Walter Hudson and the Mackinac Island Affair had a record-breaking debut at the posh Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island June 15. Our gift shop book-signing event sold more books than any other local-interest author the hotel has ever hosted.
People who stopped to talk always bought the book after I told them a little bit about it. The Sixties, the space program, the Island, it’s a compelling mix. When I talked to youngsters, they dragged their parents up to buy it.
One girl, about age 12, had a big camera around her neck. “You remind me of me when I was your age,” I said. I didn’t even think people carried cameras any more. I thought picture taking was pretty much relegated to cell phones. But she did remind me of me, when I took pictures for my junior high school newspaper. My father bought me one of the first smaller Polaroids, the ones that had the drop in film pack. I took pictures and wrote news stories and was soon running The Emerson Eagle. That was when junior highs in Livonia, Michigan were named after American poets.
At the Grand Hotel the young lady asked me how I got started in writing.
“First you read a lot of books,” I said. “That teaches you words, sentence structure, and how stories are told.”
The more difficult question was why. Why do writers write? Why did I want to write?
Well, tell the Guardian Of Forever to crank it back to about 1958. Career vistas for girls didn’t exist. Teacher, nurse, and secretary would be mentioned if one needed a stopgap before housewifery.
Pilot, policeman, doctor, lawyer, fireman, astronaut, engineer, truck driver, train conductor, scientist, architect…those weren’t for us.
But there was something a bit more glamorous than teacher/nurse/secretary and women were doing it. We picked up on it by reading our older brother’s Superman comics. There was this woman having great adventures and not just because Superman took her places. She was a newspaper reporter!
Lois Lane made independent decisions and talked tough to cops and robbers and even her boss. She was a role model for hundreds of thousands of girls in the Fifties. And she had help. The newspaper that came every morning had comic strips and one of those strips was called Brenda Starr.
Susan Loden, a former colleague in Sanford, Florida, recently emailed saying that next to her older sister, the greatest influence on her was Brenda Starr.
“She was a blue-eyed reporter, with stars in her eyes and a “mystery man,” Susan wrote. “I even had red hair, like Brenda, for about five years…Brenda Starr always had a romantic rival for her mystery man, a sidekick, and major adventures as a reporter.”
(I replied that she didn’t have to tell me about Brenda Starr. My father, coincidentally or presciently, gave me the middle name Starr.)
So many of us opted for major adventures. While housewives were packing lunches, preparing dinners, and doing laundry, we were chasing fire trucks, watching murder trials, and digging dirt on politicians. We witnessed all the triumphs and tragedies of mankind. Then we ran for pay phones or rushed back to our office to write it all up in 45 minutes without spelling anyone’s name wrong. Boy we had fun!
One thing was for sure – we weren’t living our lives only as a Mrs. Somebody.
There’s a “Brenda Starr” in Walter Hudson and the Mackinac Island Affair. She’s Freya Firestone, the flamboyant fictional reporter for the Detroit Free Press. She chases stories, parks her rare Thunderbird anywhere she pleases, and dates her boss. Her hair is almost red. Then there’s Alexis Hudson, the protagonist’s mother. She’s got printer’s ink in her blood, considers ethical journalism a sacred calling. Two strong women who work with their brains, meet deadlines, and aren’t afraid to go to jail to protect a source. They are terrific role models for young women.
In addition to Freya and Alexis, there’s Jane Hart, who I couldn’t make up. Yes, Jane was a real woman and more larger than life than the fictional women in the book. Mrs. Hart was a pilot, equestrian, sailor, founding member of the National Organization for Women, and mother of eight. She and 12 of her fellow female pilots tried to break into the astronaut program in the early Sixties.
So while the title character is a boy, Walter Hudson and the Mackinac Island Affair is also great for girls.
