, and they deserve to have their voices heard. And so, if I could, I would do every single one of them, because it's a crime, if pun intended, that they're first harmed in this way of having their life ended and not on their terms, and then they're harmed secondarily by not getting justice and by being denied justice and not getting their voice heard in the world as more than just a victim. And so that's why this matters, and I noticed that there's a really dangerous trend right now in America of wanting to turn away from history and turn away from the ugly parts of history, and specifically I'm thinking about the part of the history of enslaved Black Americans is now a paragraph, I think, in sixth grade history books, and some people in this country don't want to talk about the Holocaust, they don't want to talk about slavery, they don't want to talk about anything ugly and hard, and I think that's really dangerous. And here's why and hard, and I think that's really dangerous. And here's why, if we don't look at our ugly and if we don't look at our hard, we are never going to do better going forward. We are doomed to repeat ourselves. And, mandy, we have to do better going forward. We have to do better going forward. And the only way we're going to do better going forward is if we look back, see what we did wrong, acknowledge it and then, looking at those ramifications and harm, use that as motivation to make different choices going forward. And so, as I see history not being honored and as I also see history repeating itself, now it feels more important than ever to write about this in the context of a page turning hopefully page turning thriller or historical book of any genre, so that we can really start to realize that it's not so far away, it wasn't so far behind us.
Speaker 2:And I think one of the craziest things that I noticed when writing this book was that it was 100 years later. How much has changed. Look at the technology computers, cell phones. This crime would have been solved now, but it could have been solved then, except that political forces corrupted it.
Speaker 2:And I think what shocked me is how much has changed and how little has changed, and I just can't believe that we're talking about some of the things that we shouldn't be talking about anymore in terms of women's rights. You know, and then it was so scandalous that you know, skirts were going from, you know, ankle length to knee length and you know that women were cutting their hair for the first time in history. So shocking to bob your hair. Women should have long hair and it's like why are we still talking about what women should be wearing or what they should be doing with their bodies or how they should cut their hair? Why are we still talking about this? How are we still talking about this? And it's only when we look at the fact that wow, we were actually still talking about this 100 years ago that it becomes so ludicrous as to land now with oh my God, why are we still talking about this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's exhausting. It's exhausting, sarah. While Broadway Butterfly centers around Dot King's murder, there are a multitude of characters surrounding her story. Dot was murdered in 1923. And in your author notes which are wonderful, by the way you explain how the telling of the story required incorporating certain elements of society. So, with this in mind, can you set the scene in Manhattan 1923, and discuss what made the city a dangerous place for people of color and how this related to Dot's personality and her trust in Ella Bradford, to Dot's personality and her trust in Ella Bradford? Dot and Ella's friendship made me realize that Dot must have been a really special lady, as was Ella.
Speaker 2:I think she was a really special lady. So I think we have to look at the fact that Ella Bradford was born in Jacksonville, florida, around 1920. They were not keeping careful birth records then, especially not for black women, so I was never able to find her birth certificate and I, after six years of searching, did find her wedding certificate and it just says birth year 1900, approximate. And you know that says a lot about society already right, who we keep careful records of and who we don't. In general, it's really hard to find historical records of women, much harder than the men Ella Bradford went to at the age of 19 years old, went to the Jacksonville train station and sat in the quote unquote colored waiting room because she could not legally sit in the white waiting room. And she got on a train North and she had to sit in the colored car because she was not allowed to sit in the white car and because black people were not allowed to sit with white people. And she had to stand in line to get food because they only had one or maybe two tables in the back for black customers. And go north to Washington DC, philadelphia, new York and Chicago and live in a world that was colder than down south, that was faster than down south, where maybe they didn't know anyone and had to leave everything familiar and dear and that sounded like home, smelled like home, felt like home Behind. To create for the chance to create a better life for themselves and their children is unbelievably courageous. And at the time Jacksonville, florida and down south was legally segregated. Colored water fountains, white water fountains. Colored waiting rooms, white waiting rooms. But New York was integrated. Ella Bradford could sit where she wanted to on the train, and that was something that I opened with that scene of what would it have been like to sit, to be relegated to colored waiting rooms your whole life and then to get to sit where you want, and do you ever forget what that was like? And so Ella Bradford sitting where she wants on the train is the opening scene in this book. When then, a page later, she walks into her place of work and finds her friend and her employer, Dot King, dead.
Speaker 2:We have to remember that in 1923, the term racism did not exist. The term sexism did not exist. If you do a search for those words, nothing comes up. And these things were legal even in the legally integrated city of New York.
Speaker 2:So one thing that I learned early on is I interviewed a professor at Boston College who wrote a book about how crime was portrayed by the media at the turn of the century and he said what are you doing for research? I said I have these subscriptions to all these newspaper archives and whatever. He said you're not just reading the articles, are you? I said yeah, I'm reading the articles, I'm clipping them out, I'm downloading them, I'm photocopying them. He's like no, no, no, you got to read the ads. You got to read the ads. That's what tells you what life is like. And so I.
Speaker 2:Hair care women want beautiful hair Digestion. People worried about digestion a lot. Some of the brands were the same Maybelline, wrigley's, chewing Gum, some of them you've never heard of. But the want ads were really interesting because you could post an ad and people did advertising the color of the skin of the person you wanted to hire and they would say you know, either colored okay or colored not okay, you know white only. But then they would also say what ethnicity they wanted. They would say German okay, because this is right after World War I. Or no, germans, and it just is. And they would say recently landed like you're an immigrant, you're okay or you had to be established, and just the idea that this was not only okay but was out there in the one ads is so shocking to our modern day brains.
Speaker 2:And Dot King hired a black woman and I think that is so interesting. And Ella Bradford was her closest friend and knew the most about her. She knew all her secrets, she knew where the money was, she knew who the lovers were, she knew who the enemies were. She became the most valuable source of information for the police.
Speaker 2:And I think that Dot, who's the daughter of two Irish immigrants, her mother works at a laundry. Interestingly, her mother eventually owns her own laundry. Her dad, who's dead, was a night watchman at Wanamaker's, which is a department store like Kohl's or, you know, clover or you know. Finally, whatever you know, the department store is in your neck of the woods and I think that because Dot was from a very poor immigrant family who moved around a lot, so there's some housing insecurity, maybe there's some food insecurity. She's one of four children, her sort of being looked down on as poor and Irish and the daughter of immigrants. I think she only. I don't know if she even made it through high school probably gave her an empathy and an openness to saying maybe some people don't wanna hire a smart, you know black woman who came here for a better life, but I do because I know what it's like to be overlooked or discriminated against for being poor, irish and white.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would like to know a little bit more about those two. They just seemed, like you know, so perfectly matched. Let's talk about the main reporter in the story, julia, and how the press shapes narrative truth.
Speaker 2:It's certainly a subject that can't be overlooked, right now, mandy, I am so glad that you asked this question because this was top of mind for me as well. Again, going back to that thing that I noticed about how much has changed in 100 years and how little has changed in 100 years, and what is really also concerning about me, about now, to me is the lack of trust in journalists. Journalism is considered the quote unquote fourth estate and that is supposed to be our safeguard keeping the government in line and holding elected officials accountable. And the idea that journalists aren't exactly that which they are and they should be holding themselves to that highest ethics, I think is really dangerous for us. And what is interesting to me is that for people who read on e-readers, you can see which paragraphs they highlight the most, and one of the most highlighted paragraphs is this this is the first, the most popularly highlighted line Quote facts were facts, but the storyteller steered the narrative and the narrative steered public perception. It was an invisible power, and so Julia realizes that words matter and how you tell the story matters. So when she's covering the crime before this and the murdered man's mistress is accused of his murder and she teams up and the wife, the estranged wife steps in to defend the mistress, who almost certainly is guilty and did in fact shoot this man, and he deserved it. The newspapers that are run by men reporting are freaking out about this and the headlines that they use are really ugly about the women. And Julia's headlines are really different and I loved that and I thought that is the power of when you say you know scorned woman, and I can actually do. You want me to go grab the book and read these, or no? Yeah, I'd love to hear them, thanks, I'm going to go grab the book and read these, or no? Yeah, I'd love to hear them, thanks. So this is where this is Julia's first chapter and she's, you know, in this male dominated newsroom and it says, you know that she'd become the lead crime reporter at the paper and one of the best in the whole city.
Speaker 2:And yet the pressure was always on to prove she deserved to be there and had the chutzpah to stay. That pressure would not end with the story or the next. The necessity to arrive earlier, stay later and work twice as hard to get paid half as much, simply for the privilege to be there, trailed her like a constant shadow. But it also meant that she found herself with the power to shape the narrative of the news, not only by which story she covered, but also by how she covered them. So when, like in this case, the accused was a woman and the Brooklyn Daily Times headlines had crowed state flays Wells woman at start of murder trial, julia had ensured that her paper headlines trumpeted innkeeper's wife aids. Miss Wells calls Roadhouse Jim a wastrel, and so it's putting the onus back on this man who is a batterer and an abusive, who is an alcoholic and violent and has beaten not only his wife but his mistress to bloody pulps multiple times. But the male reporters aren't talking about that. Julia can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really interesting, I love this stuff.
Speaker 2:I could talk about this all day.
Speaker 1:I'm going to switch things up a little bit, because there's a couple of other things I would like to talk with you about, and that are the roles in the literary organizations and festivals that you are a part of. Let's start with the Mystery and Thriller Mavens and then move on to the Nantucket Book Foundation and Festival.
Speaker 2:I would love to yes. So I started Mystery and Thriller Mavens as an authors helping authors initiative to help my fellow authors get the word out about their books as the pandemic descended. So originally I had hoped that this book would come out on March 15, which was the anniversary of the crime 2020. Now let's remember March 15th 2020, the day the world shut down, thank God, my book. I wasn't able to finish my book and get a book deal by then, but I kept thinking, oh my God, what if I had? Because all of my writer friends whose books were coming out found themselves in this terrible position where they couldn't. There were no events, everyone was stuck at home and books were considered non-necessity, so you couldn't even order books. So I was at home, all of my events were canceled, and I thought how can I help? What if it had been me? How can I help those who are in this position? And so I started interviewing authors the night before their books come out. And now it's been five and a half years and I'm still doing it.
Speaker 2:So every Monday for hashtag mystery Monday, I interview mystery authors the night before their weeks come out, because we all know Mondays can be murder, and I try to make them a little bit less painful and get your week off to a killer start, and my goal is to connect readers with their favorite authors and to introduce them to their next favorite authors. And a year into that effort of doing those interviews, I was doing them by myself. I partnered with a woman-owned independent bookstore, which is one of five, I think, or it's a few dedicated I should say a few dedicated mystery and thriller bookstores in the country Murder by the Book in Houston, texas, and that is run by McKenna Jordan and she is a legend and it has been an honor and a pleasure to be her partner in crime streaming interviews for five and a half years now and I can queue up pre-orders for authors, stream my interviews to my audience as well as her audience, and it just works really well for everybody. So it's been an honor and a pleasure, gosh that's wonderful.
Speaker 1:So you and I started about the same time five years ago for exactly the same reasons. I think that's really cute.
Speaker 2:It's so great because things were so dark and so dire then, and the fact that good things came out of it and people sort of banded together and did what they could with what they had is so lovely Doing good in the world even in the darkest of times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, humanity is capable of fabulous things, right, okay, well, what about the Nantucket Book Foundation and Festival?
Speaker 2:Yes, so I got invited to be a featured author in the Nantucket Book Festival for my first book in 2014. And then they invited me back for Broadway Butterfly and I loved it. And then I started attending whenever I could after that, just as an attendee, because the authors are always incredible, the interviews are always thorough and thoughtful and interesting and thought-provoking, and so I kept coming back as often as I could and then, when Broadway Butterfly came out, they invited me back and then I started piping up. I said, oh, I have some ideas. And I thought they're never going to want to hear this.
Speaker 2:But this overactive hand of mine just kept flapping up with raising ideas and they said these are some really great ideas. Would you like to be our co-chair for the festival? And I felt so honored, couldn't believe it, thought they got the wrong person, but since then have invited me back every year to co-chair, and I just signed on to co-chair next year's 2026 Festival, which I'm very excited about and I believe so deeply in the work that the Nantucket Book Foundation does, which puts on this book festival every year, as well as does incredible things like run a book boom meal, providing free books to the on island residents year round, has young writer award, has a scholarship, has a visiting author program so that the kids never feel that they're 30 miles out to sea, has a children's book day, gives out 200 free books in English and Spanish really inspiring stuff. So they invited me to join the board a year ago and I am thrilled to serve as a board member since then as well, and thank you for all the great work you do.
Speaker 1:Let's talk books. What are you currently?
Speaker 2:reading. I am currently reading Patricia Cornwell's next Kay Scarpetta book and I am also reading that book on your shelf right there, which is also on my shelf Vianne, which is the prequel to Chocolat, which I am just so excited about.
Speaker 1:Excuse the pun, but it is a delicious book. There's one other thing I wanted to ask you about the work you do for the Boston Public Library, and I mean you and I met through our mutual author friend, dawn Tripp, when we were both at the San Diego Writers Conference, and I know we're going to meet up again at the Boston Book Festival in October. It's going to be fun.
Speaker 2:I can't wait to meet up in Boston with you, mandy, after spending time with you in San Diego at the Writers Conference there. So, yes, so I am thrilled to be part of the Boston Book Festivals Literary Committee, and that is one of the biggest book festivals in the world with over 20,000 attendees. And then I also serve as a board member for the Friends of the South End Library, which is the branch of the Boston Public Library, and in that role I curate and host the South End Author Series, which has a spring series and a fall series, where we have author events like this, with food and drinks and bookish community. And that again is the South End branch of the Boston Public Library, and I'm just so honored to be a board member and to host the author series there as well.
Speaker 1:Well, sarah, thank you for all the work you do with all these organizations. I know how hard it is and it's often voluntary and I appreciate the work you do. Now are you working on another book? I am working.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited to be. I just wrapped up my research and I'm just starting to write my third book and my second historical thriller, and I can't wait to delve into my next true crime case in the fabulous world of historical, where everything somehow seems more glamorous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, glamorous, and in some cases uglier too. I think yes, sarah. Thank you so much for being on the show. And I did want to point out my husband also read Broadway Butterfly, because I was telling him about all the characters in the book and he said I know those characters from Boardwalk Empire.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, thank you for noticing that. For Boardwalk Empire fans, Naki Johnson was Dot King's former lover and Ben Hilda Ferguson's lover and Partners in Crime with Arnold Rothstein, Dot King's landlord, and you might recognize a few other characters as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the characters, I love the story, and that the story is true makes it even better. Sarah, thanks for being on the Bookshop Podcast and I look forward to seeing you on October 25th.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much you are I mean such a legend in the author space and the book space as an incredible interviewer, and I can attest to that, having sat in on your sessions at the San Diego Writers Festival and now as being so honored to be your podcast guest. The questions that you ask are so fascinating and somehow get to the nucleus of the subject but yet leave it open-ended enough to really have room to organically explore. And interviewing is a really tough skill set, actually, and you are incredible. I've gotten to see you in action twice now, so I'm such a huge fan of yours and I've been had so much fun talking to you, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1:A pleasure Now I'm blushing. You've been listening to my conversation with Sarah DeVello about her book Broadway Butterfly. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on Instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, and my executive assistant and graphic designer is Adrian Otterhan. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Thank you.