Always Learning: Language and Power

I now have copies of almost all the news articles that related to the death of Sam Wa at age 75 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The 1921 murder of this aging downtown businessman was not officially solved, in spite of a detective being hired. And it's the center catastrophe of the (fictional) mystery I'm writing, Cold Midnight.

Research never stops, not during the writing process, and not even afterward. One strand I've been exploring is the meaning and use of the word "Chinaman" in 1921. From 2010...