The Reluctant Canary Sings came about as a result of my mother’s reticence about her career as a featured vocalist with some of the Great Lakes big band orchestras.

As she said very little about her life before my birth, I’ve taken license to make it all up aside from about five facts I did manage to glean both from her and from my research. I call the book a hybrid with memoir elements (the five facts about a real person) and fiction elements.

In a prologue, I’ve provided some information about the setting where this novel begins. Click here for a sense of that scene.

I provided Bobbi Bowen’s family with an apartment in Cleveland’s Little Italy. Case Western Reserve University has some of the best research materials on Cleveland, Ohio, history complete with a great collection of images and articles about all kinds of useful things.

I also called the archivist at the McGoogan Library, University of Nebraska Medical Center and an old textbook from the surgeon who set my broken finger to learn about medical practice during the Thirties for this chapter.

The Reluctant Canary Sings is now available in ebook format, free, at Smashwords. during the summer sale. For ebooks and hard copies, go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

If, like me, you prefer to browse your purchases at a real bookstore, you’ll find it at The Bookworm and Our Bookstore in Omaha, Francie and Fitch in Lincoln, The Sequel in Kearney, and A toZ Books in North Platte–all in Nebraska. You will also find copies in several Nebraska libraries.