Fried Chicken Castañeda

At the Castañeda Hotel you’ll find romance, gourmet dining, bootleggers, and murder!

Bored with her conventional middle-class life, Prudence Bates escapes Cleveland by heading west to qualify as a Courier for the Southwestern Indian Detours. On the California Limited she meets Jerry Begay, a charming Navajo school teacher. They feel an instant rapport, but he’s headed for Gallup, so it’s but a brief encounter. In Las Vegas, New Mexico Prudence is befriended by Castañeda Hotel Harvey Girls Martha and Anne and desk clerk Clara. They take Prudence under their wing and invite her along to dances and the local hot springs. Four days later, Martha’s brother, Tom, is found murdered. Was it because of his bootlegging activities? Or his amorous relationship with Liz Kearney, daughter of the richest man in the area and rumored mob boss? And was that really Jerry Begay whom Prudence saw meeting with Tom in secret the day before he was killed? Following in the footsteps of her favorite fictional detectives, Tommy and Tuppence, Prudence is determined to solve the murder. But one wrong step and she may end up in the sights of the bootleggers.

After 20 years as a librarian and another 20 as a professor of library science and library historian, Suzanne is moving on to her third career as a novelist. She was inspired by an exhibit on the Couriers at El Tovar at the Grand Canyon and her research in women’s history. When not writing, she can be found reading, baking, gardening, and binging t.v. westerns. She has lived and worked in Utah, Puerto Rico, Texas, Spain, New York City, and Los Angeles. She lives in Baton Rouge with her Australian husband and brown and white spotted rat terrier dogter.