By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The Kopp Sisters of New Jersey did many marvelous things during their lives in the early half of the 20th century.
And even after they were gone, they helped author Amy Stewart find her way to writing fiction.
“I tend to read more fiction for pleasure,” Stewart said. “So I was always trying to write a novel. It had not worked out.”
Instead she made her reputation writing a half-dozen books on odd corners in the natural world that are hits with “horticultural nerds.”
Then she “stumbled” upon the Kopp Sisters, the subjects that launched a series of books that mix historical fiction and mystery.
The fifth in the series, “The Kopp Sisters on the March,” was published last month. She’s just finished writing the sixth novel, and there’s no end in sight. “Truly crazy things happened to them in the 1920s,” Stewart said.
The author will visit Bowling Green where three of her books have been community reads. The books cover the gamut of her work. They are “The Drunken Botanist,” her last non-fiction book, “Girl Waits With Gun,” the first book in the Kopp Sister series, and “Wicked Bugs,” a nature book for kids.
Stewart will speak at the Wood County District Public Library, 251 N. Main St., Bowling Green, on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. in the atrium. The event is free but ticketed. Tickets are available online at https://www.wcdpl.org/Meet-Amy-Stewart or from the library.
Stewart said if someone had asked her when she was 5 what she wanted to be, writer would have been the answer, said Stewart during a telephone interview conducted while she’s walking down a street in New York City.
She still aspired to be a writer when she headed to college but “I had no idea how I’d make a living as a writer. I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
So being “practical” she ended up with a degree in anthropology. “That’s what happens when you entrust 18 years old with their future,” she said.
“I didn’t know what to write about in my 20s.”
Stewart did social service work, and ended up studying urban planning. “So I made sure poor people had a place to live. That was important.”
She planted a garden at her home in Santa Cruz, California. That was something to write about.
From that garden sprouted her first non-fiction book “From the Ground Up.” From a chapter in that book, on earthworms came her second book, “The Earth Moved.” Then a trip to a flower market led to “Floral Confidential,” an exploration of the international cut flower trade.
“Each book led to the next,” she said. “if I could persuade my publisher it was interesting, then I wrote a book about it.”
Her latest “The Drunken Botanist” explores all the plants that go into alcoholic beverages. “Everything and every bottle in the liquor store is a plant.”
Then she discovered the Kopp Sisters by accident. She’d tried her hand at fiction with one novella “The Last Bookstore in America” published, and a few manuscripts languishing in drawers.
But the sisters had a story begging to be told. Constance Kopp, the eldest sister, was the first female deputy sheriff in the country. Unlike other women who worked in law enforcement at the time, who acted as social workers, Kopp “had a gun and a badge and arrest authority. She could chase a crook down on the streets and put handcuffs on them. … She went on to an amazing career in law enforcement.”
All this was a revelation to Stewart, and it was just the start. This takes place in the context of having three adult women living on their own in rural New Jersey. Each a colorful character in her own right.
“As I was researching I felt a little bit obligated,” Stewart said. She told herself: “Anyone could have found it. I found them. I don’t want to put this story back in the box.”
As she kept digging through news clips she came to realize how big the story was as it sprawled into the 1920s.
She found a publisher interested a series that was historical fiction with a bit of crime and a bit of women’s history.
The people and stories are true, though Stewart said, she’s had to add some dialogue and every day details to fill in for gaps in the record.
In “Miss Kopp’s’ Midnight Confession,” she “mushed” two cases together to shape them into a novel. “Real life never works well thematically.”
Stewart has just finished the sixth book and is heading into the 1920s. She told her editor they can spend as much time in that period as they want.
The story is being developed as a television series, she said.
All this has meant setting aside her non-fiction work.
“It’s hard for me to think beyond it,” she said of the Kopp Sisters series. “It’s so all consuming. Not just them, but all the side characters. … I had to be really immersed in World War I, especially women’s roles. You get sucked into World War I and you never come out. It was so interesting, this moment between new technology and old. America was not yet a superpower just a scrappy nation on the other side of the Atlantic.”She’s hoping to keep telling the Kopp stories, at an unforgiving pace of one book a year. She’s not sure how long the series will last.
“Honestly it depends. If people keep reading them, I get to keep writing them,” Stewart said. “That’s how the math works on that one.”
