by Kelley Rouse
I met Helen Chappell, journalist and fiction writer,
briefly last summer outside the Avalon Theater in
Easton where we shared a break between
acts of Radio From Downtown. Helen is one
of those people that you know immediately is a mind alive.
She has an energy that you don't forget and a quick
wit and sense of humor that made listening to her
interview with Van Williamson later that evening on
"life in the Oysterback," delightful.
About a month ago, Debbie Creasy, manager of Browseabout Books in Salisbury, suggested I read Helen's latest fiction, a mystery entitled "Slow Dancing with the Angel of Death." I don't usually read mysteries, but I remembered Helen and was intrigued. I finished it within 24 hours, because it had a ghost in it, because I was kept guessing, and because of the deliciously familiar characters.
After I reading the book, I
called and asked Helen
for an interview. Although we'd only spoken for
a few minutes, months earlier, I immediately felt like
I was talking to an old friend.
I knew our meeting would be fun, and I wasn't disappointed. We settled into the session with coffee and cigarettes and then Helen went for the heavy fix. The 'good stuff' as she put it coming back into the living room with a bag of milk chocolates filled with almonds. I couldn't help but laugh.
Here I was, sitting in the home of a renowned journalist and fiction writer, in the quaint outskirts of Royal Oak, feeding my favorite addictions and talking about the things I love most: politics, women's issues, philosophy, religion and writing. It was wonderful.
We did get to talk about "Slow
Dancing.." too, sandwiched between
what seemed like hundreds of conversations, and a
tarot reading, graciously offered and expertly
given. Her facility with that arcane skill was
hardly a suprise: what does one
expect from a woman who writes about a ghost who
comes back to ask his x-wife to solve his murder?
Helen was born in Pennsylvania, which she says she's "not proud of," and spent her growing years between Kennet Square, Chester County, and Dorchester County, Maryland. Her father worked the wetlands and Helen, often in tow, developed a love for that strangely beautiful and hostile place, the marsh, as well as the people that lived on the Shore's watertowns. Although "Oysterback" is a work of fiction...short, short, stories that appear on the Commentary page in the Baltimore Sun, it's clear that Helen knows the difference between a muskrat and a nutria.
In "Slow Dancing with the Angel of Death" she makes a serious plea for the survival of our wetlands, in the way Helen likes to say serious things, with humor.
After she slaps the "environmentally dull" around for awhile, she goes for her prime targets.
"It's social satire. You're dragging people out into caricature sometimes. God knows there are enough people around here you can poke with a sharp stick who are going to scream. There are a lot of pompous, pretentious people on the Eastern Shore...and those are the ones I went after."
Helen's evolution into the accomplished writer she is began with a desire to be a commercial artist. She says she was always writing while hawking a portfolio, which didn't work out as well as her pen.
Although she refers to it as her 'deep dark secret,' she began writing "turgid" Regency Romances under the pen name of Rebecca Baldwin. Then there was the other pen name used for turning TV scripts of Angie Dickenson's "Police Woman" into pocketbook novels.
She wrote some serious novels that earned good reviews, but only sold five copies. After twelve years in The Big Apple, Helen landed a big book deal and thought she'd move back to the Eastern Shore the Shore for one year. She's still here, and has been, with the exception of another 6-month stint in New York that she says made her so unhappy, she came back home and hasn't left since. "It's an easy place to live," she admits.
After working three years for a local newspaper covering the crime and court beat, Helen had the 'stuff' with which to create Hollis Ball, heroine of "Slow Dance." She also says spending time waiting in bars with the cops for the outcome of trials gave her a new respect for some officers of the law. For "Slow Dance with the Angel of Death" she called on Wade Roach, now Chief of Police for St. Michael's, for law enforcement advise. Her mentor, she says with a smile, is Bill Horne, a judge in Circuit Court in Easton and former State Delegate.
"You might say I barnacle onto these people in a professional manner and I've gotten good expert advice."
It is this good measure of expert advice, Helen's knowledge of the Eastern Shore, and her fascination with people that makes this mystery a wonderful story to read. Helen's wild imagination, wry sense of humor, and skill with words just adds the magic to this first in what we hope to be a series of mysteries starring Helen's alter ego, Hollis Ball, and the people, real and imagined, of the Eastern Shore.
Please come meet this important writer, I am sure
you will find her, and her books, as wonderful as
I did... Kelley
Note: Helen Chappell will be meeting readers
and signing copies of her new novel Saturday,
June 1, 1996 between noon and two o'clock p.m.
at Browseabout Books,
on Salisbury
Boulevard in Salisbury MD. (410-860-5400)
May 26, 1996 Kelley Rouse All Rights Reserved