In a few weeks, I head off on a trip to the south of France. Just Tony and me, I thought—but a tagalong friend has become part of the planning.

This friend is a writer I greatly admire: the late Edith Wharton. Obviously, Edith Wharton and I haven’t met. But I call her friend because I see in her writing and wanderlust my own longings and occasionally, a sharing of humor or pain.

Edith Newbold Jones was born in 1862 and died in 1937. She first visited France when she was four years old and spending time on the Continent with her wealthy parents. She sailed back to France on frequent visits after marrying Teddy Wharton in 1885. This marriage dissolved, first as a separation in 1911 followed by a divorce in 1913, on the grounds of Teddy’s embezzlement of her trust fund to support his mistress. Many of her books set in France have middle-aged American characters who are divorced and have complicated situations such as faraway children and the dubious chances for remarriage or acceptance back to their original families. These themes present in Madame de Treymes and A Son at the Front. The most powerful and heartbreaking of her France books that I’ve read—because she has 12-plus French books and stories, I have a way to go—is The Mother’s Recompense, a tragic novel about Anne Clephane, an American woman living in Nice, where she’s fled after a painful divorce that granted her ex-husband sole custody of her daughter. After Anne’s ex’s death and her estranged daughter’s coming to adulthood, she’s invited by her daughter to return to New York, where she learns of the terrible coincidence that her daughter is planning to marry Anne’s former lover, Chris Fenno—an artist-turned-war hero, fourteen years younger than Anne, who vanished from her life. This novel is the very definition of romantic suspense with twists and turns as Anne struggles with whether to tell her daughter or not.

Wharton’s Paris and South of France for exiles in the early 1900s is beautiful, privileged, and a kind of alternate reality for rule-bound Anglo-Saxons to explore. Edith praised the French people for many virtues. In French Ways and Their Meaning, I chuckled at reading: “The French physiognomy, if not vividly beautiful, is vividly intelligent; but the long practice of manners has so veiled its keenness with refinement as to produce a blending of vivacity and good temper nowhere else to be matched.”

Yes, based on my short experience, I do like French people!

Edith rented a gracious townhouse in the 7th arondissement of Paris, the capital city where she volunteered and raised funds for relief for the WWI soldiers and their impoverished families. She also spent years in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt, a few miles north of the city, where in 1918, she bought and restored a magnificent house called Colombe and its gardens.

In the 1920s, she bought a winter residence in Hyéres, in the Var region of Southern France, not far from the Riviera. This home, Castel Sainte-Claire, was a place where she could escape the cold winds of winter and relax with an entirely new social circle, many of them foreign writers and artists.

During Edith’s thirty-plus years in France, she wrote dozens of books yet still attended and held parties, especially literary salons which had guests as famous as her old pal Henry James, the lawyer who served as her muse, Water Berry, and Marcel Proust. She also made touristic trips regularly by motor car, which in the early 1900s meant traveling without a roof or windshield. Car travel was for the hardy, although she always had a chauffeur, maid, and friends along. Some of these driving capers included her dear friend Henry James, although he is never named in A Motor Flight Through France, a travel guide published in 1908 that competed with hundreds of other tour guides for English-speakers interested in France. In the photo below, Edith is motoring with her husband Teddy and friend Henry James (in the United States).

After World War I was over and transatlantic tourism resumed, Edith penned French Ways and Their Meaning, a highly-opinionated primer on what to look for beyond the sights, and inside the people. This was certainly the book that made me smile the most—often in amusement at her strong opinions on feminism and of the United States. Yes, even though she was urging people to come to France, she was also letting loose on what in America made her want to leave.

As I pack my suitcase, my anticipation rises. I hope that Edith’s France is still there for me to explore. I envision myself in Nice, stepping out of a hôtel particulier onto the Promenade des Anglais: “The glare of the promenade, where the top-knots of struggling palms swam on the wind like chained and long-finned sea-things against that sapphire wall climbing half way up to the sky.”

Edith loved gardens, and she equally adored beautiful small towns and large, old cities. In multiple works, she laments the industrial building landscape of New York and Boston, comparing it with superior France. In French Ways and Their Meaning, she speaks of “taste” as “…the reason, for instance, why the French have beautiful stone quays along the great rivers on which their cities are built, and why noble monuments of architecture and gardens and terraces have been built along these quays. The French have always felt and reverenced the beauty of their rivers, and known the value, artistic and hygienic, of a beautiful and well-kept river-front in the heart of a crowded city.”

In the novel Madame de Treymes, an American businessman, John Durham, finds unexpected emotion in landscape. “He was always struck anew by the vast and consummately ordered spectacle of Paris: by its look of having been boldly and deliberately planned as a background for the enjoyment of life, instead of being forced into grudging concessions to the festive instincts, or barricading itself against them in unenlightened ugliness, like his own lamentable New York.”

John Durham has fallen in love with Madame Fanny de Melrive, a friend from childhood days who’s now an unhappily-married American lady with a half-French son and a philandering French husband. She longs for a divorce. In his efforts to marry her, John runs up against the formidable in-laws in the form of a spokesman sister-in-law, Madame de Treymes. Madame de Treymes is tiny and dark and more than formidable, embodying another of Wharton’s beliefs: that French women are powerful players in society, even without being equals under the law. This was a controversial concept to put forward during the time of growing feminism in the US and England, which she denounces in French Ways and Their Meaning as being mostly women talking to each other. She has no time for the fact that women were being kept out of colleges and professional societies, so this couldn’t happen.

She points out that since the 1600s, French women had been involved in intellectual conversations with men at dinners, parties, and intellectual salons, and because of this, they enjoy more freedom and life satisfaction. She wrote about how upper-class women have played a role in France’s political movements, society building, the arts, and when it comes to common women, they share the operation of family businesses, serving as sales managers, bookkeepers, and the like. Furthermore, her declaration that throughout history, French women often held true friendships with men meant that their husbands were mindful to treat their wives very well, so as not to lose favor. In general, she sees French women as “grown up,” describing it this way:

“If then, being ‘grown up’ consists in having a larger and more liberal experience of life, in being less concerned with trifles, and less afraid of strong feelings, passions, and risks, then the French woman is distinctly more grown up than her American sister; and she is so because she plays a much more interesting and lively part in men’s lives.” She acknowledged that romantic affairs existed along with friendships, more strongly in her fiction than in her travel nonfiction. Below, Edith is picnicking with her beloved friend, Walter Berry, who also spent many years near her in both countries.

“Grown-up” is one of Edith’s favorite adjectives, and the compliment extends to the country’s national character—especially with respect to their honesty, and long-honed appreciation of culture. She also admires French taste, talking about how French statues sit just within an alcove in grand church architecture; there are no accidents of scale. French people have a “seeing eye” and are an “artistic race” as opposed to the British, who are excellent at writing, and appreciate art from Greece, Italy and France.

As mentioned earlier, it seemed impossible for Edith to refrain from being critical of the wealthy Americans she saw in Paris and the South of France. And this is just as much fun to read today as it might have been one hundred years ago. The Mother’s Recompense tallies up the cluster of mature women who meet at their “social nucleus,” an American rectory:

They were all there: the American Consul’s wife, mild, plump and irreproachable; the lovely Mrs. Prentiss of San Francisco, who “took things” and had been involved in a drug scandal; the Comtesse de Sainte Maxime, who had been a Loach of Philadelphia, and had figured briefly on the operatic stage; the Consul’s sister, who dressed like a flapper, and had been engaged during the war to a series of American officers, all of whom seemed to have given her celluloid bangles; and a pale Mrs. Marsh, who used to be seen about with a tall tired man called “the Colonel”, whose family-name was not Marsh, but for whom she wore mourning when he died, explaining—somewhat belatedly—that he was a cousin. Lastly, there was Mrs. Fred Langly of Albany, whose husband was “wanted” at home for misappropriation of funds, and who, emerging from the long seclusion consequent on this unfortunate episode, had now blossomed into a “prominent war-worker”, while Mr. Langly devoted himself to the composition of patriotic poems…

All these things, whispered in confidence, reimagined to protect the guilty when Edith lay in her soft bed, writing.

Raised in a conservative old-money family from New York—the elite people who built high society before the Vanderbilts showed up—Edith had led a stultifying, if scandal-free, life. She positively reveled in the freedoms of France. As she says in French Ways and Their Meaning:

“Because the French write and talk freely about subjects and situations that Anglo-Saxons, for the last one hundred years (and not before) have agreed not to mention, it is assumed that the French gloat over such subjects and situations. As a matter of fact, they simply take them for granted, as part of the great parti-coloured business of life, and no more gloat over them (in the morbid introspective sense) than gloat over their morning coffee.

“To be sure, they do ‘gloat’ over their coffee in a sense unknown to consumers of liquid chicory and health beverages: they ‘gloat,’ in fact, over everything that tastes good, looks beautiful, or appeals to any one of their acute and highly-trained five senses.”

Based on my reading of Edith Wharton, here’s my to-do list for my trip to the South of France.

Check out French towns from a boat on the Mediterranean, in order to properly regard buildings and monuments.

Attend an expat gathering, knowing all the while that the people may have committed sins in the US they’re not talking about.

Prepare for the French correcting me, because they are being honest, and I need to know.

Gloat with gusto over the café créme, croissants, and everything else.

The post To France, With Edith Wharton: How a long-gone American writer’s South of France inspires me appeared first on Sujata Massey.

Stacks of books, Sharpie pens, a microphone. A sea of empty folding chairs—and a slight rush of nervous energy.

This scene is a cliché for any author who’s been fortunate enough to have a bookseller invite you sign books.

I count myself very lucky to see whatever number of seats the bookseller has set out filled with people. But a bookseller friend said to me that publicists for mega-selling authors sometimes require a bookseller to be able to offer seating for 200 or more. Hence, the Instagram reel of the 1500-person audience in Brooklyn Center, MN for Abby Jimenez, a popular romance author with a new book, The Night We Met. What I could see of the event was more akin to what I hear about Taylor Swift concerts, and I am going to bet the fans received books that had been signed in advance. How else could it be done? Three cheers for any author who can get that many people to assemble for a book launch!

The first book signing I remember attending was back in elementary school—probably fifth or sixth grade. Susan Cooper, the seminal British author who wrote fantasy novels for children from the 1960s onward, was speaking at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul during her national tour for one of her books—my likeliest guess is it was The Dark is Rising, her most famous book in the series that is still captivating readers today. During my childhood, Susan Cooper was my dream author, a woman from my birthplace of Great Britain who used legends and lore from Wales and King Arthur to develop her haunting series. We were reading this Newberry Award winning novel while under the age of 12, although I notice that her books are now classified as “young adult.” In the crowd at the college, I recall only adults being there. I felt wise beyond my years and still am grateful to my elementary school librarian who thought I might like to go and asked the parents of me, and a few other friends.

In the twenty-first century, faculty members are no longer allowed to take students in their own vehicle to off-campus events. But in the 1970s, people had more freedom. And while I regret that the kind librarian’s name is forgotten, I still remember her and am grateful for this early experience meeting a literary superstar. Susan Cooper, who was around forty at the time, spoke quite warmly to us. I don’t remember if we bought any books—probably not, because my paperback copy of the book (which I’ve carried to my adult home, after all these years!) is dog-eared and unsigned. We children didn’t know what a special opportunity this was—to have a signed book by a writer we loved, and who at the age of 90, is still a perennial in bookstores.

My next experience with a fiction author came about ten years later. I studied as an undergraduate in the Johns Hopkins University writing seminars, a department different from English in that we Writing Sems majors did read novels, but we were also expected to learn from working authors of all sorts—poets, science writers, journalists, and yes, novelists. Martha Grimes, the celebrated American author based in Washington DC, came to the campus for as a visiting professor for the spring semesters of both my junior and senior year.

Every Thursday afternoon, nine other students and I sat around a long table, not quite realizing she was on the New York Times bestseller list, right at that moment, and probably had a lot of choices of what to do with her time. learning from one of the masters. And at the end of the semester, she presented each of us with her latest book, signing it herself with a personal message. “I hope you get across the effing lake” she wrote to me, a reference to the implausible-sounding plot point in my mystery story submission that she critiqued for the class. Now I think how generous she was to sign and gift her reader copies with us. I treasure this signed book almost as much as what she taught me about the feasibility of crime fiction as a bona fide career.

When I began struggling with the craft of my own mystery writing a decade later, one of the first signings that I recall was that of the late M.C. Beaton, when she visited Mystery Loves Company Books in Baltimore in the 1990s. Beaton is another British writer well known for her humorous Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as more than 100 romance novels, most of them under her real name, Marion Chesney. I attended with my friend and mystery maven (heck! she designed this website!) Susanne Trowbridge, who was close with the store owners, Paige Rose and Kathy Harig, who sadly are both deceased. I remember feeling shy at the event, but knowing that because I was an adult, I must say something to this author who had amazed me with her deft, humorous hand. It was a small but enthusiastic turnout, typical for the tiny store, one of those places where books are piled up everywhere and cats wind their way through your legs. Ms. Beaton was quite agreeable, and I remember thinking, I can’t fathom ever finishing my own manuscript-in-progress, selling it, and having people hear enough about it that they’d take the time to meet me.

“You’ll have your first signing here,” both Kathy and Paige promised me, separately, so I knew it would be true—if I only I could finish and sell my book.  I kept going to book signings, I joined Sisters in Crime, and I kept writing. In 1996, I signed a contract for my first mystery, The Salaryman’s Wife. Kathy Harig read the galley that HarperCollins sent the store and told me it was good. What a relief it was—and from that point on, I was in the book signing world, receiving invites from stores I’d never heard of, and badgering the publicists to ask after ones in big cities, like New York and San Francisco, that I dreamed about. Fortunately, the 1990s was a time when female-centric mystery was booming, the economy was good, and tours were a possibility for writers once their books were coming out in hardcover editions.  Yet for many years I would go on tour, sitting in my economy seat on the plane with my throat closed, thinking the whole journey was unknown and could very well be disappointing. Who was I to have a signing when there were Martha Grimes and Susan Coopers in the world? These fears have subsided as I’ve built two series, and audiences also show up because booksellers themselves are increasingly sending email newsletters to their readers about upcoming events.

Not all signings take place at independent bookstores. Sometimes events are scheduled in place where there’s a large captive audience. This includes mystery fiction conventions and conferences like the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, a giant writing extraganza where I was featured with my longtime mystery writer friend Laura Lippman, with our interview conducted by our new friend, the suspense novelist Angie Kim.

During this last tour, I’ve spoken at stores with crowds as small as four and large as sixty-plus. I know that the store that might not get a lot of audience for me one night might simply choose to ask you to sign as many books as if there had been dozens—thus ensuring the books stay at the store, until they are sold, something quite generous to do in a business where profit margins are very tight. There are also a few stores that have voracious readers out of state who want signed books mailed to them. As I see it, each store visit is an incredible opportunity for a writer to connect with a reader—and if readers don’t show, you can demonstrate to the bookstore that you’re a well-tempered and kind individual who appreciates their efforts.

I’ve grown to feel I’m holding a serious responsibility at a signing. I’m not there to be promotional, despite a tour being a form of book promotion. Being a wee bit nervous can be helpful: it pushes me to remain sharper and more aware of what I hope to communicate. But truly—there’s no need for a witty or profound speech. If I read a bit of the new book, it allows people to know if they might want to read it. The coup de grace  is to allot plenty of time to receive questions. The most typical questions I hear are: why did you make your protagonist a Parsi, what’s your writing process, how do you do your research, and will any of your books ever be made into a movie? I hope is to satisfy the queries candidly without revealing spoilers. I also aim to share my particular experience of becoming (and staying) a writer, because I know that amongst the folding chairs, there always sits an individual who is quietly working away at their own manuscript.

And isn’t it wonderful they—the readers, writers, and the curious—have a place to come? The act of bookstores opening themselves to hosting events is akin to creating a literary picnic gathering in a town green. Whether or not an attendee buys a book, they’re taking part in an impromptu community meeting that is about . . . imagination. A writer’s, and their own.

When I moved to Minneapolis in 2005, I was lonely the first few years. I really missed my friends from Maryland, DC, Virginia and Pennsylvania. I had felt so connected—and now I was living in a city that was so different from my childhood experience. The only solution to my social boredom that I came up with was visiting the city’s famed mystery bookstore, Once Upon a Crime, and introduced myself to its owners at the time, Pat Frovarp and Gary Schulze. They already had my books on the shelf and became fast friends. I kept shopping at the store and attending events they hosted like the monthly Twin Cities chapter of Sisters in Crime meetings. My circle slowly widened, and I became part of a writing group (hello, Stan Trollip, one of the members!).

I also attended signings for out-of-state authors coming to sign their latest books. Cara Black and Libby Hellmann are both mystery authors who I didn’t know very well during my early Baltimore years—but I went to their signing to hear them talk about their work, and to buy their books to ensure Pat and Gary made some money that night. The bookstore seats were completely filled, making the authors happy. Cara and Libby then invited me to join them for dinner at a nearby pub, and the three of us formed an ongoing creative and supportive relationship that endures. After I moved away from Minnesota and transformed back into a Maryland author, Minnesota became a very important book tour stop. So in 2019, when I toured to St. Paul, the great mystery novelist William Kent Krueger showed up to “welcome me back to St. Paul.” Things had come full circle.

Speaking of writer friends, it’s now becoming a bookstore strategy. Many booksellers like to promote signings in which one writer (a local fixture who’s not on tour) interviews an author who is on tour. This tandem work takes away the pressure of a tired writer repeating a stump speech, but rather answering surprising questions and going on spontaneous tangents with their interviewer. Readers are thrilled by natural conversations featuring real, unscripted moments between people. When I’m in this role, I read the book ahead of time, prep questions, and ask the writer if there’s anything in particular they love to talk about. During The Star From Calcutta book tour, I was quite grateful for the interlocution assistance from writers Vera Kurian in Washington, DC, Dan Fesperman in Baltimore and Ritu Mukherjee in San Francisco. Doing it all by myself, every night, when my day typically started with an early morning flight, can be wearying. The antidote is knowing one’s night has been organized by the interviewer, and all I have to do is answer questions.

It seems a shame, but inevitable, that most publishers are curtailing authors book tours. I understand that sending authors to places that involve plane travel, road transportation and hotels is quite expensive, and the return on that investment is uncertain. I am so grateful that my publisher, Soho Press, listened to me when I spoke about the importance of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the West Coast, as well as all the spots I can easily drive to in my area. And during this last tour—as I grasped the hands of customers who had demonstrated a real sense of caring about the characters in my books—I also felt their care for me as a person.

Although we’d never met before, they knew me.

And that is quite a gift for someone whose best friends in childhood were her books.

The post Signing My Life Away appeared first on Sujata Massey.

Napping after lunch is a tradition with adherents worldwide, especially in warm seasons and places. We had 87-degree weather yesterday in Baltimore—the second hot day in a row. Cherry trees are bursting into pink heaven outside my bedroom window. As I lie down over rather than underneath the sheet because of my street clothes, guilt snuggles alongside me, an unwelcome companion whispering that I didn’t make my morning writing quota.

My sigh back at her turns into a yawn. There’s a curtain of fog inside my head, perhaps induced by the budding trees themselves. Brain fog prevents me from getting into flow whenever I want. I know from experience that sentences are most sprightly in the morning, but unfortunately this morning I dashed out for an appointment. And so, at 1:15 PM—right after lunch—I throw myself onto my bed with relief.

I know I’m not the only person who indulges; and I imagine how many people are napping in my neighborhood. Thirty-five miles away, the White House lies, and I have a brief image of Donald Trump napping that I quickly shove away.

Better to think about people in my lane: writers. The authors Vladimir Nabakov and Thomas Mann were habitual nappers who managed to also write classic novels. Patricia Highsmith napped, but usually at 6 PM, setting herself up after a day of writing to soldier on into the night.

The Internet search calls up many more male writers as self-avowed nappers than it does female. I suppose women writers have often felt that stealing time to be able to write was a great privilege not to be squandered. As the mother of a one-year-old, when my baby napped, I wrote frantically—it was my only chance. I play out this idea to realize that in the 19th and much of the 20th century, women worked hard in the house, caring for children, and if someone got a moment to herself, and was working on a book—there was the focus. I bet that daytime sleeping was a privilege reserved for the elders among them—and was a sign of necessity for their health. Apparently, the legendary nurse Florence Nightingale made the discovery that rest was needed for recovery—though she typically spent less than five hours on sleep herself!

Things are slowly changing. Tricia Hersey is a poet, nonfiction writer and activist famous for her books Rest is Resistance and We Will Rest in which she explains her practice of resting as an act of self-care and protest against the unrelenting, capitalistic grind. I’ve read about scientists proving that a fatigued brain has more trouble finding answers and creative solutions than a rested one. Though it’s not just sleep that does it—walking in nature works, say if you’re in a workplace or at school and don’t have a cozy bed in which to retreat.

Brain power also increases after taking a walk in nature.

My pattern used to be to regularly stroll with my dog after my own lunch. I did it because I know that if I move vigorously after lunch, my blood sugar curve doesn’t look like Mount Olympus. Blood sugar that’s too high is itself a reason for sudden fatigue.

There are plenty of ways to spend one’s time when not writing. I will continue to practice both walking and napping. I may have dreamed up a way to combine both. And this looks like sinking into a chair on my upstairs porch, or on a bench in the park, and letting my eyes ever-so-gently fall closed.

Setting my alarm now for 25 minutes.

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A slender, intense-looking Indian man in a crisp white shirt and a dhoti, is sitting at a cane-legged desk set on the veranda with a whirring fan nearby. His brow is furrowed as he slowly writes in Bengali on the legal pad in front of him.

Sitting cross-legged on a mat nearby, is a well-groomed boy who appears to be seven or eight years old. He’s neatly dressed in shorts and a kurta shirt. In his hand he carefully holds an antique pencil sharpener, which he is using to shape a pencil’s point to perfection. His concentration on his task just as strong as the writer in the chair.

The boy turns his head at the sound of footsteps. A middle-aged woman slowly treads up the path and onto the verandah. But Saradindu Bandyopadhyay, the writer at the table, works steadily, as if in a world of his own.

I can picture this scene in so many Bollywood historical films—my favorite genre. But the story is true. Saradindu Bandyopadhyay was born in 1899 to a very respectable Bengali Hindu family and was trained as lawyer. Yet since his college days, he’d engaged in creative writing, a passion that was perhaps less respectable, but more emotionally thrilling.

Read the rest of the article at CrimeReads.

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I’ve been thinking quite a lot these days about human connection.

Apparently, a loneliness epidemic is worsening—even though the pandemic is over. Twenty years ago, most Americans felt they had more close friends than they do today. In addition to the pandemic cutting down on gatherings that never got restarted, we might also consider the ubiquitous presence of social media—and overwhelming YouTube and entertainment streaming options, and online games—and filling space. All this is an effortless replacement for the risk of reaching out to real people.

But I am not here to judge. The loneliest time in my life was my years from age seven to eighteen. I was in the American Midwest, a place that has changed considerably since the 1970s. During my childhood I was an outcast because I didn’t look like or have the same interests as my peers. Plus, I sucked at gym games.

My parents did all they could by giving me chances to take extracurricular lessons and summer camp. In these arenas, I was well-liked and happy. Yet every day I went to my elementary/junior high/high school, my stomach knotted. I didn’t have anyone I could count on sitting with at lunch, and I had the added fear of not knowing if I was going to be bullied. Words have the power to be so hurtful!

And there are other miracles that come through words.

I started reading fluently and with exuberant joy in first grade. By second grade, I was unstoppable. And while I don’t want to be as corny as to say books were my friends, the fact is that I could depend on them more than anything else in my life. And within the pages, I felt aligned and that I had faraway friends among my favorite protagonists. I loved Sara Crewe, the little girl marooned without parental support in a cruel boarding school in Victorian London in Frances Hodgson-Burnett’s A Little Princess. I was captivated by a young Laura Ingalls, who like me, suffered through brutal Minnesota weather without much social contact outside of her own family. Small things Laura was crazy for like maple syrup on snow, or a hand-whittled toy, or an orange at Christmas, made me wish for the same. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield had three orphans under guardianship in London becoming child stars in acting and ballet, glamorous arenas that I certainly thought should become my career goals. Another British author, Rumer Godden, delighted me first with her stories featuring doll characters, and then with middle-grade stories about girls who were also fishes out of water.

Juvenile fiction is the most impactful fiction I’ve read—I take it very seriously. It helped me survive, and it shaped my character. But teen reading was great, too. Adolescence meant being able to read and fully bask in the glory of the best adult fiction. Some of the most transporting books were by young authors and featured coming of age themes. The year I was sixteen I found a used-bookstore copy of Bonjour Tristesse (translated into English, it means Hello, Sorrow) published in the 1950s when its author, Françoise Sagan, was about the same age. This story about a girl’s disillusionment in her philandering father, and her own bold decision to take a lover for herself, takes place on the France’s Côte D’Azur, an area that stayed in my imagination and that I’ll finally visit in a few months. Another great read from my high school years was This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: the author’s debut novel about a young man leaving my own city of Saint Paul to go to Princeton. I recall his struggle to find himself socially, and to find love in a new sophisticated world. There I was, seeing a dreamy vision of escape for myself, too.

Yes, these books were my friends. And reading them made me feel so warm toward the authors. I wanted to ask them, what made you write this book? Is your protagonist you—because I really like them!

For a reader to meet an author of a beloved book is a rare occurrence. What happens between a reader and a favorite book is intensely personal; it’s hard to express, even with a glass of wine at book club. Admiration, tenderness, distain and anger—we feel all of this while reading, and we are somehow linked in a relationship with the person who made these people.

I’ve experienced all of this as a reader. I also feel the emotion when I have my author hat on get to meet people through book signings and online book club presentations, and letters.

Today fan letters don’t travel in envelopes to publishers, but as emails to authors. Here are some I’ll never forget:

The email from a young woman in Finland, as miserable in school as I was, who submersed herself in Rei Shimura books which were published between 1997 and 2012. She was contemplating dropping out of school but stayed because her parents promised her a trip to Japan, if she did graduate. Her books were her comfort; and that brought tears to my eyes. The second letter I received was a few years later, post-Japan. She’d loved her time there and was thinking about a future possibility of working there—perhaps like my protagonist Rei Shimura.

Another reader I recall was a man in his seventies, originally from India. He drove six hours with his wife at his side to a signing I did in San Diego. Not only did the two readers care about the books; they also had detected through careful reading of acknowledgements, my father’s identity. You see, my dad had studied at the Indian Institute of Technology, just as the reader had done, a few years earlier, and in the exact same field. Thus—a kinship network arose—and to that gentleman, I was as good as any niece who’d written a book!

Just the other day, I received an email from a retired teacher in Hawaii who with his wife had gone traveling to India, visiting many sites in Mumbai that correspond to my character Perveen Mistry’s exploits. The concierge at their hotel wanted to help with any need, so on a whim they asked her to phone up Mistry Law. Could not be arranged, the concierge reported with an apology, not realizing she was playing a part in a comedy that would be later submitted to me via email. You are a mischief maker! I wrote back to him.

The greatest thing that ever happens when I release a book is the chance to meet the readers. They are the only thing that keeps me going, that gives me the blood circulation I need to attempt another work of fiction.

I start a national tour next week to promote my new Perveen Mistry novel, The Star From Calcutta. I’ll tell you about its plot next time, because right now I am overwhelmed with tour preparations. The most wide-ranging tours involve a lot of flying, often with airport show times as early as 5 AM. There are meals that are unpleasant or missed altogether, unfamiliar beds in sterile (if you’re lucky) hotels and unpredictable Uber rides. But I tour because of the readers, the independent booksellers, and I hope to see some of you guys in some of these cities.

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I secretly anticipated a really big storm would hit the East Coast in 2026.

It’s not that I have psychic powers. I simply enjoy almanacs and folk wisdom about nature—and I keep my eyes out. One of these American folk legends is that when the acorns abound, snow is going to be profuse. And Baltimore was certainly overwhelmed by acorns a few months ago. The explanation is that this is something called a “mast year”—an abundant seed/nut production every 2-5 years resulting in more acorns than animals can consume: meaning, more trees for all of us. Yet this mast year, we had three winters’ worth of snow in one day. And isn’t a lot of snow great for baby trees?

We had a small snow a week ago as a test; light enough to shovel easily and sprinkle down the pretty bright blue crystals of pet-safe snow-melting material. Oh, for those halcyon days of having my feet on the pavement—and not mincing over snow with my abdomen braced to keep my balance! With this particular storm, I find my legs are fatigued from all the subtle adjustments and shifts from slick ice to falling into unexpected depths of snow.

Ice seems to be bad everywhere in America this winter. I saw a picture in The Atlantic‘s online edition of woman who looks like a younger version of me captured by ICE agents titled “Welcome To The American Winter.” Freezing weather, terrible bounty hunters, a woman fallen to the ground. Images of death and abuse of power and hard weather—as well as a national uprising like we’ve never seen.

Minnesotans are standing up against masked men prowling the icy streets, who incidentally can’t seem to keep their balance on snow banks. Yet a huge swath of the United States, from south to the northeast, is blessedly not under mass deportation evasion, but is nonetheless flummoxed by deep layers of ice and snow ranging from eight to thirty inches. In Baltimore, I think the snowfall was as high as 18 inches, depending on how the winds blew. I plunged thigh-deep on my walk today seeking out a bank machine from which to retrieve cash to pay for a snow plow service that never showed up.

Winter Storm Fern is not my first East Coast snowstorm. I’ve lived here over thirty years and usually have excitement about snow forecasts. I find the groaning sound of salt trucks dumping material on the streets comforting—it goes back to my childhood in Minnesota. I also love the scraping sounds of sleds and snow shovels on the street. I gaze in admiration at Baltimore neighborhoods transforming like film sets back into the 1800s, because nothing looks more charming than an old house set in snow.

This storm, though, has thrown my age—and weaknesses—at me. The snow is so high and so hard that I can’t shovel as I usually enjoy doing—even a week earlier, during a two-inch storm. Yes, we salted before this particular blizzard with Pet-Melt, and I did a bit of shoveling during the storm, but it wasn’t enough. Tony and I decided to make life simpler and hire professionals with machinery. So far the first two snow removal companies we made advance arrangements haven’t been able to come. We are waiting on a third, fingers crossed. You really need to take care of snow yourself.

The tradition in our house is to make a pot of chili on a snow day. I started this when our children were small. I usually threw together a vegetarian chili made from canned red beans and tomatoes, plus lots of fresh onion, garlic and spices. I’d also bake cornbread and cookies. We’d invite one or two families who could walk over to eat and chat with us, while the snow fell. The party felt like we were getting away with something!

Now that Tony is usually works from home, he’s taken on chili cooking with great professionalism. He mines the internet to find the exact out-of-print Fine Cooking recipe that he knows. He appreciates chili so much that he initially proposed making two variations—one white and one red—but I talked him into choosing his favorite and letting me make a vegetarian alternative. At this point, we both knew we had limited hours before the snow hit, and we were cooking for a crowd. He agreed to my point—as long as he could also bake a carrot cake.

Who would argue with that?

On the final non-snow day, he shopped. It meant driving thirty minutes to a John Brown, a butcher in the Baltimore County who sells especially delicious grass-fed beef. Here he picked up 7 pounds of sirloin tip. Then it was returning to the city and Mom’s Organic Market for canned beans in short supply, cream cheese, carrots and currants. Then he made a short walk to Eddie’s Market in our neighborhood for the black beans that were completely sold out at Mom’s. The man was exhausted, and then he had to unpack it all and start chopping, because the chili would be served the next day. While he played at “The Bear” in our kitchen, I made invitations on paper to all the neighbors on the block. I decided, why not ask everyone—including the folks living in apartments, who we saw coming and going but just didn’t know?

The chili recipe was extravagant, rising to the rim of the 16-quart stockpot. And after bubbling for a few hours, it needed to chill overnight. The pot was too tall for the fridge—but one perk of bad winter weather is the outdoor refrigerator every Minnesotan knows. My twist was sliding the stockpot underneath the dining table on the deck. I then laid a tablecloth on that table so the snow didn’t fall through it and bury our highly anticipated dish.

Snow day dawned on Sunday with flakes falling fast on the diagonal. I kept on sweeping snow from the porch and shoveling the front walk and out to the street, so our guests would be able to arrive at 12:30 onward. In between I made corn muffins and laid the table for the party. We weren’t sure how many people would come, so we put out mugs to fill with the chili, which would stay hot in a slow cooker. My second dish was a vegetarian shepherd’s pie made on Saturday. It was simple: a layer of richly seasoned tepary beans underneath mashed potatoes. Yes, we could have made a green salad, but why? It wasn’t a normal, polite sit-down lunch with china. It was a snowstorm chili party, which meant you could eat casually in any room, holding your food in one hand and a spoon in the other.

We didn’t know who or how many would come—but the result was just right. About fifteen people, many of them not known to us. Three of these millennial households brought batches of fantastic home-baked cookies. There was plenty of wine and water and kombucha.

What a party it was! Our youngest guest was ten months, and our oldest in the neighborhood of eighty. I met 10 new people, right in my own house. I realized the beauty of living in a neighborhood that mixed homeowners and renters; students, retirees and workers. It makes for a great party mix.

We have a lot of snow, but we are so lucky not to have lost power. And luckier still to have had new friends in our house—bringing a sense of not being alone, even when marooned.

The post Snowed In! appeared first on Sujata Massey.

I’m writing to you from St. Paul, Minnesota, where many roads are ice rinks and frozen snowbanks are as hard as stone. I came for a few days to visit my parents and sisters. January always means bringing warm boots, a down coat, and a thick wool hat and gloves. And now: my U.S. passport.

The reason I’m carrying my document everywhere isn’t because I’m paranoid.  It’s because the Supreme Court gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authority to racial profile: that is, to stop and detain people based on their skin color. For a brown person like me, it’s not a joke. If I’m on a street by myself and the wrong car comes up, just telling them I’m a U.S. citizen isn’t enough. So many citizens have had lengthy detainments; and others have never come back home.

In the Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, a massive deportation effort named “Operation Metro Stop” is underway. More than 2000 ICE and Border Patrol agents are driving through business and residential neighborhoods, lingering to look at people both on foot and inside cars. Beating up and pepper spraying victims is common: not only for people they hope to throw into the van, but the neighbors and bystanders who step in to observe whether they have warrants and can legally take people. They are using license plate information to get the names and addresses of people participating in protests, and then following these people and speaking to them by name to intimidate them. This is the terrible new change that’s happened in the last few weeks: ICE is violently and psychologically retaliating against peaceful protestors.The Trump government’s goal is to punish Minnesota, and use the wide publicity of the harm they’re doing to frighten sympathizers around the country and suppress political resistance.

Most people have already heard about the shooting death of American citizen and mother Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7. Good had only come to a scene where ICE cars were because she’d heard that ICE was hassling people and observers were needed. Kristi Noem, the head of Homeland Security, described the officer as being subject to “domestic terrorism” and falsely stated that Good was an aggressor. But she never got out of the car. The truth was that her last words alive, recorded on Ross’s cellphone, were: “Dude, I’m not mad at you.” And his words, after shooting her three times in the face, were “Fucking bitch.”

As I’ve said, the Good shooting, just like many other actions against the community observers, are meant as a warning to people not to interfere with ICE abductions. The agents are clearly distressed by the many times they’re missing making arrests because of the tremendous support Minnesotans are showing for each other.

“We are Not Afraid!” is the defiant cry people chant at the men and women with guns in their hands and bandannas masking their faces. I am honking my heart out as I drive past each group. “Thank you!” I occasionally yell from my window, and the call comes back: “You’re welcome!”

More urgently, Twin Cities residents are making whistles with 3-D printers and distributing them widely to the population. They blow their whistles to signal that ICE is in the area, leading the vulnerable to take cover and the observers to get boots on the ground. And while ICE is going door-to-door asking people to report to them which houses have immigrants living in them, other neighbors are giving their phone numbers to such families for help in crisis. There is no rioting; there is no violent interference with ICE. It’s peaceful support, absolutely covered by existing law. Yet many protestors are being held in ICE jails for a day, during which time they are subject to extreme interrogations and offers of money in exchange for names of other protestors. What does this remind you of?

The valiant resistance is appearing from all sides. Minneapolis’s Native American community is sending its trained volunteer network to patrol streets and assist in protection. They’ve also have turned a community/arts center into 24-hour safe haven for observers and community members needing a place to sleep and eat.

It may seem surprising that this particular state in the upper Midwest has turned out to be a place where people care so deeply about neighbors who are relative newcomers.

I think the answer is tied into to the history and nature of Minnesota. Ever since Native Americans were forced out of the area in the 19th century, Minnesota became a place for transplants—and this history goes back only a few generations. Some people rode in covered wagons from other states, and foreign immigrants sailed directly from Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavia. African Americans have been here since the pioneer era and the Civil War. The Twin Cities were further integrated in the 20th century, during the Great Migration from Southern states. I recall that back in the 80s, it was common to see mixed race couples going out together in Minneapolis—something that could be dicey in many other parts of the country.  During this same decade, the state gained Hmong, Somali, South Asian and Latino immigrants. Minnesota had plenty of job possibilities, and local government leaders were willing to set up bilingual schools and daycare options. The philosophy was that giving people a chance to get an education and job would lead to economic success for everyone.

Another unusual regional feature that influences Minnesotans is a strong sense of obligation to help people caught out in the elements who seem to be in trouble. Minnesota has the coldest winters in the continental U.S. This fact, over the generations, has shaped an awareness of the potentially fatal risks people face out on the street in the snow. To this day, if you are cozy at home, but you can see a car stuck in the street in front of your house, you are expected to zip up your parka put and get out to help them. This was explained to me during my first winter as an adult homeowner in Minneapolis—even though it was already the age of cellphones and emergency car services. If it’s your street—you keep the people on it safe.

Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison has filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration for Operation Metro Stop, just as several other states have done. Regardless of this, ICE will certainly keep on assaulting Minnesotans. It must be hard for them to understand that the more tyrannical they are, they will only inspire larger numbers to step in to fill the shoes of those they’ve taken away.

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December 31 is the grand finale of every year. This closeout of a calendar is meaningfully observed in most countries of the world. I always have a reason to anticipate New Year’s Eve, no matter whether I’m going out or staying in. And while a lot of national and world events in 2025 were very distressing, it was a great year for my personal travel and appreciation of new places and ideas.

The path was revealed through a series of flights, train rides and drives through Europe this fall. I’ve already written essays about my October-November travels in England, Scotland and Greece. That was supposed to be my trip in full. However, a fateful tapas get-together with two friends at the New Orleans Bouchercon mystery convention convinced me to add on France.

Diana Chambers is a Californian who writes suspense fiction. Persia Walker is a writer of historic mystery, originally from New York but with considerable time living and working in Europe. Diana and Persia met by chance on a train returning from Paris to Aix-en-Provence, where Diana stays when researching and Persia has been residing for three years already. I have mostly spent time with these two at conventions where we have fallen into discussions about life overseas and writing. My trip to France would give me a chance to see some places on my own and the small city they both chose in the South of France.

But before Aix, I stayed for a few days in my port of entry: France’s third largest city, Lyon. I arrived late at night from Greece into the town’s airport. My hotel had kindly scheduled a driver to pick me up take me the half-hour to the historic Hôtel Carlton near Place de la République. I awoke to sunny skies and a historic city filled with the same kind of Haussmannian buildings for which Paris is famous. With two beautiful rivers running through the city that had pedestrian walking bridges, it felt incredibly romantic. Romantic enough that one day, I walked nine miles.

I tried out my fractured French phrases at a real café where the café crème was hot and strong, and the accompanying croissant smaller than what I was used to in America, and also much more tender and flavorful. Lyon is considered France’s culinary capital, and I explored this through restaurants near where I was staying, and also in central Lyon at Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, a covered grocery and restaurant market named in honor of the late godfather of nouvelle cuisine. There are many kinds of food in Lyon, all seeming delicious. My highlights included a pork medallion with lentils at the food hall, and a very fine mushroom risotto and a salad Lyonaisse at a perfect little cafe called Le Layon. Another intriguing detail is Lyon’s tradition of almond-flavored cakes that are always colored fuchsia.

Throughout my days in Lyon, people automatically spoke to me in French, and I guessed from the multicultural nature of the city that I might be mistaken for a second- or third-generation Frenchwoman. It was a welcoming feeling, and I wished I didn’t have to use my phone as often as I did for the right phrase. Could I seriously learn French at my age? The thought popped into my head, and it’s still there.

Everywhere in Lyon, and later in Aix and especially Marseille, I saw color. Mixed race families strolling the boulevards, interracial couples in cafes, and diverse groups of kids hanging together by their schools.I’m aware of the existence of the French nationalist group that is against racial diversity, yet I sensed no evil looks or threats. I also had read that France had a law prohibiting women from wearing religious clothing such as a hijab in sports and state-run buildings, but I saw women with headscarves. It turns out such dress is legal in public spaces.

For me, the foreign solo traveler in France, there was just one source of nervousness: language. Although I’ve absorbed hundreds of French words in novels, and know that many English words have French or other romance language roots, I’ve not studied French. I leaned into this and soon enough was booking train and restaurant reservations on French-only websites. I used translation apps to help me turn those elegant words into clumsy verbal offerings.

After a fractured French conversation with a cab driver and a quiet, fast train ride, I exited Lyon and arrived in Aix on the dot. I was filled with excitement at meeting people I could chatter to in English.

It’s such a gift when a friend overseas invites you to visit. This kind of connection moves one beyond tourist highlights and into the wonders of everyday life. Friendly guidance leads me to unexpected buildings, restaurants and other sights. Walking slowly through the massive Cathédrale St-Saveur with Persia, I saw small paintings and figures that she adored, that I might have been moving too fast to see. With Diana, a day trip to Marseille resulted in her introducing me to the most magnificent historic hardware shop imaginable, complete with antique doll furniture.

Persia lived in a charming one-bedroom in a possibly medieval century building that had been renovated into flats, and Diana and her husband were renting an AirBnB that was half of a grand 19th century house surrounded by gardens. Rents in Aix are higher than in a lot of parts of France, but with its cozy size, it can be easier here than in other places. It was routine for these two to stroll to shopping, public transport, and frequent get-togethers for Café or Apero (pre-dinner drink) with others. The city also has a sizable population of foreigners living year round. There are organized social groups that are English speaking and meant to support foreigners living in France. Some women I met in these groups have lived here for decades and have a current or former French partner; they understand and speak French with fluency, or very close to that. Others are retired from overseas careers like the State Department, or simply came from the US, Britain or elsewhere with modest to intermediate French that’s growing through daily living and language classes. Various friends commented on the peace they felt living here. They say it’s a peace built on a foundation that people of all means deserve free health care, and that guns and violence have been successfully restricted—if not vanquished—in France.

My own observation is that another special element is the trust and consideration people give to each other—even if they aren’t friends or family.  Twice I experienced fellow travelers asking me, in French, if they could carry my luggage on a staircase. Language isn’t a barrier to people reaching out to help others—but I have to remember that people are not psychic. There will be times I don’t understand something  that I should ask. But there is that feeling of foreigner shyness that overcomes me.

And that leads me to a confession of my almost-fail in a country of high efficiency. I must explain how someone who got to the station an hour before departure almost missed the train from Aix to Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The French TGV high speed trains are marvels of speed and comfort. All three cities I visited had them departing almost every hour to points all over France. The earlier you book a train, the cheaper it is, and if you are a young person or over sixty, you can book seats at discounts as high as 30 percent. And you can bring your dogs!

The trouble is  that these marvelous trains come in fast, have many cars, and exit the station more speedily than an Amtrak. It’s hard to know where to stand on a platform to be close to your correct car, which is crucial if you have luggage. The trouble started because of my confusion over the electronic sign board inside the station which didn’t show the name CDG on the route, just the ultimate end destination—and I hadn’t done my homework on the whole route. A station employee instructed me to pass through the south gate in order to meet the particular train, so I assumed that was where the train would briefly park. In reality, the train rushed in and went much farther to the north. I knew the letter for my car was G, and the lettered cars near by area was R and S. I started running north, keeping close to the train and listening for any bits of conversation I could understand. Another foreigner was speaking with a passenger boarding the train, a Frenchman who spoke good English. I heard the  Frenchman say, “no, no! This part of the train does not go to CDG. That’s up front.”

A train that splits into two. Zut alors!

It’s hard to run if you’re not a runner, let alone with a suitcase. As I ran I wondered: should I put an end to this and just board? Even if I board in the wrong car, have I got to the half of the train going to CDG? An ominous whistle blew, but a compartment door was open, and the conductor was there, his face perturbed. “Where do you go?” he asked in English. “CDG,” I panted.

“This car is for CDG!”

No better words ever heard. In seconds, I’d stepped up into what  turned out to be my exactly designated car.

Was there an angel on my shoulder? It’s true that I had been inside a lot of cathedrals . . . maybe someone flew down from the ceiling and had hitched along.

Bonne année!

See you in 2026.

The post Grand Finale in France! appeared first on Sujata Massey.

Last night, I dreamed I was in Nafplio.

In the dream, I was visiting the city in the middle of winter, yet it was warm enough for short sleeves. People were swimming in tranquil waters. Shop windows beckoned with jewelry, and I paused, not sure where to go. I was also aware that I was something of a shadow: a foreigner traveling alone. Nobody knew me; nobody would miss me if I vanished.

This isn’t hyperbole. I actually did have the dream. A few hours before I went to bed, I’d been sitting with Tony at our good friends’ Rani and Peter’s dining table. We’d talked about how I’d driven from Athens Airport to Nafplio, an old seaside town in the Peloponnese that has been called one of the most beautiful places in Greece. I very casually said I’d made the drive. I was downplaying what my dream later reminded me: that I had felt very alone.

I could have confessed that I’d been highly nervous about making the 170-kilometer drive by myself in a country where I’d only recently learned to decode the letters of the alphabet. Chiefly, I was worried about a breakdown, accident, or getting lost by myself. Would the Euro coins I had left over from Thessaloniki hold out for all the tolls I expected to pay on the 2-hour route?

It was my good fortune that the Greek highways were smooth as silk, although with my nerves I wound up taking 2 1/2 hours to get there. Apple maps were genius, even with unnamed roads. The worst part was at Athens Airport, when I sat down inside the tiny Kia automatic car I’d been allotted. I simply couldn’t figure out how to start the engine. I sucked in my pride and 42 years of licensed driving experience and asked the Avis rental car employee to teach me the precise order of turning the car key and stepping on the accelerator—and no, it’s not like in America. The other mystery he explained was the absence of P among the car’s gears. Apparently, the way to put the car into a stationery mode was to put it in neutral and pull up the hand brake. Thank God I asked for assistance and didn’t try to figure it out myself!

I reached Nafplio without any adversity; although it took me half an hour to find parking in the busy free lot at the port and drag my wheeled suitcase to my bed and breakfast, which was located in an old Venetian townhouse on a narrow no-parking street in the Old Town. One of the reasons I wanted to be in Nafplio was because of the extensive preserved old town, a mix of medieval and 19th century buildings that combine Ottoman and Venetian architecture.  But that grandeur sometimes has parking restrictions.

Nafplio (also known as Nafplion) has ancient roots going back to the days of Poseidon, who’s said to have fathered a son, Nauplios, who is the town’s namesake. The port became a city of interest during medieval times, and was variously occupied by Greeks, Ottomans, Byzantines and Venetians.

The city has compact, yet impressive, neoclassical architecture and majestic forts and castles. All this and its good location for water trade led to its selection as the first free capital of modern Greece in 1828 (the capital’s location was changed to Athens in 1834). While a lot of Greece has suffered having old buildings lost to fires, earthquakes or modern development, historic preservation has been quite successful in Nafplio. Houses dating from the medieval period through the 1920s operate as charming small inns, restaurants, shops and museums. According to my millennial tour guide (who moved away briefly in his youth for the big lights), Nafplio has never had exciting nightlife, which means it appeals greatly to families and older tourists. The tourism is specifically driven by Greeks, many of whom drive  from Athens on the weekend for a sightseeing and dining escape.

I’m a city dweller who unabashedly believes in the communal nature of urban places, and I am grateful to have an old house in an old neighborhood that includes a post office, library and a small supermarket. Still, the romantic in me has seen too many movies about small towns in Italy and France and England—and I have my own fantasies of the peaceful writing life in such a place, interspersed with jaunts to the market and conversations with longtime shop owners nearby. This you could have in Nafplio without question. Adding to the conviviality was that this city was not overrun with chain hotels. In the old town, most lodging appeared to be genuine pensiones—the historic Italian/French term given to hotels in Europe that tend toward being more boarding house or bed-and-breakfast. The kind of places with steep staircases, small rooms, and old furniture. And if you’re lucky—French doors that open onto a postage stamp balcony that show the historic neighborhood in its glory.

Hotel Adiani is operated by a local family who also run another pension-style hotel, Amymone, plus an elegant restaurant, Wild Duck, just across the way in a similar historic townhouse. The restaurant was full scale luxury: local produce and meat and cheese transformed into fusion dishes. My stay included breakfast that was prepared in the restaurant and also included specialty coffees made to order by a young man so versed in world news that upon hearing the name of my home city, he inquired about our tragedy, the 2024 Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.

During the trip, it was humbling for me to witness  how many people closely read the news of other countries. It also seemed that California was the state that people in the UK, France and Greece loved to imagine—and I’ll take it as a compliment that people sometimes would incorrectly guess this was my home. Still, despite the allure of California, I only encountered one person—a server in an Edinburgh gastropub—who was hoping to travel to the U.S.. The uncertainty about the validity of tourist visas at US airports makes the reluctance quite understandable.

Some countries in Europe are working assertively to attract non-working foreigners with solid pensions and bank accounts to emigrate. Greece is one of the places offering Golden Visas—long term residencies—in exchange for buying and rehabilitating properties for their own use or commercial development. I saw plenty of for sale signs in Thessaloniki, and during my spring visit to Syros; however, very few of the former residences and offices in the historic area of Nafplio appeared to be vacant. Instead, I saw boutiques selling clothing, eyewear and jewelry; one gelato shop after another; and dozens of tavernas and cafes. Apparently, starting at Easter and through early October, the little town overflows with both Greek and foreign visitors. I had arrived during the last bustling weekend, when car parking was tight at the port; but once Monday came, I found I was often the only person roaming a particular block. A photographer’s dream!

When you are alone, you can make your days as complicated or simple as you like. I set up a pleasant routine of having a superb breakfast downstairs, followed by a walk to get another coffee at a shop to take up to my room. Hotel Adiani had renovated its old rooms handsomely including with modern art painting on headboards and walls, and interesting textiles here and there. It was a glorious surprise to have a wooden writing desk with a good chair, as well as a small sofa. With such comfortable digs, I wrote more than I expected. I went out for lunch every day and often found the appetizer of meze or a salad was quite large and so filling that I couldn’t manage a regular entrée as well. I walked the food off in the afternoons by exploring the town’s famous landmarks like the hilltop Palamidi castle, approximately 900 steps above the town; the genteel Syntagma Square, and Arvinitia Beach, a sweet, semi-circular protected swimming place that was in use by a handful of visitors in early November. I had looked at the calendar and not believed it would be possible to swim in November. Therefore, I had no bathing suit, so I can’t say what the temperatures were, but my guess is the water wasn’t as warm as the sunshine.

When nighttime fell, I was often in my room, looking out from the balcony at the sunset and the street life below. Usually I was too full from my lunch to want much, but I once ate by candelight at an outdoor table overlooking the port at Wild Duck. Another time I wandered into a bakery and picked out a small box of cookies to have with a hot cup of herb tea (it seemed like bakery browsing was very popular in the evening throughout Greece). I have to make a recommendation about Nafplio’s oranges and tangerines. They had varying levels of sweetness and were delicious in salads, juice, or eaten as themselves.

Dinnertime is when I most often missed being with Tony, who was 5000 miles away conducting a midday Zoom with his colleagues. It wasn’t that I couldn’t eat alone. All restaurants I visited welcomed me as a solo diner, some with quite kind and attentive service. To the Greeks, a solitary traveler is unusual; two of my walking tour guides in Thessaloniki and Nafplio confessed that they hadn’t ever traveled alone and weren’t sure that they would like it.

I’ve traveled alone for many years; first as a journalist, and then as a young woman in Japan whose husband was oceans away on a navy ship.After we were reunited, I kept traveling alone for the sake of research for my novels. Therefore, this new step—spending half my fall trip in Europe alone, going exactly where I wanted, and eating only when I was hungry—didn’t seem on the outset to be that difficult. It with the widespread English spoken by younger Greeks, being understood was mostly possible. It was only when I reached France—the final week of the five-week journey—that my solo journey became a little more challenging.

More on that later!

The post Nafplio Off-Season: a Time of Pondering and Wandering appeared first on Sujata Massey.

This fall, I took myself on a lengthy, change-as-you-go ramble through a few countries in Europe. There was no excuse of book research or conferences or overseas signings. It was just to satisfy my hunger for faraway locations, and if you are going through life in 2025 America, you may understand what I mean.

The theme of the trip was one carry-on suitcase and one traveler, making choices that changed along the way, according to mood. My husband Tony accompanied me in the first two weeks, and I visited a few overseas writer friends at times along the route, but for much of the 33 days, I was alone. I left my laptop at home but brought an iPad, although I was too rushed to remember to transfer my manuscript onto it. I’ve always wondered whether living overseas would actually be too distracting for me to do any writing! In this case, the sheer tumult of packing a carry-on is enough to make me forget a book-in-progress. Fortunately, it was easy to just pick up and start a new chapter where I believed I’d left off. And work is good. Even writing a few paragraphs or a page made me feel I deserved some kind of an outing and a great lunch. Both goals were easy to achieve for a solo traveler in the historic Greek city of Thessaloniki.

My travel plan didn’t make much sense to most people I knew, except for those interested in food and religious history. Thessaloniki is not an island, nor is it within a sought-after part of the mainland, like the Peloponnese. It lies in the northeastern region of Central Macedonia, and it’s curved snugly around the Aegean’s Thermaic Gulf. Turkey lies across the gulf, and the nations of Albania, North Macedonia and Bulgaria form a Northern border. When I saw big signs like “Balkan Shopping Center” I knew I wasn’t in the Greece of travel websites.

Non-Greek influence is omnipresent in the city. Ottoman Empire Muslims ruled Thessaloniki or almost 500 years, a bit longer than other places within Greece where they ruled. During this occupation, other religions like Greek Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Judaism were tacitly allowed. This meant that Thessaloniki citizens had a plethora of places to worship, including the stunning Byzantine Hagia Sophia, which sits proudly in the center of downtown.

Another landmark near the Thessaloniki’s waterfront is the White Tower, which served as a notorious prison in the Ottoman period. Even though it’s now a museum, I just couldn’t bring myself to enter it. I have a sense that sometimes the energy of the past lingers on in buildings. Jails aren’t places I enter lightly, and I honored my instinct to go other places.

Above, I’m standing in front of a place with much better vibes. This is the Yahudi Hamam, a once-bustling Jewish public bath with separate men’s and women’s sections. As the Spanish Inquisition took hold in Catholic European countries, Thessaloniki, under Ottoman rule, was a haven for non-Christians to settle. The Jewish population included both Sephardic Jews fleeing Spain and Italy, as well as Ashkenazi Jews from elsewhere in Europe. At one time, there were more than 60 synagogues in the town, and the various Jewish families spoke either Ladino, Russian, Hebrew, German, as well as Greek, reflecting their diverse origins. This situation had a tragic unraveling during World War II, when the Nazis came to Thessaloniki, rounding people up and taking thousands away never to return again.

To remember the lost, there’s a Jewish Museum housed in a handsome neoclassical building. Jewish donors worldwide contributed to build it, including the designer Diane von Furstenburg, who has family roots in the city. Inside the museum, no photography was allowed, but displays have old photographs enlarged and narrate in Greek and English the community’s story of rise and fall, of community inclusion and tragic betrayal.  A few artifacts like tombstones, clothing, and jewelry are beautiful to ponder; however, the most unforgettable items are the uniform, tin cup and spoon that one Jewish man carried out of the concentration camp and back to his hometown.

It turned out that Thessaloniki is a hotspot for Balkan nations and hosts an international film festival annually. I tried to go, but was too late. All the tickets for opening night at the Art Deco theater, Olympion, were sold out. Still, I enjoyed watching people flock from Aristotelous Square into the theater for the big show. During evening hours the town felt lively, with people out eating and drinking and listening to live music. The city buzzed, but in a manageable, walkable way.

I felt fortunate to be able to be about two minutes walking distance from the action to my home base, a hotel called The Modernist. It’s a true boutique hotel in a remodeled 1930s building within a connected block of shops and restaurants. I had a small, nicely-appointed guest room with a postage stamp balcony that was shadowed by many taller buildings close by. A building boom in the 1950s resulted in Thessaloniki and many other cities getting packed with tall, wide and supposedly earthquake-proof concrete apartment blocks. They aren’t much to look at from the street, but I can imagine the views these apartments offer over the water.

A few blocks from The Modernist lay Aristotelous Square: a wide pedestrian thoroughfare lined with original apartment buildings in the Belle Epoque style. The city is built along the water, and it was here along New Paralia (new port) that the military paraded on Oxi Day, an annual remembrance of the Greek prime minister’s refusal of Benito Mussoli’s demands in 1940. The national holiday brought families and friends out for parade viewing, strolls along the water, and long lunches and drinks at the plethora (Greek word, yay!) of restaurants and tavernas. I tried to wait as long as I could for the parade to formally start, but the crowds were giving me claustrophobia. Therefore, the shot I’m sharing is how the soldiers appeared while they were lining up for their grand march.

I wandered down the waterfront to a very charming part of the city called Ladadika, which boasts lovely old buildings from the 1930s. Most of these places were where olive oil was once pressed and wholesale food supplies were sold. “Meze” is the name for a small, savory dish sold at many tavernas and restaurants in Thessaloniki. It might be a few sautéed shrimp, an assortment of meatballs, roasted vegetables, and so on. The Greeks are generous, and it turned out that the average meze was more of an entree size. It broke my heart not to be able finish some of the dishes I tried, like the roasted onions and eggplants with garlic. Do you see what I mean about the portions?

Meze are traditional and famous within Thessaloniki, but the town has also expanded its reputation with Modern Chef Magic. In fact, Thessaloniki is designated as Greece’s first UNESCO heritage gastronomic city. The sidewalk cafes were filled with people enjoying food in temperatures in the 60-70 Fahrenheit range most days. At night, bakeries were packed with people taking a sweet treat or two before going home. A lovely episode in the cable show The Bear has a chef traveling to Denmark to learn how to really cook sophisticated dishes and bring that sense back to America. In that spirit, I recommend culinary types who are interested in opening a Mediterranean-themed restaurant outside of Greece consider training for a year in a Thessaloniki restaurant kitchen. Greek food is so much more than salad, pastitsio and gyros!

Oh, the food adventures I had. It wasn’t just pastry grazing at night. My hotel friends recommended a fancy vegetarian restaurant called rOOTS (not a typo) where the food was beautiful but tasted a little experimental, if you catch my drift. I love roasted red pepper and risotto, but a red cabbage coulis was just not as tasty to me as a full-fledged, sautéed piece of cabbage. In a list of the city’s top restaurants, I settled on the seafood restaurant named 7 Thalasses. The pricey establishment had plenty of open tables at lunch and was exceptionally stylish, with elegant service and sophisticated treatments of seafood. Knowing my appetite, I ordered a salad and a single plate of shrimp, both exquisite.  I admired the seafaring design theme that was carried all the way into the restrooms.

My language school, Peek at Greek, was ten-minute walk from my hotel—everything in the city seemed to be fifteen minutes away or less. I enjoyed climbing the staircase of the old neoclassical building to the schoolrooms. Although I had private classes, I know other classes were going on for more advanced students. Most of them are immigrants who’ve come to work in Thessaloniki. The school also runs multi-day excursions into scenic areas so students can practice Greek in the environment. Sadly, I’m still too much of a beginner to properly converse; but I’m now comfortable with most of the alphabet and I can understand some of the conversation around me.

There’s nothing like getting to know a city through locals. Therefore, I talked as much as I could in my Greek-English mix to the teachers and people I met in restaurants and other places. One highlight was a walking tour through the city’s markets and small restaurants. it was led by a young travel agent who had a genuine love for home city. She brought me to taste olives, cheese, meat and sweet pastries, Greek coffee, and a very strong spirit called tsipouro. In the Modiani Market, all manner of foods were for sale—including sheep’s and goat’s heads. Fortunately we moved past quickly to fill our noses with the scent of wild mountain tea and then peruse kitchenware made from olive wood. Living out of a carry-on, I had no room for purchases, but I bought two tiny olive wood spoons—just right for scooping coffee or salt in my kitchen at home.

And this is how I will remember Thessaloniki.

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