Join me today for an interview with historical novelist Nancy Bilyeau. Her latest novel, The Orchid Hour, is set in 1923 New York during Prohibition. You may recognize her from her Tudor period novels with a Dominican nun as the main character or her 18th century novels set in London and France, or Dreamland set on Coney Island in 1911.
In the interview she tells us what drew her to Prohibition New York, her research process, and the best cocktail to drink while you read her novel about speakeasies and, of course, orchids.
What fascinated you about the Prohibition era enough to inspire The Orchid Hour?
It was how New York City, in particular, went through Prohibition. At first, there was mass denial. The city refused to believe that America would outlaw drinking, and this gave the temperance leaders a clear field to lobby politicians and get it passed across the US. Then, when New York had to go dry, the big restaurants that had catered to the Astors and Morgans of the city ended up closing. Nightlife struggled. People bought booze from bootleggers and stayed home for a while, but they got sick of that, and the speakeasy was born. There was this tension between wanting to create nightclubs with good music, a lot of alcohol and a little food, and staying under the radar so the police wouldn’t raid you. How do you become a “hot” nightclub when you need to be a secret?
By nature historical novels require a lot of research, and you’ve included so many great details, including about the orchids. What were some of the most fascinating things you learned?
I’ve always struggled with growing orchids, too. What’s important to know is they are possibly the hardest flower to grow. We are not alone! It does take a certain sensitivity and a real obsessiveness to succeed.
But I didn’t know the truly incredible history of the orchid — for instance, that scientists think the orchid could be 100 million years old. I knew that orchids were prized by the Victorians. But it became a race among the collectors to send their orchid hunters all over the world. It was shocking what happened in these countries. Collectors would seize the rare orchids and then burn down the jungle on their way out so no competitor could get one. And there was even a story of a collector shipping his find to England and they pulled out of the box an orchid growing out of a skull. The orchid hunter had dug it out of a graveyard in the Philippines.
I had the name — The Orchid Hour — when I began writing and I knew I wanted orchids in it, but it wasn’t until after I’d started writing that I discovered there was an orchid that was supposed to release its fragrance at a certain hour of the night. I just had to make that a part of my novel.
What cocktail would you pair with the novel?
I can never say no to champagne, and I think a lot of people who made their way to the Orchid Hour speakeasy felt the same way.
But when it comes to cocktails, there is one that first popped up in a bartender’s book in 1923 and I’ve always felt an affinity for it. It’s the gimlet. In the beginning, the gimlet was made of “gin, a spot of lime and soda” and you can find it in “Harry of Ciro’s ABC of Mixing” in the 1920s as half lime cordial and dry gin. So a good bartender at a speakeasy could handle it.
I like gimlets for two other reasons. You will find the drink in the Raymond Chandler books — Philip Marlowe drinks gimlets — and I have a little bit of hard-boiled noir in my novel. And the gimlet is — sexy. And that works well for my novel too. I went on a bit of a gimlet tour/bar crawl with my husband as part of the “research” for my novel. It was such a fun night. There are a lot of fantastic bars in New York but I’d have to give this one to The Gin Parlour in the Intercontinental Hotel on East 48th Street.
The Orchid Hour
If you’d like to purchase The Orchid Hour, here are some places to go:
The Orchid Hour on Amazon
The Orchid Hour on Bookshop.org
Further Reading
If you’d enjoy reading my reviews of some of Nancy’s other books, here are the links:
