Saturday, August 25, 2012

What is Kathryn Miller Haines reading?

This weekend's featured contributor at Writers Read: Kathryn Miller Haines, author of The Girl is Trouble.

Her entry begins:
I’ve been on a non-fiction kick lately. Both of these books are, in their own ways, true historical crime, which is my weakness as a reader. Neither is the standard recounting of a historical murder, rather more what the horrible price of hubris can be.

I just finished Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, his non-fiction examination of life in Berlin during Hitler’s rise from the point of view of our ill-equipped Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, and his daughter Martha. Given my obsession with World War II (I’ve written two mystery series during that time period) and my love of Larson (I think Devil in the White City is such an extraordinary book) this was a natural match for me. While Hitler is the evil at the center of the book, what’s almost more discomforting than reading about what life in Berlin was like for the citizenry under his hold, is the naiveté with which the American public and its government was viewing his rise to power and how we turned a blind eye to the early signs of his madness, violence, and desire for greater domination. There’s no greater symbol for this deliberate ignorance than in Martha Dodd, a young woman (with a voracious sexual appetite) who defends the Nazis over and over again in...[read on]
About The Girl is Trouble, from the publisher:
Iris Anderson and her father have finally come to an understanding. Iris is allowed to help out at her Pop's detective agency as long as she follows his rules and learns from his technique. But when Iris uncovers details about her mother's supposed suicide, suddenly Iris is thrown headfirst into her most intense and personal case yet.
Learn more about the book and author at Kathryn Miller Haines's website and blog.

Writers Read: Kathryn Miller Haines (August 2011).

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Kathryn Miller Haines & Mr. Rizzo and Sadie.

Writers Read: Kathryn Miller Haines.

--Marshal Zeringue