by Kathleen Toomey Jabs
We are thrilled to welcome author Kathleen Toomey Jabs as our guest.
Kathleen's debut mystery is Black Wings (Fuze Publishing, December 2011 trade paperback and ebook formats), and is set in a place she knows well herself: The United States Naval Academy.
Today Kathleen tells us about that very same setting, and how it is an integral part of her mystery's storyline.
— ◊ —
This spring I visited Annapolis for the first time in nine years. My mystery novel, Black Wings, is set at the U.S. Naval Academy and in the Pentagon. I had to show my ID card just to walk through Gate 3, the side gate, leading from the town of Annapolis into the Academy — times had changed. Back when I was a midshipman at the Academy in the late 1980s, Gate 3 was open to tourists, wanderers and mids — at least during daylight hours. We used to sneak over the wall when we were past curfew or cutting it close. Half of the thrill was tasting freedom; the rest of the joy was breaking rules and getting away with it. We reveled in scraping over the brick, scrambling over stone, crouching in bushes and running through shadows only to creep up the darkest stairwell into Bancroft Hall, our dormitory. I have no idea what late mids do now or how they breach the wall. In this post 9/11 era of heightened security, scaling a wall is no light-hearted prank.
Photo provided courtesy of
Kathleen Toomey Jabs
Black Wings is purposefully set in the late 1980s and early 1990s before women were integrated into warfare specialties and before email and cell phones had proliferated. I needed the earlier time period — without the connectivity and connection we now take for granted. Back then, the walls of the Naval Academy loomed large — we midshipmen lived in deliberate, intentional isolation. Walls kept us in and out. Our lives were prescribed with an Honor Code and extensive schedules and routines, but, all of us didn't follow all of the rules and regulations. In this regard, the Naval Academy mirrors most places in life, but the stakes and expectations are higher. For some of us midshipmen, adaptation was a constant. We compromised; we made bargains; we hued out our own moral code. We had dreams, fears, mixed loyalties and tough decisions. All the material for good fiction. The setting, the people, the choices — the Academy stayed with me long after graduation. I knew I had to write about it, to explore it in all of its potential.
In Black Wings, the Naval Academy is a critical part of the setting. Bridget Donovan and her friend, Jude Duggan, sneak behind the revered chapel and make their way into the steam tunnels that crisscross and underpin the Naval Academy grounds. Bridget and her roommate, Audrey Richards, march through the halls of Bancroft, eat in the legendary dining hall and walk by the looming obstacle course on Hospital Point as they make a pact which will change both of their lives and Naval careers. Each scene at the Naval Academy is deliberately chosen, a blend of faction and fiction. I drew on time-honored rituals and made up some of my own.
To do my research for Black Wings, I returned to the Naval Academy. I traced my old running routes — past the jetties that girded the Severn River, over the wooden bridge that spanned Chauncy Creek, along the obstacle course and around the edges of Hospital Point, a field flanked by water on all sides. I had my notebook with me and I stopped and jotted down scraps of notes. I climbed a hill to the Naval Academy cemetery and listened to the caw of crows. I closed my eyes. I took in what was there and then I wrote about what wasn't. My novel was fiction, but I wanted to be accurate where possible.
As a setting, the US Naval Academy is unique. The very fact of its self-imposed isolation adds to the curiosity. Who doesn't long to know what hides under the façade of perfection? To visitors, we midshipmen are the image of discipline — marching in lock-step, rifles crooked in the corner of arms. We pivot on demand. We chant cadence. But the image of smooth perfection is a lie. We are not all the same; we roil with tension. Black Wings hinges upon a secret that starts at the Academy then goes behind the walls in search of the truth.
— ◊ —
Kathleen Toomey Jabs is a 1988 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. She served on active duty for six years and is currently a Captain in the Navy Reserve. She holds an MA from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Her stories have been published in a number of literary journals and received several prizes, including selection in the National Public Radio Selected Shorts program. She lives with her husband and two children in Virginia.
— ◊ —
Black Wings
A Mystery by Kathleen Toomey Jabs
LT Bridget Donovan suspects the worst when her former Naval Academy roommate, Audrey Richards, perishes in a botched take-off from an aircraft carrier. The Navy says it's an accident, but facts don't add up. Could it be suicide, or murder?
Donovan's unofficial investigation into what really happened, both during their past Academy days and in Richards' final hours, forces her to examine the concepts of honor, justice and the role of loyalty in pursuit of those ideals.
