Sara Rath

Autumn 2024

My fondness for Wisconsin's Northwoods is evident in the continuing seductive locales for my fiction. An early reader of this manuscript said "I could tell I was north of Highway 8. I could hear the lapping waves and smell the pines."

 

ACCIDENTAL SUMMER addresses an unfamiliar topic: a true, tragic event that occurred in Hurley, Wisconsin over a hundred years ago -- the brutal murder of Lotta Morgan, an aspiring actress and "Lady of the Evening." To this day it remains a cold case. Encouraged to research this savage crime, Jenny Burgess' enthusiastic endeavors explore her beloved memories of the "up north" she loved as a child, at the same time she's bringing unseemly historical events to light. Her careful research (with the help of her pal Ginger) unwittingly links shameful deeds of the Pineries to the present, challenging local residents who are threatened by current evils and a Northwoods nobody really knows.

 

Since this book contains factual information from the 1800s I'm concerned with the demands of proof, time and place as well as makebelieve characters and invented incidents. I am including a lengthy bibliography which helped me identify the cause and perpetrator of Lotta's death.

 

 

 

At Home With Terry Jones

3 August, 1983. London -- Grove Park, Camberwell. The last in a line of red brick row houses. Our taxi driver had been disappointed that we were not going to visit John Cleese, “that crazy man." Instead, I was interviewing Terry Jones – who, I assured our driver, was pretty crazy, too. My daughter Laura, then 19, was mortified to be seen as tagging along but, like her brother and mother, was a devoted fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, first introduced to American television in 1974. We'd been touring France and the UK for nearly a month. Read More