North Star Conspiracy (A Glynis Tyron Mystery)
Miriam Grace Monfredo, 1993
Penguin Group USA
353 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425147207
Summary
The year is 1854. In Seneca Falls, New York, everyone is busy with the opening of a new theater, no one notices the death of a freed slave. As a supporter of the Underground Railroad, Glynis hears information that raises her suspicions, and soon discovers more than she wants to know about some of the so-called sympathizers.
Glynis Tryon, the delightful Seneca Falls, New York, librarian introduced in Seneca Falls Inheritance, returns, still balancing her own life against the momentous events of the times. With sure authenticity, the author evokes the atmosphere of 1854, seven years before the Civil War, and brings to life the vivid cast of characters involved. A local election is pending, from which Glynis and Elizabeth Cady Stanton hope will come gains for women's rights. A wealthy resident has started Seneca Falls's first theater, and its production of Macbeth looms large in the story.
Glynis herself faces a wrenching decision: Constable Cullen Stuart wants her as his wife when he moves west to become a Pinkerton man. Warm as her regard for Cullen may be, Glynis is reluctant, knowing how her life must change after marriage. Meanwhile, Seneca Falls has become an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Fugitive slaves following the North Star to Canada find support from many of the town's inhabitants, including Glynis.
It is a difficult commitment at best, and when complicated by murder, a perilous one as well. Once again, Miriam Grace Monfredo has combined historical events, a moving personal story, and an engrossing mystery in a work of extraordinary interest.
North Star is the second of six books in the Seneca Falls Mystery Series. The series includes (in order): Seneca Falls Inheritance, North Star Conspiracy, Blackwater Spirits, Through a Gold Eagle, The Stalking Horse, and Must the Maiden Die. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Miriam Grace Monfredo, a former librarian and a historian, lives in Rochester, New York. This is the second "Seneca Falls Mystery" series. A previous "Seneca Falls Mystery," The Stalking Horse, was chosen by the Voice of Youth Advocacy as one of 1998’s best adult mysteries for young adults and received a “best” review in Library Journal’s young adult section. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Fresh, original and creative, this lively [work] brings together a cross section of women from Seneca Falls in 1848—a librarian, women's rights activist, former slave, brothel keeper, plantation wife/slave owner and town cultural advocate—each with strong opinions that will reflect on the history of activism prior to the Civil War.
Syracuse Post-Standard
North Star Conspiracy is a reasonably serious mystery that is also a good bit of fun, set in 1854. With her friends Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Seneca Falls librarian Glynis Tryon also works on such feminist issues as suffrage. Glynis is no dilettante; when she has an opportunity early in the book to marry a man she truly cares for, she turns him down. To assent would man the end of her career. Fully involved in the life of the community, Glynis becomes caught in a web of intrigue that includes murder and shows herself a capable ratiocinator. Like other entries in the series, the novel features historical notes at the end detailing people, places, and things the reader meets or hears about in the course of the story. A bit too much late-20th-century sensibility manifests itself in Glynis Tryon's point of view, but the story remains enjoyable.
Grant Burns - Librarians in Fiction, A Critical Bibliography
In 1854, six years after her adventures with Elizabeth Cady Stanton described in Seneca Falls Inheritance, librarian Glynis Tryon returns for a suspense-filled adventure based on the northward escape of fugitive slaves. Women's rights' advocate Glynis rejects the marriage proposal of her friend Constable Cullen Stuart, who leaves Seneca Falls, N.Y., to join the Pinkertons. Missing him, she busies herself in the planning of the town's new theater and the upcoming campaign for state assembly of a banker who favors women's rights. She is puzzled by both the recent suspicious death of a freed slave from Virginia and the murder of a slave-catcher who was last seen with a woman from the theater group. Then Niles, her landlady's son, returns from Virginia to announce his plans to marry Kiri, a slave whom he has convinced to run away. Glynis's role in helping Kiri farther along the Underground Railroad and her observations at Niles's trial in Virginia for abetting the slave's escape mesh seamlessly with details of the librarian's personal life in this intricately plotted, historically vivid, thoroughly satisfying mystery.
Publishers Weekly
Unmarried (by choice) librarian Glynis Tryon (Seneca Falls Inheritance) learns firsthand of the iniquities of slavery when her boardinghouse landlady's son Niles returns to their western New York home with Kiri—a beautiful mulatto slave he helped escape from a Virginia plantation. A slave-catcher is on their trail, and though Glynis manages to get Kiri to her sister's house in Rochester, a stop on the Underground Railroad, Niles is captured and returned to Virginia to stand trial. In Richmond to help Niles's lawyer, Glynis learns that three recent murders back home all tie in with Kiri—and with the murder of her fleeing family 13 years before by a villainous overseer, now living up north under another identity. With help from Constable Sundown and Cullen Stuart, a Pinkerton detective, Glynis and Kiri bait a trap for the villain and spring it during the debut performance of Macbeth at Seneca Falls's just-opened theater. Stimulating fare (despite a subplot or two too many) that effectively parallels the powerlessness of slaves and women—the disenfranchised—building to a dramatic courtroom sequence. Sojourner Truth, Matthew Brady, et al., appear in memorable cameos.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• Generic Discussion Questions
• Read-Think-Talk About a Book
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for North Star Conspiracy:
1. Why does Glynis refuse to marry Cullen Stuart, despite her fondness for him? In what ways would her life have changed as a married woman? You might use that question to segue into a discussion of the conditions for women in the mid-19th century. Does Monfredo make any connection between the powerlessness of white women and their slave counterparts?
2. On what basis does Glynis decide to help Kiri flee her captors? To what extent is an individual free—or compelled—to disobey laws that violate the conscience? ? Who decides when laws are unjust?
3. What is the effect of Monfredo's inserting real-life historical figures into her fictional world? Why might she use that technique? Does Monfredo's treatment of those historical individuals make them, or the era in which they lived, come alive for you?
4. Did Monfredo's book enable you learn more about the Underground Railroad and abolitionist movement? Monfredo has been praised for her historical accuracy, which brings up an interesting question—is the ability to appreciate history enhanced through fictional tellings? How useful did you find the mini-encyclopedia at the back of the book?
5. As has been said, "the past is never past. In what way does Kiri's past come back to haunt her?
6. What does the journey to Richmond reveal about the era's political divisiveness between northern abolitionists and southern slaveholders?
7. How does Glynis arrive at her courtroom revelation? What steps lead her to uncover the key evidence?
8. Does the entrapment of Thomas Farley make for a good ending...or an unrealistic one, forced or tacked on?
9. This is a mystery after all. Talk about how Monfredo buries clues, misleads the reader, uses plot twists, builds suspense, and reveals the solution? How well does she do all that? Did you find the revelation surprising...or predictable?
10. Finally, consider Monfredo's use of a theatrical production, Macbeth. How does it function in the story (think about role playing...)?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution.)