In a phone interview this month, Rader-Day told me that Christie’s work “is very tied up in my reading history and the kind of reader I always was, the kind of writer I became.” She has been a big Christie fan since she was 11. The book ticked off too many of Rader-Day’s interests. In fact, she’s been a Chicago resident for 20 years.īut after five years of the idea rattling around in her brain, Rader-Day mentioned it to her editor and the book was sold in 2018.
She was initially unsure if she should write it, in part because she was not a historical writer nor British. A lifelong fan of Christie’s, she had come across the story that children had been evacuated to Greenway, an actual home that can be visited, and really wanted to read a book about it. Rader-Day’s work itself is a historical act. (Even the idea of the front line is tenuous-the war comes to them when enemy planes fly over and bomb parts of England.) Lori Rader-Day Credit: Justin Barbin There’s a lot of guilt and grief for being at home and not on the front lines.
But for the people within the story, their role in the larger theater of war is not clear. We can see that these are quiet but important contributions that support the war effort. The townspeople are playing their role by keeping watch for enemy planes or spies and caring for one another, especially when their neighbors’ sons (and daughters) are killed in battle. In Death at Greenway, the nurses may not be on the battlefields, but they are quietly making a difference caring for the small children, including two infants. That front is right here at home, in our daily lives, and in our daily tasks.” As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said during one of his WWII-era fireside chats, “There is one front and one battle where everyone in the United States-every man, woman, and child-is in action, and will be privileged to remain in action throughout this war. What I loved about the novel was the picture it painted of the home front. Can she take care of the children and uncover the truth without her horrible past coming out? The narration is written with eight shifting points of view, mostly focused on Bridey, but also showing us the perspectives of one of the evacuated children as well as some of the servants. When a young man is found dead nearby, Bridey fears that her past mistakes will be revealed. But Bridey just wants to keep her head down, get a good reference, and put the accidental death of a man in her care behind her. Their stories are the ones that matter here.īridey’s fellow nurse, Gigi, seems ill-suited for the job and her story does not line up. That draws the focus on Bridey and her fellow characters. Christie is more of a specter, a hovering presence over the characters of the story, than a character in her own right. She along with another nurse bring the children to Greenway House in Dartmouth, England, which turns out to be the private residence of the “queen of crime” Agatha Christie. Set in England during World War II, a young, disgraced would-be nurse, nicknamed Bridey, takes a job as a nanny to help care for ten evacuated children in the countryside during the height of the Blitz.
That’s at the core of Lori Rader-Day’s latest mystery Death at Greenway. As Studs Terkel wisely said in a 2007 interview, “Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that’s what it’s all about. Each of us in our own way contributes to making history, even if it isn’t always apparent. But what about the people who make these movements happen: the ones who campaign for the presidents or labor movements, the ones who fight the wars, the people who get things done at the ground level. How do we contribute to making history every day? When we learn history, there’s often a huge emphasis on the leaders who make things happen, whether they are presidents, businessmen, or heads of social and political movements.
Sommelier Series (paid sponsored content).Best of Chicago 2021 ballot: Bonus round of nominations.