Tomboy: A Jane Benjamin Novel

by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

Overview

It’s 1939. On the brink of World War II, Jane Benjamin wants to have it all. By day she hustles as a scruffy, tomboy cub reporter. By night she secretly struggles to raise her toddler sister, Elsie, and protect her from their mother. But Jane’s got a plan: she’ll become the San Francisco Prospect’s first gossip columnist and make enough money to care for Elsie.

Jane finagles her way to the women’s championship at Wimbledon, starring her hometown’s tennis phenom and cover girl Tommie O’Rourke. She plans to write her first column there. But then she witnesses Edith “Coach” Carlson, Tommie’s closest companion, drop dead in the stands of apparent heart attack, and her plan is thrown off track.

While sailing home on the RMS Queen Mary, Jane veers between competing instincts: Should she write a social bombshell column, personally damaging her new friend Tommie’s persona and career? Or should she work to uncover the truth of Coach’s death, which she now knows was a murder, and its connection to a larger conspiracy involving US participation in the coming war?

Putting away her menswear and donning first-class ballgowns, Jane discovers what upper-class status hides, protects, and destroys. Ultimately—like nations around the globe in 1939—she must choose what she’ll give up in order to do what’s right.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647424084
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	06/28/2022
Series:	A Jane Benjamin Novel
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in California's Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field. She teaches college writing in Northern California and consults with writers in the energy industry. She serves on the advisory boards of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children, and Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors. She has also served on the Writers' Advisory Board for the Belize Writers' Conference. Copy Boy is her first novel, and she’s currently working on her second. She also writes and publishes flash fiction and non-fiction, which you can find at such journals as Brevity and Cleaver. She and her husband live in Sacramento with an aging beagle and many photos of their out-of-state sons. To learn where you can read her stories and more, go to shelleyblantonstroud.com.

Editorial Reviews

2023 Readers' Favorite Book Awards Gold Medalist in Fiction (Mystery - Historical)

“Blanton-Stroud is a wonderful writer, and Jane is a compelling creation. . . . An intriguing and engaging mystery—readers will hope for more adventures starring the redoubtable hero.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A wonderful story full of nuance and character.”
—Sheldon Siegel, New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of the Mike Daley/Rosie Fernandez series

“Who doesn’t like a reporter story that is not only prescient but character driven? That makes Tomboy one of those rare historical novels that’ll have you searching for something similar–it won’t be easy, this one is a unicorn.”
—The Strand Magazine, “Top 25 Mystery Novels of 2022”

“Jane Benjamin’s the heroine we need, the heroine we wish we were—determined, tough as hell, utterly loveable. This propulsive novel was a lot of danged fun!”
—Elizabeth Gonzalez James, author of Mona at Sea

“Combining the feminist can-do of Phryne Fisher and the snarky commentary of Veronica Mars, Jane Benjamin is a boatload of fun.”
—Halley Sutton, author of The Lady Upstairs

“A spirited feminist noir that flips femme fatale and private dick archetypes on their heads, while pitting Jane's hungry ambition against her obligation to family.”
—Anita Felicelli, author of Chimerica

“Murder, deceit, and gender fluidity take to the high seas in a rollicking whodunnit.”
—Alia Volz, author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco

“1939’s Jane Benjamin is a quintessential heroine for now—gritty, gutsy, gender-bending, and driven to fulfill her journalistic ambitions in male-centric bars and smoke-filled San Francisco newsrooms. She’s one difficult girl you want in your corner and on your must-read pile.”
—Dorothy Rice, author of The Reluctant Artist and Gray is the New Black

“Mix Jo March and Tom Ripley, shake well, pour into a martini glass and take a big, brisk, bitter swig of Jane Benjamin. Like me, you’ll be deliriously intoxicated by Copy Boy’s bracing sequel.”
—Gretchen Cherington, author of Poetic License

“Riveting as Mare of Easttown, binge-worthy as The Queen’s Gambit, Tomboy will keep you reading—obsessively—until the very last line.”
—Debra Thomas, author of Luz

“Chock-full of audacity and adventure, a suspenseful and layered novel.  From the squalor of Hooverville to the opulence of the Queen Mary, cub reporter Jane Benjamin grabs our hearts once again.”
—Ashley E. Sweeney, author of Answer Creek and Eliza Waite

“Crisp prose, snappy pace, exquisite period details and a resourceful, resilient, wonderfully flawed protagonist. Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy boat ride.”
—Mary Camarillo, author of The Lockhart Women

“A sharp and affecting novel of pain and love wrapped in a meticulously crafted mystery, Tomboy ascends to a breaking point that will leave you breathless.”
—Laurie Buchanan, author of The Sean McPherson novels

“The best kind of seat-of-your-pants protagonist to keep your heart racing as she gets herself into scrapes that threaten her safety, but clarify her morality.”
—Maren Cooper, author of A Better Next

From the Publisher

2022-03-03
In this historical fiction sequel,a San Francisco journalist shows her resourcefulness and audacity after a tennis coach’s death.

Edward Zimmer, the publisher of cub reporter Jane Benjamin’s newspaper, and his companion, Sandy Abbott, are traveling to London to watch the 1939 Wimbledon games. San Francisco’s favorite daughter, Tommie O’Rourke, will be defending the city’s honor. Defend it she does, but at her moment of triumph, her coach, Edith Carlson, suddenly collapses and dies right there in the stands. Through luck and pluck, Jane has joined the traveling entourage and even wins the provisional confidence of Tommie and her brother, Frank. Meanwhile, Jane is wangling for a promotion to gossip columnist. While the group is sailing home on the Queen Mary, suspicions arise that Edith actually was murdered, and Jane is on the case. Enter the sad figure of Helen Carlson, the coach’s niece, a very troubled—if not mentally ill—woman who chooses suicide and is buried at sea with her aunt. Jane tries to solve all of these mysteries, reconciles (somewhat) with her mother, and gets ready for the next stage of her tumultuous life. Blanton-Stroud is a wonderful writer, and Jane is a compelling creation. Check out some of the lines in the enjoyable novel. After surprising a celebrity, “the photographers ran off like hyenas with bloody chunks of meat in their mouths.” Jane, desperate to hear crucial information, lent her “ears what remained of” her strength. The London weather is as “cold and drizzly as the eye of a sneeze.” There are many vivid flashbacks to Jane’s hardscrabble growing up in a 1930s Hooverville in California. Readers will understand that Jane’s childhood made her what she is now and is going to be in the future (see Nietzsche: “Whatever doesn’t kill me…”). And her troubled troubadour father had nonetheless a nobility to him (see Woody Guthrie).

An intriguing and engaging mystery—readers will hope for more adventures starring the redoubtable hero.

Kirkus Reviews