When Tasha Alexander was a young girl, she filled her days imagining what life would be like if she lived during another time as the queen of England or churning butter as a pioneer.

Turns out, her daydreaming wasn’t a waste, after all. Alexander, a Lincoln Park resident, has turned her imaginary travels into a reality, and now she spends her life exploring the world—researching places and history for her series of historical suspense novels.

“You just can’t capture a place without having gone there,” Alexander said. “It’s almost impossible to accomplish the right atmosphere otherwise.”

Alexander’s novels follow the adventures of a young Victorian widow, Emily Ashton.

Her newest book, “Tears of Pearl,” is the fourth in the series and was released Sept. 1. It is set in Constantinople during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire.

The story follows newlyweds Ashton and Colin Hargreaves who visit Constantinople for their honeymoon. On their first night in the city, they discover a girl murdered in the courtyard of the sultan’s palace and the story unfolds from there.

Alexander will visit the Oak Brook area to sign copies of “Tears of Pearl” at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12 at Barnes & Noble, 297 Oak Brook Center.

For each book, Alexander intensely researches the location and history to help her provide authentic details for the reader. For research on “Tears of Pearl,” she visited Istanbul, formerly Constantinople.
When Alexander writes, she starts by studying the setting where the story will take place.

“When you do that type of research, things start intriguing you, and you get a sense of where the story could go,” she said.

She attributed her love of reading as the motivating force behind becoming a writer.

“I think if you really love to read, it’s easy to decide that you want to write,” she said. “I always wanted to write as a small girl, but then life gets in the way.”

After Alexander graduated from the University of Notre Dame, she worked a series of different jobs and did not pursue writing.

“I kept saying I wanted to be a writer, but I never actually wrote anything, so I either needed to write something or stop saying that,” she said.

The first book in her series, “And Only to Deceive,” was published in 2005 and featured the narrator Emily Ashton. Alexander continues to write novels with her as the central character.

She recently returned from Normandy, France where she conducted research for six weeks for the next book in her series.

Alexander’s mother, Stacie Gutting, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame, said her daughter was very creative as a child, often performing shows and dressing up in costumes.

“If she weren’t a novelist, she would be an actress,” Gutting said.
As a child, Alexander even drew wardrobes for fictional characters who were often from distinct periods in time, Gutting said.

“She sketched an entire wardrobe collection for Cinderella,” she said.

Gutting said her daughter’s vivid imagination once involved the whole family when Alexander asked them to live like pioneers for a day, which included chores such as making their own bread and butter without modern amenities.

“Her father put his foot down at one point,” Gutting said. “He wouldn’t have the air conditioning off while the bread was baking. It was too hot.”

By Katie Leimkuehler
Triblocal.com community manager
 

Photo submitted by Carrie Schechter