Fire at the Stymie Club is a retrospective collection of stories
set mainly in St. Louis, in Springfield, Illinois and in Maryland,
along the Chesapeake Bay's western shore, where author Sandra Olivetti
Martin was co-founder and publisher of a widely read newspaper, Bay
Weekly. The book includes versions of her prize-winning stories for
that paper..
The title of the books stems from Sandra's girlhood, in St. Louis
above a restaurant and supper club operated
by her father, a charming bookmaker, and her mother, the glamorous
daughter of Italian immigrants. Her family's Stymie Club offers an
enticing setting for the book's first story with its extralegal doings
and the perfumy sensuality of female clientele and waitresses looking
out for precocious little Sandra.
The book also includes features and
columns written for the flourishing sister independent,
Illinois Times, Springfield, Illinois, and reflecting the ethos of a
capital deeply connected to Abraham Lincoln in an era when women's
rights and freedoms took center stage in lawmaking.
Journalism continues with memoirs of her life and family into the 19th century.
Other memoirs are personal essays of deeper intimacy.
