This article has been pre-scheduled as I am currently on maternity leave.
Last month I shared with you the very first sneak peek of my upcoming historical novel The Queen of Roses. Today I’m back with another excerpt because this book is actually a dual timeline novel, which is a return to my roots as a writer!
Just as a refresher, Englishwoman Adele Pearce has been on the rounds of the London Season, looking for a husband, for an embarrassing number of years when her mother calls her out to Pasadena to join Adele’s ailing father as he convalesces. When she arrives, she realizes that her mother isn’t only interested in reuniting the family but she intends to succeed where Adele has failed: finding a husband. That means marrying an American and settling down in the strange, arid City of Roses.
Fifty-seven years later in 1960, Pasadena newspaper reporter Theresa Johnson is struggling to get off of the Obituaries desk when she receives a life-changing call from a woman called Miss Pearce. That is where we pick up this excerpt.
Back at her desk, Theresa began shuffling through her notes for a faded nearly famous jazz singer’s obituary that was due at the end of the day. Mercifully, the tan telephone on the corner of her desk rang, giving herself an excuse to put off figuring out a more delicate way to phrase the singer’s onetime manager’s suggestion that taking cocaine to work and laudanum to sleep in the twenties had probably contributed to the life of general ill health that had ultimately led to the singer’s demise.
“Theresa Johnson,” she said into the phone.
“Miss Johnson? There’s a telephone call for you,” said one of the paper’s switchboard operators.
“Who is it?”
“A woman who says there’s an error in one of today’s obituaries.”
Theresa sighed. “All right, put her through.”
She waited a moment for the operator to connect the outside call and then said, “Theresa Johnson speaking.”
“Miss Johnson? Thank you for taking my call. My name is Adele Pearce. I am concerned about the accuracy of one of your articles that ran in this morning’s paper.”
The woman’s voice sounded strong, but it had the timber of age and, if Theresa wasn’t mistaken, an English accent lacing through most of her words.
She clamped the receiver between her ear and shoulder so she could grab a reporter’s pad off the stack on her desk and a pencil. “May I ask which article it was?”
“The obituary for Guy Whitley.”
She remembered writing the piece. Former hotelier. Grew up in Chicago and moved to California to make his fortune just before the turn of the century. Fell on hard times before the First World War and seemed to have lived a fairly quiet life afterwards. He had one child, a son who had died in Italy during the Second World War, and a wife who had passed away from cancer in 1949. He’d moved into a care home for about five years before dying of natural causes. Phil had given her two hundred words, no space for a photo, and had made her wait weeks for it to run.
“I remember the piece. What is the error you wish to have corrected?” she asked, tapping her pencil against her notepad.
“All of it. The entire article is wrong.”
Theresa’s pencil froze in midair. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Pearce but—”
“Miss Pearce,” the older woman interrupted.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Pearce, but I can assure you that I researched Mr. Whitley’s life very carefully.”
“Apparently not carefully enough,” the woman said, her tone wry.
“May I ask how you can be certain?” she asked.
“Well, first of all, you said that his wife died in 1949.”
She let out a breath. If the date of Mrs. Whitley’s death was incorrect, it should be a relatively easy correction to issue.
“All right. Do you know when Mrs. Whitley died?” she asked.
“In 1949, as you wrote,” said Miss Pearce.
Theresa frowned. “Then there is no correction needed.”
“Yes, my dear, there is. You see, she was only the second Mrs. Whitley.”
The Queen of Roses is out October 20th, but you can preorder your copy today!
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