Why Snoods Were Swell for 1940s Women

In Uncivil Defense, the latest book in my mystery series featuring 1940s private eye Maggie Sullivan, a woman wears a snood. It prompted one early reader to ask, “What’s a snood?” My first impulse was to say it’s sort of like a fancy hairnet. Half a second’s...

America’s WWII Blackout Cars

by M. Ruth Myers While working on my current Maggie Sullivan mystery, I wanted to make sure when World War II blackouts went into effect in the United States, especially in Dayton, Ohio, where the series takes place. After all, private eyes wouldn’t be private eyes if...

Women Clash on Eve of WW2

In the two years before the Pearl Harbor attack, Americans were divided over whether the country should get involved in the war against Hitler. Nowhere was this split more evident than among American women. In 1940 and ’41, when politics was still largely a man’s...