I talked with a friend the other day who told me about tracking down the truth of some old family stories. Her grandmother, it appears, may have been a waitress in a Southern restaurant frequented by mobsters on the run in the 1930s. The family had sent her to a private school, but then the Depression hit and the money ran out. My friend’s grandmother essentially disappeared for several years. Even when she was reunited with the family, the lost years weren’t discussed. My friend isn’t sure if that’s because the family was trying to keep secrets, or life went on and no one was interested in the past.
I write Sci-Fi, but I love mysteries. One of my favorites is Perry Mason. A staple of those stories is the villainous blackmailer and the woman desperate to keep family indiscretions secret for the sake of the children. Of course, the secrets have to come out to save Mason’s wrongly accused client, and rarely is anyone scandalized.
My family stories would make a splendid series, especially the ones about relatives who are safely dead. It’s harder when there’s someone alive who could be hurt, but I’ve still got the story of the man who kidnapped his own son and moved across the world, the child who set off alone after a war and created a completely new identity, and the woman who defied all of her clan’s conventions and managed to keep her place as a beloved daughter.
On second thought, maybe I’ll keep writing Sci-Fi and fold these characters into stories with space aliens and faster-than-light travel. I doubt even my own mother would recognize herself in the shape of a nine-foot, blue-skinned lizard lady.