Patricia Raybon and a New Mystery Series

Noted author (and friend) Patricia Raybon introduces a new detective in a mystery series this week.

Our heroine is an African American seminary professor in the 1920s.

Annalee Spain is a feisty woman living in Chicago poverty when All that is Secret opens. Her father’s shocking death brings her home to Denver in time to deal with historically accurate corruption in that town.

It’s a surprising mystery in many ways, and it opened my eyes to situations I’d never contemplated before.

Thank you, Patricia.

An unusual heroine–or not?

Was an African-American female theology professor unusual for the time? As Raybon explained,

“Unusual, yes, but not totally unlikely. Even before the Civil War, enslaved Blacks hungered for opportunities for learning, so progressive denominations and philanthropists launched colleges for “Negroes” known now as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) denomination, formed in 1816, had two seminaries, graduating young Black theologians from the onset.”

Annalee Spain would have come from that world.

Raybon also pointed out colleges like Oberlin had accepted Black students as early as 1835.

While most white colleges in the U.S. didn’t enroll Black students in Annalee’s time, she would’ve found a place to study and wouldn’t be “the only” young Black woman in her age cohort to earn a college degree. Her study of theology would be rare, but not impossible. Meantime, HBCUs are a priceless treasure in the U.S.

I thought Annalee Spain was an original, clever, determined detective–which she needed to be, given the situation thrust upon her!

What about Spain’s “irregular” sidekick?

The mystery opened on a snowy November night in 1923 when Annalee Spain finished a paper owed in 45 minutes to a theological magazine. With little left to eat in her small boarding room, she worried about how to deliver her paper in time to earn a much-needed stipend.

Then a knock came, and Spain discovered an impoverished, street-wise, half-starved, 11-year-old orphan.

Eddie didn’t come to pick up the paper. Instead, he delivered a telegram which changed everything. Abandoning her paper, Spain traveled to Denver to learn what really happened to her late estranged father.

But first, she fed the boy her last bit of food.

And so, an irregular partnership began between the brilliant African American professor and a hungry, street-smart, white boy.

As Raybon recounted:

“I loved Eddie immediately, and I loved the tension he brought to every scene where he appeared. As with Annalee, he was searching for answers about his missing father, a onetime preacher.

In that way, Eddie and Annalee mirrored each other in their determination to resolve their “Daddy issues.” They also shared a theological awareness.

But I didn’t “create” him. He just showed up when Annalee opened the door!

That’s one of the truly fun things about writing fiction—watching for who shows up, then letting them come to the party. I’m totally humbled by how this happens because I know it’s God at work, not me. Thus, we have Eddie.”

I loved Eddie, too.

1920s Denver–tensions of all sorts

1920s Denver was awash with racial tensions and political corruption. Raybon looked no further than her own church to discover a historical nugget worth investigating.

Raybon’s church burned to the ground in 1925; an unproved arson believed to have been the work of Klan members.

In a surprising turn of events for the time, a local white Presbyterian church invited the African-American African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.) to worship with them.

The two congregations shared the building for a year until the AME congregation rebuilt their church in 1926.

My hope was to introduce a faith character in Colorado, my home state – a beautiful “sunshine” place, but during one of its darkest times, the 1920s. 

Good fiction needs a threat element. So, that’s how I used the Klan in my mystery—as background tension for my lead character’s sleuthing. The threat was real in Colorado, however. So, I wanted readers to encounter history that they might not have known, but that also heightened narrative tension.”

While Raybon obviously had a personal connection, she did her research to explore the broader community.

I started by reading histories about Colorado’s Klan. Then, I found myself poring over old Colorado newspapers from the 1920s, the era of my book.

With thanks to Denver Public Library’s amazing Western History Digital Collections, I listened to oral histories, scoured old phone books, street maps, vintage photos, church bulletins.

Meantime, small story details demanded attention: How much was a train ticket from Chicago to Denver in 1923? What perfumes were women wearing? Aftershave scents for men? Car models? Hit songs? Popular movies? Maid’s uniforms. Buttons vs. zippers on clothes?

I love history, so pouring over this material never got old.

From the city’s history and her own family, Raybon wrote a compelling story.

Where did her characters come from?

Raybon patterned Spain after her own mother,

“a firecracker–feisty and nearly fearless. I borrowed my mother’s spunk to give Annalee a bright, brave spark. Readers love proactive protagonists. My late mother, for inspiration, filled that bill. In life, my mother took no prisoners. I enjoyed writing some of that same attitude in Annalee.”

As to Jack, the WWI veteran/pastor who aids and abets Spain and Eddie?

Raybon didn’t say, but I’ve met her splendid husband, Dan!

A new genre for Raybon

Raybon, a reporter and nonfiction author of many books, decided to try her hand at a “clergy mystery” during the COVID pandemic.

I’d started working on a mystery some 10 years ago but put it on a shelf. During the pandemic lockdown of summer 2020, however, I was desperate for something to take me away from the horrible daily news. So, I went back to my mystery.”

She laughed,

“What had changed [during those 10 years] was me. Older now, I worried less about what people might think or say about prim Patricia Raybon writing a romantic historical mystery. No reaction could be worse than a pandemic. So, I let her rip and gave it my best.”

A long time Sherlock Holmes fan, Raybon also enjoys a host of historical clergy mysteries like

Father Brown and Grantchester, and I deeply love Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries.

I also love mysteries set in other countries including Vaseem Khan’s Baby Ganesh mysteries in India, Harriet Steel’s Inspector De Silva mysteries in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Rhys Bowen’s “Her Royal Spyness mysteries” in the U.K. (and her stand-alone novels), and Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency mysteries in Botswana.

In the U.S. I admire the American Girl History Mysteries for children and, for adults, William Kent Krueger’s “Cork O’Connor mysteries” in the north woods of Minnesota (and, especially, his excellent stand-alone mysteries such as Ordinary Grace).

Raybon obviously wrote what she loved!

Who is Patricia Raybon?

Raybon grew up under Jim Crow segregation in a family of faith in Denver, much later than All that is Secret.

I’ve always asked hard questions of God but listened for answers. Thus, I’ve been writing almost since I could read. Half a minute past first grade, I started writing stories–but also looking for life insight. That journey led me, past college, to newspaper reporting at my hometown paper, The Denver Post.

Her writing has appeared in many periodicals, won awards (including a Pulitzer Prize nomination), and taught college writing courses. In addition, she’s published many personal essays on faith and family in several well-known periodicals and authored seven books (including two memoirs).

Reflecting on her first novel, Raybon said,

All That Is Secret, my first novel, is my seventh book, but also personal in many ways. Why tell such personal stories? The reward and journey of discovery changes lives, starting with my own. My goal? To inspire readers to bridge their divides, love God and one another, and choose peace.

My Annalee Spain Mysteries series is inspired by that same goal. I love what Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil said about Annalee. “This story of an amateur sleuth has the potential to change our perspectives.” In fact, I was going for that. May God help it to happen.

Watch for All that is Secret published the first week in October 2021, with two more mysteries to come.

Tweetables

Introducing an African-American female theology professor confronting Denver’s 1920s Ku Klux Klan. Click to Tweet

A new detective, a unique location, and much to ponder: Annalee Spain in 1920s Denver. Click to Tweet