Research For My Upcoming Novel Produces Side Benefit
By ML Condike
As part of my research to write my first novel, The Desk from Hoboken, due to be released March 5, 2024, I read several “how to” books about genealogy research. To practice the kind of research necessary to solve a 180-year-old cold case, I used my own maternal family lineage and discovered I am directly related to Isaac Bassett a Revolutionary War Patriot. I was able to collect all of the necessary documents (birth, marriage, and death certificates) to prove my relationship. I applied and got accepted into the Daughters of the American Revolution.
My antagonist in the story is a DAR member who has gone awry. You might want to read my book when it comes out. Here’s the blurb from the back cover:
In a bid to heal from the grief of a personal loss, forensic genealogist, RaeJean Hunter, takes on a straightforward case —identify human remains found on a nearby college campus. He client believes they are the 180-year-old remains of Mary Rogers, a woman who died mysteriously in 1841 and suspects she was reinterred in a nearby cemetery that had washed away. It should be simple enough, a project to get her back in the game.
Unfortunately, it quickly becomes anything but. In fact, it becomes downright dangerous.
Someone doesn’t want RaeJean to investigate the puzzling death of the woman whose death inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Roget.” As she follows clues through four states and discovers living family members who both help and hinder her search, she quickly realizes that the secrets of Mary Rogers’ demise were never meant to be exposed.
What lengths will someone go to keep the truth buried in the past? As threats escalate and RaeJean and her family’s lives become endangered, she’s forced to follow every lead and use every skill she has to find the answers she needs before it’s too late. Using DNA from two famous New England families, historical data, modern genealogical techniques, and a little guidance from a seemingly mystical antique desk, RaeJean takes on the cold case despite being given every reason to abandon it.
After all, what truths have been hidden for 180 years that would be worth bribery, kidnapping, and even murder?
RaeJean Hunter is about to find out.