All Men Glad and Wise: A Mystery

2022 IPNE (Independent Publishers of New England) Award Finalist, Genre Fiction

The steward of Willingford Hall was murdered in the Dell on 12 March 1919. I found his body because I’d been thrown by a horse. It’s difficult to say which event was more unlikely.

Willingford Hall stable lad Harry Green is about to make a discovery even more unlikely than a corpse.

With the estate near bankruptcy and the rise of automobiles fast replacing horse travel, Harry, a young woman passing as a lad, will soon be out of a job. Facing the knowledge she has no skills in the service positions open to women, Harry resolves to discover who murdered the steward, thus becoming a woman who can determine her own future. But as her investigation proceeds, a second murder demonstrates just how dangerous her knowledge is. Soon, no matter where she rides, she finds that somebody is following her.

Part coming-of-age and part cozy mystery, All Men Glad and Wise confronts a time of tremendous social change: the inequities of service jobs, the quandaries of grooms as technology advances, and the patriarchal assumptions that exclude women from valued work and riding astride. Harry, like horsemanship-and like England-is on the cusp of a world looking forward.