It’s been a minute! Actually, it’s been closer to a year and seven months since my last release. And it was a year and eight months for the release before that one. Blows my mind how time flies!
But I do have a new book that I’m so excited about. I enjoyed releasing A GIANT MURDER as part of the historical “Ever After” mystery series. That one was set in Dallas in the 1920s, and I had a blast doing research on my grandparents and great-grandparents and their lives in my hometown.
Well, I got to revisit Dallas history again with this new book, A TROLL FALLS.
This time, the era is the late 1940s. While the first book focused on downtown, this second one actually takes place closer to where I grew up.
White Rock Lake is the backdrop for this story. My mom swam there before they closed it to swimming in the early 1950s. I used to take my kids there as a homeschooling field trip, and I still visit the beautiful Dallas Arboretum near the shores of the lake. It has the most magnificent view of downtown which is six miles away.
[Photograph of the DeGolyer Estate Driveway], photograph, 1940; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth207033/
Accessed February 28, 2023), University of North Texas Libraries,
The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Municipal Archives.
One of the main structures of the Dallas Arboretum is the DeGolyer House, built in the mid-1930s. It looks like a Spanish Hacienda and I had fun “borrowing” it to create the Halling Estate in my book. The house I created might be fiction, but the vistas and the sprawling lawns and gardens are very real! This is actually a postcard with the image of the DeGolyer house on it from the 1940s.
Stick around for more details about 1940s Dallas and information about A TROLL FALLS!
Marji Laine 