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Interview by Alice Cary
Agatha Christie, move over. R.L. Stine, watch out. As the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Best Juvenile Mystery Award, Joan Lowery Nixon has been called the "grande dame of young adult mysteries." She's written more than 100 books and has more on the way, with a repertoire that's strong in spooky sagas as well as Western adventures and historical fiction. Several of the author's passions converge in her latest book, Search for the Shadowman (Delacorte, $15.95, 0385322038, ages 8-12), which features an exciting tale of the Old West, frightening modern-day adventures in a cemetery, and a young hero who solves a family secret.
When a history assignment spurs 12-year-old Andrew Thomas to interview his relatives about the past, he learns about an ancestor named Coley Joe Bonner whom his great-aunt refuses to discuss. Determined to ferret out the truth about this "mystery man," Andy digs deeper into his roots using the Internet. (Nixon's text neatly weaves in a few step-by-step instructions for readers who might want to delve into their own family history.) Like Andy, Nixon lives in Texas and often uses her computer for research, but she also relies on the huge stacks of reference books that fill her study. While she has done genealogical research, the impetus to write Shadowman came from her editor, who asked if Nixon had ever considered having a character use the Internet to discover something. Nixon liked the idea, but then had to decide exactly what her character would discover.
She drew a bit of inspiration from her own family, as is often the case. The hero is named for her grandson, Andrew Thomas Quinlan, to whom the book is dedicated. Andrew's older brothers, Sean and Brian, have their own series, called Casebusters, published by Disney Adventures. And Nixon's first book, The Mystery of Hurricane Castle, published in 1964, features two of her daughters as main characters.
Family -- and lack of family -- is at the heart of yet another of Nixon's popular series, The Orphan Train Adventures, the latest of which is Circle of Love. Nixon wrote the first, A Family Apart, after hearing about the trains that took more than 100,000 children from New York City to new homes in the West between 1854 and 1929. These novels tell the various stories of the six fictional Kelly children sent west by their impoverished, widowed mother.
In Circle of Love readers again meet one of the six, Frances Kelly, now a young woman assigned to escort 30 children on an orphan train like the one she herself rode. The year is 1866, and with the Civil War just over, some ex-soldiers are using skills learned in the war to rob banks. Frances and her charges become entangled with just such a rogue. Nixon's research on the real orphans has taken her to museums across the country. As a member of the Orphan Train Heritage Society, she has spoken with some of the orphans who still survive.
"I spend most of my time at these meetings in tears," she says. "I've heard so many fascinating stories. One boy sent west rode the rails back to his Brooklyn home after several years. When he appeared in the kitchen, his mother looked at him and said, 'What are you doing here?' He said, 'Don't worry. I'm going back tomorrow. I just need to know who I am.' "
"Sending these children west and giving them new families may not have been the best thing for them emotionally," Nixon concludes, "but it kept them alive."
The series is so popular that Nixon is completing the first two books of a spin-off series, The Orphan Train Children, shorter books aimed at younger readers ages 7-11, the first of which will be published next spring. These volumes will continue the stories of the children Frances takes west in Circle of Love.
One of Nixon's favorite childhood pastimes was listening to a radio show called "I Love a Mystery." Her passion has endured, leading to young adult novels with titles such as Secret Silent Screams, A Candidate for Murder, and The Seance. Although Nixon doesn't use gore and doesn't like horror, she did use a ghost to help solve the crime in Whispers from the Dead, based on a murder that took place in her neighborhood.
"I told the police what I thought happened," she says, "but they weren't the least bit interested in what a writer thinks." She adds, "Maybe I'm really a detective at heart."
Alice Cary is a reviewer from her home in Groton, Massachusetts.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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