Indigo Christmas
Jeanne M. Dams
Perseverance,Sept 2008, $14.95
ISBN 9781880284957
In 1904 South Bend, Indiana, recently married Hilda Johansson Cavanaugh struggles with her adjustment from being a servant to that of the wife to the affluent Patrick. She knows you can take the woman out of serving, but not the serving out of the woman as she is used to answering the bell not pulling the bell cord. Worse she finds herself isolated from her spouse’s upper crust family and friends while her former working class peers snub her.
Hilda's only remaining friend Norah O’Neill rushes into the house despondent shouting near hysterically that the police arrested her husband Sean accusing him of murder and arson to hide a theft gone bad. Whereas Aunt Molly tries to calm the distraught woman down reminding her of the baby she carries, the other visitor Dorothy Elbel is appalled by the crass behavior she witnesses. Hilda says she will help Sean while with Aunt Molly’s encouragement she joins a committee of the well to do wives planning a Christmas Party to launch their Boys Club for lowlife street kids. Some of the boys targeted for the club become paid “Baker Street irregulars” consultants of Hilda as she investigates the homicide.
More of a historical look at social and religious dysfunctional relationships between groups than a turn of the century mystery, INDIGO CHRISTMAS is a strong Hilda Johannson entry. The story line uses class conflict to provide insight into Middle America in 1904. For instance Hilda's Swedish Lutheran relatives and Patrick’s Irish Catholic kin do not get along , and the gap between working class and the “aristocracy” is accentuated by the heroine’s not belonging to either and by the chasm between the upper crust charitable Brahmin's and the poor kids they target as their cause. Although the amateur sleuthing is kept more as a backdrop than usual (see CRIMSON SNOW) to the vivid look at 1904 Indiana, fans of the series will enjoy the escapades and trials of Mrs. Cavanaugh.
Harriet Klausner
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