Friday 5ive- April 29, 2022

The Friday 5ive is back after a long hiatus. I've been away on Fridays for awhile so I have a lot to cover.

1)  I had a big birthday earlier this month, and the celebrations went on for a long time and all were lovely. My kids came over for dinner, and my husband ordered a fabulous chocolate peanut butter cake from 

We Take the Cake, bakery in Miami. He said he knew I secretly loved chocolate and peanut butter, but that is not a well-kept secret- everyone who knows me is aware of that. We all loved the cake, it tasted just like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. The next night we went to dinner at Ocean's Prime and I ordered the Deviled Eggs with Caviar on top. They were delicious, and I graciously shared them with my sons and husband. 

2)  Monday night I was awakened at 3am by loud explosions. It sounded like fireworks right outside my window, and when I opened the window blinds, that is exactly what I saw. It only lasted a few minutes, and the fireworks didn't travel very high, not even above the high rise across the street. There was a lot of chatter on the Nextdoor Neighbors website, with people not believing it was fireworks, but I saw it with my own eyes, and the next day my friend sent me a photo from the street that confirmed it. So there.

3) I am so glad that in-person book events are back! On  Monday night, Adriana Trigiani was in conversation with the charming Willie Geist talking about her fabulous new novel, The Good Left Undone, at the gorgeous Rizzoli Bookstore. (My rave review of the book is here.) Willie Geist started off by saying that interviewing Adriana is like lighting the fuse on a firework- just light it and she's off. (I wonder if Willie has an alibi for later that night....) The standing room-only crowd enjoyed hearing about the wedding that Adriana crashed in Scotland that led her to write the fictional story of the Cabrelli family in Tuscany. The Cabrellis have been gem cutters and designers for generations, and Trigiani told of taking a gemology class at Christie's auction house in New York that helped with her research. 

Adriana covered a lot of ground in this freewheeling discussion and we learned so many fun facts, such as 

1) Adriana had a mad crush on Orson Wells

2) St. Bernard of Clairvaux was not a handsome man

3) Adriana didn't know you could buy Sweet & Low in a store. Her grandmother would take the packets from the restaurant tables and put them in her purse. Her grandmother passed away in 1987 and they still have Sweet & Low packets from her stash.

4) Elizabeth Taylor had size 11 shoes. You never saw her feet in any of her movies.

Yes, the evening was filled with laughs, fascinating information about the creation of The Good Left Undone, and it was so great to see so many people I haven't seen in a long time. It was like the good old days. I even got to meet author Jane L. Rosen, whose terrific novel Eliza Starts A Rumor I sent as Christmas gifts two years ago. I'm looking forward to reading her upcoming novel, A Shoe Story, publishing in June. I can't wait to go to more in-person book events in the future. 

4)  I binge-watched season two of Bridgerton on Netflix, and I have to agree with my friends- season two was better than season one! Season one was all about the sexy with the Duke and Daphne, and season two was about the slow burn romance between Anthony Bridgerton and Kate Sharma. We watched with bated breath as Anthony and Kate fought their mutual attraction as Anthony was to marry Kate's younger sister. Once again we had gorgeous costumes and jewelry (those tiaras!), beautiful scenery, and Queen Charlotte. I love how they deepened the family relationships, we really got to know the Bridgerton family and their friends and frienemies. I can't wait for season three. 

5)  I've read some terrific books. The first one is a true crime book, which is not a genre I normally read. Kathryn Miles' Trailed, about her investigation into the murders of two young women in Shenandoah National Park in 1996 had me riveted. Miles takes us through the missteps into the investigation, the arrest of a suspect whom she doesn't believe is guilty, and the lives of the two young women cut short by a brutal act. My full review is here. 

Jessica Anya Blau's novel, Mary Jane, comes out in paperback, and I loved this one. Mary Jane lives a sheltered life with her straightlaced parents in 1970s Baltimore. Mary Jane doesn't have many friends, sings in the church choir, and helps her mother cook dinner in order to learn how to be a good housewife. She gets a summer job babysitting for the precocious child of their neighbors, who are decidedly more progressive in their lifestyle. They wander around the house nearly naked, and don't cook meals for their daughter, subsisting on fast food and cereal. When a rock star and his famous singer/actress wife come to stay to be treated in secret by the father, a psychiatrist, Mary Jane is mesmerized by everything going on this household. Blau absolutely nails what it feels like to be a fourteen year-old girl in this wonderful novel, a perfect summer read. 

Next week, I'll share my visit to Boston. Stay safe and healthy all!

Trailed by Kathryn Miles

Trailed by Kathyrn Miles

Published by Algonquin Books ISBN 9781616209094

Hardcover, $27.95, 320 pages

Kathryn Miles is an outdoor expert and she combines that with her award-winning journalistic style to investigate the brutal double murders of two women in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park in Trailed- One Woman's Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders.

Miles began a teaching job at Unity College in Maine in 2001. A small college in central Maine that focused on environmental studies, it had only 500 students and 30 faculty. Lollie Winans was a student at Unity in the 1990s. Lollie was "confident, egoless, gregarious, and fiercely protective". She came from a wealthy Michigan family, and was a sexual abuse survivor at the hands of her mother's new husband.

Julie Williams was from a conservative religious family "a world traveler, quiet, self-assured and big hearted". Julie and Lollie fell in love and overcame struggles to be together. Lollie and Julie led outdoor excursions for other women, sharing their love of the outdoors with others.

In May of 1996, the two women set out to hike and camp in Shenandoah National Park. Their bodies were found at the end of May at their remote campsite when their dog was found wandering alone. The murders shocked the National Park goers and staff, and the investigators on the case were determined to find the culprit.

There were many problems with the investigation. The murder site was an outdoor campsite, and it had rained before the bodies were discovered. Budget cuts at the National Parks meant that resources, including investigators, were spread thin. FBI agents called in clashed with the park police as how to process the crime site.

The nature and location of the heinous crime made capturing the killer a priority. People want to feel safe in national parks, and this could frighten people away. Investigators narrowed in on a suspect, and in 2002 Darrell Rice was arrested.

Rice had been previously arrested for harrassing a female cyclist, and he was at Shenandoah in May. US Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference and announced that Darrell Rice would be charged with a newly established hate crime statue for the murders of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans. 

The case against Rice fell apart, and in 2004 it was dismissed. In 2016, twenty years after the murders, the FBI issued a press release asking for any information that may lead to the successful prosecution of the case, implying that they already had a suspect.

It was at this point that Kathryn Miles became involved. She was a writer at Outside magazine at the time, and she pitched her editor on the idea of writing a long form investigative piece on the murders. She would write of the lives of Lollie and Julie and the FBI's renewed interest in the case.

The murders consumed Miles. She became friendly with the park police investigators, and spent months, years even, going over every detail and possible suspect. She learned all about forensic science, getting to know Ann Burgess who worked on the launch of the FBI's Behavorial Science Unit (if you watched Mindhunter on TV, you saw a fictionalized version of her).

Miles comes to the conclusion that Darrell Rice did not kill the two women, and she zeroes in on another likely suspect. 

Fans of true crime TV shows, and books like Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone In The Dark will want to read Trailed, but it appeals to more readers than that. Kathryn Miles gives the readers a look at flaws in the criminal justice system, not always intentional. We get to know police investigators, FBI agents, Darrell Rice, friends of Julie and Lollie, and especially Julie and Lollie. Miles honors the memory of Julie and Lollie by letting us get to know them as real people whose lives were tragically cut short. 

I am not a reader of True Crime, and yet I could not put Trailed down. 

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Kathryn Miles tour.