MURDER IN MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS By Victoria Thompson
Have you ever heard of a Boston Marriage? In Nineteenth Century America, unmarried professional women (teachers, social workers) often shared living quarters. Part of this was an economic necessity because, just like today, women were paid less than men. The other part of it was social. Women developed close friendships with their peers and enjoyed each other’s company. The author Henry James (you probably studied him in high school) wrote about one of these relationships in his classic novel The Bostonians. Although the phrase “Boston Marriage” never appears in his novel, people started calling these relationships between professional women who lived together Boston Marriages, no matter what city they lived in. This is the part I love most about writing historical—learning all this trivia! In MURDER IN MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, my protagonists Frank and Sarah Malloy have just opened a private detective agency. They are hired to find out who killed a yo...