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Sharan Newman is the author of the Catherine Levendeur mysteries, 10 historical mystery novels set in 12th-century France. She’s also published three mythbusting “Real Histories” from Berkeley Books, a trilogy of fantasy novels featuring Guinevere of Arthurian legend, and a mystery set in 19th century Oregon. She has coedited a series of anthologies on Crime Through Time and published a collection of short stories titled Death Before Compline.

Her Death Comes As Epiphany won the Macavity Award for best first mystery, Cursed in the Blood received the Herodotus Award for best historical mystery, and The Witch in the Well won the Bruce Alexander award for best historical mystery.

The research for her books has taken her to, among other places, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique France Méridionale et Espagne at the University of Toulouse and the Institute for Jewish History at the University of Trier. Sharan Newman has a Ph.D. in medieval studies.

She is currently working on a biography of Melisende, the first native-born queen and first female ruler of Crusader Jerusalem.

Newman lives in Ashland.

EB: How did you become a mystery writer?

SN: I had been writing fantasy but realized that I was reading more mystery. Then I came across an historical puzzle that seemed perfect for a mystery.

EB: What was that?

SN: In his account of the building of the abbey church of St. Denis, Abbot Suger wrote that the nobility had thrown jewels and gold chains into the mortar of the cornerstone. But archaeologists found no trace of them. It was when an engineer told me how long it took mortar to set back then that I realized there had been a chance for some skullduggery. The question was, by whom. The mystery started unfolding from there.

EB: Your first series featured Queen Guinevere. How did you decide on the character of Guinevere as series focus?

SN: I had taken three terms of graduate courses in Arthurian literature. At the time (early 80s) there was almost nothing on Guinevere, either in fiction or academic work. She always came across as super-bitch. I began to wonder why and the story grew from that.

EB: What accounts for the continuing popularity of Arthurian legend? And for our fascination with medieval times generally?

SN: Arthur is infinitely mutable to the era. The idea of a man who tries to create a perfect society and fails is very compelling. People seem to be fascinated with medieval times because they have no idea what they were really like; most people base their interest on either positive or negative myths. (Don’t get me started. This is a hobby horse of mine.)

EB: Your Catherine Levendeur mysteries followed the life of a former novitiate in the Order of the Paraclete. What was the Order of the Paraclete?

SN: It wasn’t an order but a Benedictine convent, rather unorthodox. It was founded by Peter Abelard and given by him to his wife, Heloise. The 16th century convent still exists as a private estate in Champagne.

EB: So far there have been 10 books in the series. How does Catherine develop over the course of the series?

SN: She grows up, has children, becomes less clumsy and more aware of the world. Rather like her creator.

EB: Did she take on a life of her own, or were you always in control?

SN: My characters are constantly bolting from me. Catherine is better than most but the men are always surprising me. I hadn’t thought about it in terms of gender before but I do find the men harder to predict. Hmm… I need to think about this.

EB: You’ve got a PhD in medieval studies and are still an active scholar. As a writer how do you balance the roles of historian and storyteller? Are they at all in conflict?

SN: No. I have a firm rule that the stories can’t diverge from what I know of the history. But writing history is storytelling. The story is just based on documentary evidence. I think
that the best modern fiction, even fantasy, has a firm base in fact. Practically, I veer between books with footnotes and books with dialogue.

EB: You’ve also written two books about the Knights of the Templar The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code and The Real History Behind the Templars. Was your idea to dispel some of the unreal history?

SN: Absolutely.

EB: Did you get any feedback from true believers in the various myths and conspiracies?

SN: Oh, yes. One person assured me that the Masons were directly descended from the Templars because he had been a member of Demolay. Others are just sure that historians are part of the conspiracy. There’s not much one can do about that.

EB: Those led to The Real History of the End of the World, which among other things, reassured us that the world was not going to end last year when the Mayan calendar ran out. Does all apocalyptic thinking have something in common?

SN: I believe so. The oddest thing is that most people believe that they will survive, either physically or spiritually. We can think about the end of the world, but not our own extinction.

EB: Do all cultures have some version of this end-of-the-worldism?

SN: So far all the ones I’ve studied have something, either constant destruction and recreation or an ultimate end.

EB: What’s likely to be the next apocalyptic moment?

SN: Comets are popular right now. Global warming is too slow for most people but they do like the idea of it causing a sudden ice age.

EB: I want to ask you about your 2008 mystery, The Shanghai Tunnel, featuring an Oregon widow in the 1860s dealing with her husband’s past. How did you get interested in Oregon history?

SN: I grew up in Portland. My mother was ill and I wanted to write something that wouldn’t require foreign research. There was an article in the Oregonian about a Chinese graveyard that had been forgotten and rediscovered during road building. That started me off. In researching, I discovered that I had been taught nothing in school about the real history of Oregon. I didn’t know about the political corruption, treatment of Chinese or the fact that Oregon had been admitted as a free state but didn’t allow black settlers. Also, there is so much primary material still extant. I was thrilled.

EB: Do you see any similarities between medieval France and frontier Oregon?

SN: Only those that create reasons for people to murder.

EB: What’s your current project? I hear you are working on a biography?

SN: The tentative title for the next book is Defending the City of God: A Medieval Queen, the First Crusades, and the Quest for Peace in Jerusalem, but that may change. It’s based on the life of Melisende, the half-French, half-Armenian queen of Jerusalem from 1138-1161. But it encompasses the views and experiences of the inhabitants of the Levant who don’t normally have a voice. The research is tricky, but rewarding.

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Diane Goeres-Gardner is a fifth-generation Oregonian, with roots in Tillamook County as early as 1852. She has a master’s degree from the University of Oregon where she studied with poet Ralph Salisbury. Her book Necktie Parties: A History of Legal Executions in Oregon, 1851-1905, was released by Caxton Press in 2005 and her Murder, Morality and Madness: Women Criminals in Early Oregon appeared in 2009, also by Caxton. Her book Images of America: Roseburg was published by Arcadia Press in 2010, part of its Images of America series.

In addition to writing about Oregon history, Goeres-Gardner is a poet, winning the 2002 narrative division in the Oregon State Poetry Contest with “Racing the Antelope.” and she has been a sponsored speaker for the Oregon Council for the Humanities.

She and her husband live along the Umpqua River surrounded by Myrtlewood trees and her miniature poodle-mix Cody.

Later this year, she will release two books on the Oregon State Hospital:
Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Tragedy and Triumph from The History Press along with Images of America: Oregon Asylum due to be released by Arcadia Publishing this summer.

EB: How did you get interested in crime?

DG-G: I got interested in Oregon’s hangings after noticing stories in old Oregon newspapers. I had been reading microfilm newspapers from the 1850s in the University of Oregon Knight Library. After collecting a few I became curious and tried to find out how many had occurred. I discovered that except for a few wonderful county historians, no one knew how many men had been executed or where the executions had taken place. This was right after William Longs’ book about Oregon’s history of capital punishment “A Tortured History” had been published. He had about a page and a half dedicated to the years prior to 1905. To me it seemed a fascinating subject and one that would make a wonderful book. After several years of research I submitted the manuscript to Caxton Press and they published my book Necktie Parties: A History of Legal Executions in Oregon, 1851-1905 in 2005.

EB: In frontier Oregon, what could get you hanged?

DG-G: Oregon has only hanged men after they were convicted of first-degree murder. I couldn’t even find a lynching for anything other than murder. There are a lot of myths floating around about who was hanged first and that so-and-so was hanged for stealing a horse. Almost all the myths I encountered were false.

EB: Hangings were social events. Why is that? Is there an American desire for spectacle, like reality shows, or did hangings fill some other social function?

DG-G: The major reason they were social events was to prove to the citizens that law and order really worked and the legal punishment was carried out. They served as a social function for people to get together, meet their neighbors, lecture children about morality, and do a little shopping in town. All the hangings took place in the county seats.

EB: You have also written about women being incarcerated. What were some of the reasons that women were imprisoned in early Oregon?

DG-G: Women were incarcerated for the same crimes men were. The major difference was that there wasn’t any place appropriate to put them when they were convicted of crimes. The Oregon State Penitentiary was never designed to hold women – under the assumption women would not commit crimes – and very few did. The first Oregon prison for women was opened in 1965.

EB: Were there typical women’s crimes?

DG-G: Oregon has never executed a woman. And no woman was convicted of first-degree murder until the law was changed to allow judges and juries the option of execution or life in prison for a first-degree murder conviction. Mostly women were sent to prison for short periods of time for first-degree larceny.

EB: How has this informed your views on women’s rights?

DG-G: Murder, Morality and Madness: Women Criminals In Early Oregon is a case-by-case study that illustrates how women accused of crimes were unfairly treated by the court system, their neighbors, and society prior to 1900. That didn’t change much until they received the right to vote in 1912 and even then the cultural obstacles took much longer to overcome. Even now in 2013, there are still people in the government trying to limit women’s rights. It’s extremely disappointing. Read history and discover the truth.

EB: Your books contain a lot of research. Have you always been a writer/researcher?

DG-G: I think of myself more as a researcher than a writer. I write to get my research into print. The research is fun. Writing is really hard work! My goal has always been to recreate the cultural and psychological context experienced by the participants in the historical events I’m writing about. I want the reader not only to understand the history but to empathize with the individuals involved.

EB: Tell us about your latest project.

DG-G: I became interested in the history of the Oregon State Hospital (known as the Oregon State Insane Asylum until 1913) because many of the women prisoners were sent to OSH in a humanitarian effort to provide appropriate housing for them. It became an even higher priority for me when the hospital began its reconstruction efforts in 2006 and they started planning to demolish many of the historic buildings.

I have two new books being released this summer. The first is Images of America: Oregon Asylum due to be released by Arcadia Publishing on June 17. It is a photo-history showing the 120-year history of the Oregon State Hospital using photos, graphs, and other historical materials. My daughter, Laurie Burke, took many of the later photos.

My second book is “Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Tragedy and Triumph published by The History Press. It includes a foreword by John Terry, an Oregonian columnist. It will be released about the end of June. It is an 85,000-word narrative looking at the hospital’s history through the eyes of the patients who lived there. It also tracks the various changes in mental health care from 1860 to 2012 in Oregon and the United States. I believe very few Oregonians know about the Eugenics Movement in Oregon when hundreds of people were sterilized (men were castrated) because they were poor, mentally ill, gay, or promiscuous. The whole movement led to the Holocaust in Germany. Authorities in Oregon were avid supporters of the movement.

Included are interviews with Dr. Dean Brooks, superintendent of OSH when “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” was filmed in the old J Building, the new superintendent, Greg Roberts, and various other hospital employees. If you ever wondered about the mental health system in Oregon or saw the old buildings in Salem, this book is the only published history of the hospital. It includes a full index and over a thousand endnotes as references, and is supported by the Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health, which opened in October 2012.

Endorsements include the following:

John Terry, columnist for the Portland Oregonian found the book “tremendously informative as well as disturbing.”

Dr. Howard Baumann, a board member for the OSH Museum of Mental Health believes “Ms. Goeres-Gardner balances the unique and complex history of the Oregon State Hospital with the art of the storyteller.”

Dr. Robert Nikkel, retired Oregon Mental Health and Addictions Commissioner, writes: “Her exhaustive research tells the full story of the institution, its troubled and humanitarian past without passing judgment. Ms. Goeres-Gardner presents a compelling story with historic references that no other book has provided to date.”

For future announcements concerning Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Tragedy and Triumph, please check my web page “www.dlgoeres-gardner.com”.

EB: Thanks. I hope we can get you back in the summer to talk more about these new books.