Post World War I London is the setting and Maisie Dobbs is the character enthralling modern-day readers in author Jacqueline Winspear’s two best-selling mysteries. The heroine, a psychologist and investigator, first appeared in Winspear’s debut novel ‘Maisie Dobbs’ (Soho Press, 2003). The young detective’s adventures continue in Winspear’s recently published second novel, ‘Birds of a Feather.’ ”A ‘Maisie Dobbs Event,’ a garden party hosted by Village Books, will treat guests to a traditional English ‘high tea’ with author Winspear at 1 p.m. on Friday, July 9. Staged in a local garden, the event will include such ‘between the war’ specialties as cucumber sandwiches, scones, clotted creams, tarts and cakes. ”Winspear’s character Maisie Dobbs is a young woman who has returned from nursing duty in World War I to her home in London a changed woman. Having experienced the perils and freedoms of wartime, she is unable to return to traditional feminine pastimes. Fate intervenes, and she becomes the assistant of a detective, and after his death she resolves to carry on alone. In ‘Birds of a Feather,’ Maisie moves up from her one-woman private investigation firm to a professional office in Fitzroy Square and an assistant. The character is made especially intriguing by her unorthodox sleuthing that calls upon Freudian psychology and her own psychic powers to trace a crime. ” ”Winspear, who now lives in Ojai, first immigrated to the U.S. from England in 1990. At the time, she worked in academic publishing, a demanding field with long hours. ‘If I wasn’t meeting with professors, I was attached to my computer,’ says Winspear, who resolved in 1992 to pursue her own writing career. With a background in education, she started out writing for international education magazines and eventually branched out to travel pieces and personal essays. ”’I always wanted to write fiction, but I was intimidated by it,’ Winspear told the Post during a telephone interview. ‘There’s so many good books around.’ As a nonfiction writer, she was advised to play with fiction as a way to enhance her nonfiction work. ‘I was clueless about how to think up a story,’ she recalls. ”That all ended in a moment that Winspear refers to as ‘artistic grace,’ when a vision of her main character appeared in her mind’s eye while she was driving one day. ‘I couldn’t wait to get home and write down what became the first chapter,’ she says. ‘I didn’t even have to think up her name, I knew it was Maisie Dobbs.’ ”What is not surprising is the part of history that forms the backdrop to Maisie Dobbs. The first novel is dedicated to the memory of Winspear’s paternal grandfather, who sustained serious leg wounds during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and her maternal grandmother, a munitions worker at the Woolwich Arsenal during WWI who was partially blinded in an explosion that killed several girls. ”’Doing research for the book was a complete indulgence, since I’m so interested in this era anyway,’ Winspear says. ‘It was an incredibly spirited generation of women and I wanted Maisie to reflect that, to do right by that generation.’ ”Winspear elaborates about how in pre- and post-WW I England, women took on the jobs of men, and by doing so claimed an independence that was difficult to relinquish. It was also a time when many women remained unmarried, simply because a generation of men had been killed in the war. ”While not a hardcore mystery fan herself, Winspear delights in the possibilities the genre offers her as a writer and hopes her books fall into the category of literary mystery, offering multiple layers of meaning to readers. ”Followers of Maisie Dobbs can look forward to more in the series. ‘At the moment, I have six in my head,’ Winspear says, ‘counting the two that have already been published.’ ”Tickets for the ‘Maisie Dobbs Event,’ organized by Connie Goetz and Barbara Edelman of Village Books, are $15 per person. To make a reservation, contact: 454-4063.
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