Words
The sneaky secret about Prohibition was the era was less about rotgut brewed in bathtubs than fine liquors and blends distilled in Canada and Europe, ferried by night by pirates and the like.
When a Western Washington University student answers an ad to work for an older woman in her garden, Jean Bowen is hardly aware she is stepping on to a path of peril and intrigue. Set in Bellingham in the 1970s, the pair retrace the life of the elder Alexandra through her eyes, a young woman when she found herself trapped on a rum runner’s cutter in the San Juan Islands five decades earlier. There Alex fell in love with the bootlegging captain, Jake McKenzie, and learned the deep, silent, sometimes ominous lessons of these wild days and evasive nights running whiskey and Chinese opiates. But when Alex at last caught the fancy of Antonio, the head of the Italian Mafia intent on taking over Jake’s Northwest Territory, her thrill turned to danger.
Denise Frisino’s debut novel moves easily between the Prohibition era and the 1970s, arriving full circle as each woman comes of age as they explore mysteries past and present.
Writing in a visual and cinematic style comes as second nature to Frisino, who spent her summers playing and working in the islands that define the Pacific Northwest, shown the craft of writing by her father, journalist and editor Joseph Frisino. At age five, Denise took to the stage and has been involved in theatre and the film industry in Seattle and Los Angeles as an actress, writer, playwright, and producer, winning awards for her writing and acting. She and her husband spend time at Hood Canal and reside in Seattle.
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