If It’s a Book Party, Make it a Real Party

By Carolyn Niethammer

I think if we ask people to come to our book parties, we should offer them something other than the chance to open their wallets and buy our books.

When my western novel The Piano Player came out, I planned a menu straight from the book. Rosie, my main character, complains of having nothing to eat but beans at the stations on her stage coach ride from California into Tombstone in 1882. So we had beans cooked in my big black Dutch oven and tortillas. But when she arrives in Tombstone, she boards at the Russ House, where real historical character Nellie Cashman serves an extensive menus of French-inspired dishes. I picked one of those dishes, Chicken a la Reine, and made that for my guests. I also made some vintage desserts.

I suggested guests come in their Western finest if they wished and some did. And because it was also a party for my 70^th birthday, I went all out and hired a real piano player, rented her a red dance hall girl costume, and worked with her to come up with authentic 1880s music. That was a little over the top, but we had a memorable afternoon in a real historic bar that my husband turned into Frisco Rosie’s Saloon with some clever signs.

Last weekend, I offered to throw a book party for my friend Dave Devine who has a brand new book on the history of Tucson from the Gadsden Purchase to now. He and his wife have had us to many dinner parties at their home, and I was a little behind in reciprocating. He is having a bigger rollout later in August, but I told him to invite his best friends to a private shindig. I planned a menu that I hoped would be amusing and cover some of the time period. This is what we had: 1880’s, beans and tortillas; 1896, Waldorf salad; 1940s, lime Jello with pineapple; 1960s, pigs in a blanket; 2000s, kale and quinoa salad; and for dessert, 1970s, strawberry and Cool Whip pie.

For drinks I had root beer, ginger ale, Gallo wine, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life beers. Also Coors packaged in vintage bottles.

Everybody remembered the Jello salad (the attendees skewed older) and the pigs in a blanket with both mustard and chile dips went fast. There was some pie left over, maybe the PeptoBismo pink Cool Whip scared people off. I’m not sure if everyone found it as amusing to eat as I did to plan and execute, but my friend sold a lot of books and we had a fun afternoon. 

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Carolyn Niethammer grew up in the territorial capital of Prescott, Arizona and now lives in Tucson in a downtown historic district. She is the author of nine nonfiction books on southwestern subjects including five cookbooks and two biographies. The Piano Player is her first novel. Find her at www.cniethammer.com. 

 

Why Writing Historical Fiction Is So Much Fun

 by Carolyn Niethammer

While readers can learn a great deal from historical fiction, it’s even more of a treat for writers.. For my novel The Piano Player, I read The Tombstone Epitaph on microfilm to learn what life was like in that dusty frontier town in the 1880s. It is said that Tombstone at that time had the best food between St. Louis and San Francisco, and the menus published in the paper confirmed that fact with offerings of  fresh oysters, lobster, six salads, five roasts, four different pies and three puddings all at one restaurant on one Sunday.

Researching what a fashionable young woman might wear led to an enjoyable afternoon in the historical society library looking over old ladies’ magazines with pictures and descriptions of bustles and bows and laces. Then there were the fabulous hats. The under garments were even more fascinating, calling for layer upon layer of fine batiste and corsets with whalebone and laces.

One of my characters, the real life Nellie Cashman, had mining interests in Alaska and Yukon Territory, so I went to Fairbanks to look at the old mining records. Down in a locked cage in the courthouse basement, in huge dust-covered books, I found Nellie’s signature when she signed for her claims. Seeing her actual handwriting sent a chill down my back. Did it ultimately make a difference to what I wrote about her? Probably not, but it sure was fun.

Next I went to Dawson City in the Yukon, and out to Nolan Creek where Nellie Cashman mined. When I figured out approximately where her claim was, I sat on a rock and willed her spirit to speak to me, to help me make her character come alive. Alas, no appearance from the other side with guidance on my project.

Stories have been told about the founder of the Arizona Historical Society and how she would attend funerals of the old-timers, accosting their relatives for diaries or memoirs. She was considered brazen, but she did collect an astounding amount of material that gives great insight into Arizona life in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Reading those fading typescripts, now carefully preserved in acid-free folders, were windows into lives both mundane and exciting.

Now all this research has been woven into my novel The Piano Player. Well-bred Mary Rose follows her dream to Tombstone and quickly discovers that she is not prepared for the challenges of being a piano player in the Bird Cage Theater. Help comes from her landlady, Nellie Cashman, proprietor of The Russ House. It is an unlikely friendship. Years after each has left Tombstone, they join up again to seek their fortunes during the Alaska gold rush. Together they deal with a lover who turns out to be a murderer, imprisonment in a Mexican jail, near death falling into the icy Yukon River and disappointment when their quest for gold is dashed. They postpone romance with the men who love them until for one, it becomes too late.

               You can find The Piano Player at Amazon.com 

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Carolyn Niethammer grew up in the territorial capital of Prescott, Arizona and now lives in Tucson in a downtown historic district. She is the author of nine nonfiction books on southwestern subjects including five cookbooks and two biographies. The Piano Player is her first novel. Find her at www.cniethammer.com.