Letters to Room Five

About the Book

In the Summer of 1995, the author stayed for a few days at the famed Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts.  The old dresser in the room contained several paper bags full of letters which other guest had left; the bags were labeled "The Secret Drawer Society of Room #5."  There must be a story there, I thought.  Months later, the story came to me, the story of a man who, given up for adoption as a baby forty years ago, discovers his true parents' identity in a packet of hidden letter in Room #5 of the Wayside Inn  The letters, in the story, also tell of his mother's long search for the tiny baby she gave up for adoption when he was born out of wedlock.  Each finds the other in her/his own way in the novel "Letter To Room Five," which is fictional but in many ways true.

OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Blue Lake Series:  Fiction

The Blue Lake Series consists at present of five novels, all with Native American themes.  The overall period covered in 1780 through 1999.  Basically, the novels tell the story of a huge fortune which has descended only in the female line since its founding by Blue Lake ca. 1820.  Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility" tell of inheritance only in the line of the oldest male heir; Blue Lake's fortune has descended only through the most able female of each generation.  The six novels may be described as follows:  

(1) "Stolen Empire." (1780-1820).  This is about an Iroquois Indian woman who, born in a longhouse in 1760, fights in vain against acquisition of tribal land by the United States and by New York State.  Defeated, in 1795 she leaves her white missionary husband, Nathaniel Winter, and goes to live in the far West.  In 1829 she returns to reunite her wealth with her husband's and to live in state with him in his mansion on lower Fifth Avenue, New York City.  It is their combined wealth which after six generations in the female line was inherited by Alison Lake, the billionaire in the fiction book #3.

(2) "Jennie Shenandoah."  (1900-1927).  Over a hundred years after the events of "Stolen Empire," but in the same geographical setting (Madison County, New York) another Iroquois Indian woman battles in court for return of a remaining part of the reservation land whose illegal taking was described in "Stolen Empire."  This is her story, a fictional account of three actual court cases, the last of which was decided in 1927.  Jennie, not a lawyer, takes on the New York State's attorneys, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Klu Klux Klan.  Jennie loses in the court battle but in so doing wins control over her own life.

(3) "As the River Increases."  (1995).  As the story opens, someone wants to kill Alison Lake and she is so depressed she doesn't much care.  Owning a billion dollars worth of Manhattan real estate has not made her happy.  But, with the help of Jim Shannon (part Oneida Indian) and Mary Beth Marsh (all Mohawk Indian) Alison foils the killer, solves her husband's murder, and finds a way to perpetuate Blue Lake's fortune for still another generation in the female line.

About the Author

The author, a lawyer, always wanted to write fiction. After years of practicing tax and corporate law he started to write. Six books later, he wrote "Letters To Room Five." The author was born in Syracuse, New York, and there attended a public elementary school and a parochial high school before enrolling at Syracuse University and Syracuse Law College. He now resides in Cazenovia, New York (near Syracuse) and spends part of his time in Santa Barbara, California.