Confessions to Mr. Roosevelt

March 11, 2019
Historian Holt (Children of the Western Plains) makes her fiction debut with a not especially exciting but pleasant mystery set in 1936. With jobs so desperately scarce, would-be writer Ellen Hartley is pleased to be hired by the Federal Writers’ Project to jot down the recollections of the older residents of Opal’s Grove, Kans. They hesitate to reveal too much for fear that President Roosevelt will be reading everything they tell their interviewers. Energetic and empathetic, Ellen happily settles into the little community. In particular, she befriends two of her interviewees—Agatha Bright, widow of the town banker, and elderly farm wife Ivy Hamilton—though she gets distressing vibes from self-absorbed and semi-delusional Nettie Vine. As revealed to the reader in the old women’s conversations and glimpses of a secret burial in 1870, Opal’s Grove has ugly secrets. When a human skeleton is unearthed during a construction project, Ellen and her friends have to decide how to handle the news. Fans of historical regional mysteries will be satisfied.