Eye - 10 May 2024
From Glimmers to A woman of mystery
Glimmers
Eye has been so moved by Friends’ generosity with sharing their moments of love and light, and hopes you’ve found your spirits lifted in turn.
Judith Niechcial, of Bromley Meeting, wrote to invite readers into a moment in her life.
She writes: ‘In the 15 March edition of the Friend I was sorry to read of Eye’s bereavement. She asked for other examples where glimmers of light and love have warmed hearts in dark times.
‘[At the time of writing] I have just spent six terrible weeks in hospital and in intensive care following complications from bowel surgery – weak, nauseous, anxious.
‘In a courtyard outside my hospital window grew a large conifer tree. One particularly difficult morning I struggled from bed to the chair, looked out and suddenly saw a group of gold finches flitting about the branches nibbling at the seeds. They were happy, colourful, carefree. What a joyful sight!’
Thank you Judith, warmest wishes for a full recovery.
What has touched your hearts recently Friends?
Murder most friendly
Friends on Facebook have been punning up a storm after Taz Cooper, of Oxford Meeting, shared that the Young Quaker Group there had been ‘workshopping Quaker murder mystery titles over supper’. These included:
No Living Witness
Living Murderously
Minutes to Live
The Final Notice
And Then There Was Silence
Suggestions abounded in the comments…
The Silence of the Elders
The Letter Killeth
Death by Committee
Murder Must Minister
Deadly Discernment
A Murder is Minuted
Murder, She Clerked
Murder on the Ulverston Express
The Clerk Struck One
The Dot and Comma murders
Thresh and Burn
Murder mystery buffs, the challenge is before you! What titles can you come up with?
A woman of mystery
Inspired by the creative titles bubbling from Friends’ noggins (see above), Eye went on the hunt for more murder, mystery, and Quakers.
Imagine the glee when Eye discovered an episode of Thee Quaker Podcast where Jon Watts and Georgia Sparling interview a Quaker mystery writer! You can listen in full at https://bit.ly/TheeQuakerMurder.
Edith Maxwell, who also writes under the pen name Maddie Day, is a prolific writer, with multiple series of books to her name, who weaves Quakerism into her work in more ways than one.
During the episode they explore how Edith came to Quakerism, her development as a writer who specialises in ‘cosy’ mysteries – a niche genre where the protagonist tends to be a woman in a small town or village; there is no gore, foul language, or explicit scenes; and there’s a satisfying ending.
Edith says: ‘My first published book came out in September 2012. And it was called Speaking of Murder, and it featured a contemporary Quaker linguistics professor in a coastal Massachusetts town, a fictional town, and she’s a professor and there’s a murder on campus of one of her students, and she gets drawn into solving it.’
The most overt Quaker thread in her work is the award-winning ‘Quaker Midwife Mysteries’.
Co-host Georgia Sparling summarises: ‘In the series, Rose lives with family in a house that’s modelled after Edith’s own home in Amesbury. The first book, Delivering the Truth, was inspired by the Great Fire of 1888. In the book, Rose becomes an amateur sleuth after a mysterious and catastrophic factory fire leaves several people dead. Along the way, she consults with John Greenleaf Whittier, who was a real Quaker poet, an abolitionist who was also actually on the building committee for the Amesbury Meeting House. Throughout the seven books in the Quaker midwife series, Rose becomes an increasingly adept sleuth, even as she introduces Edith’s readers to Quakerism.’
Edith reflects: ‘I have had so many people say “I’ve learned so much about Quakers from you, about being a Quaker, from your books”, which is heartening, like people really have appreciated that. Yeah, I think there’s just so many people who know nothing about what those values are that we hold dear, of nonviolence, integrity, equality.’
