Blending Fact With Fiction

The Silver Shadow by Liz Tolsma is a marvellous Christian historical novel and part of the True Colors series.

It is a fascinating novel set in Denver in 1900 and based on true crimes. Fact blends with fiction to produce a cracking tale.

We witness the plight of women. They were seen as the weaker sex who need to stay protected in the home. It was deemed unsafe for them to walk the streets after dark. Women may have received the vote but were still viewed as unworthy by some. There were some plucky women who were determined not to be put down by chauvinistic attitudes and who actively sought out the perpetrator of the crimes against women.

Women were prejudiced against in the workplace. The leading lady longs to be a serious journalist but is given the frivolous social events of females to cover. Her writing skills are not taken seriously by either her employer nor her father.

The characters were well drawn and realistic. The women with their caring attitudes, looked out for each other.

Trusting God was important. He will never let us down. His plans for our lives can be trusted. When events spiral out of control, we can call out to God who will rescue us. We can cry out to Him with our hearts when our lips have no words.

The Silver Shadow was a fabulous read. It is also quite as a scary read as you realise similar crimes against women actually happened in 1900.

This True Colors crime series is fantastic. I am loving all the books in it.

I received a free copy of the book from Barbour Publishing at Net Galley for a blog tour with Celebrate Lit. All my opinions are my own.

JULIA WILSON

About the Book

Book: The Silver Shadow

Author: Liz Tolsma

Genre: Christian Historical/Suspense

Release date: May 2021

A Shadowy Figure Is Intent on Harming Denver’s Women

Book 11 in the True Colors series—Fiction Based on Strange-But True History

Denver of 1900 is still a dangerous place to be following the silver crash of 1893. And of out of the dark comes a shadow intent on harming women. Ambitious young Denver newspaper reporter Polly Blythe is searching for the big story that’s going to launch her career. On Friday evening, August 24, 1900, she gets her break when two women are cracked over the head within a two-minute walk of each other. But policeman Edwin Timmer thwarts Polly’s ideas of a serial criminal. . .until the shadowy figure strikes again. Will the reporter and the policeman team up to find the culprit before he strikes too close for comfort?

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

Liz Tolsma is the author of several WWII novels, romantic suspense novels, prairie romance novellas, and an Amish romance. She is a popular speaker and an editor and resides next to a Wisconsin farm field with her husband and their youngest daughter. Her son is a US Marine, and her oldest daughter is a college student. Liz enjoys reading, walking, working in her large perennial garden, kayaking, and camping. Please visit her website at www.liztolsma.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter (@LizTolsma), Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. She is also the host of the Christian Historical Fiction Talk podcast.

More from Liz

One of the most popular questions I’ve gotten from many readers of the True Colors Crime series is how do I come up with the ideas for the books? For the first two, Becky Germany, acquisitions editor at Barbour Publishing, had the ideas. That made my life easy. I just had to fictionalize it, and I had a book. But when I was putting together the proposals for The Gold Digger and The Silver Shadow, it was up to me to find the true crimes I wanted to use.

I went online and scoured historical crime blogs and books for ideas. I wanted crimes that I could work easily with, that made for compelling stories. As I was doing this, my husband and two daughters and I were driving home from Georgia. We were somewhere in Indiana. Don’t ask me why I remember this when I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, but I do.

And then on Google Books, I discovered a book about crimes the world had forgotten. The first one in there sounded so good. Not too grisly, something that no one would be able to guess the culprit very easily. It was perfect. Imagine my excitement when Becky told me they would be publishing The Silver Shadow.

Then I sat down to research it more. And I could hardly find anything! What? Where was all the information on this? There had to be more. That chapter in the one book couldn’t be all there was. He had to get his information from somewhere.

Eventually I did come across some articles from various Colorado newspapers with a few details. Not many at all. None from any of the Denver papers, even though that’s where the crimes were committed.

In the end, that’s all the information I discovered. In a way, it was freeing. I could write whatever I wanted, and no one would be the wiser. Even if they did some research and some digging, there wasn’t much to find. I was able to take the facts that I did have, combine that with what I found out about Denver in 1900, and put it together in a story. I tried to use historical details wherever I could, but of my four True Colors Crimes books, this is the most fictional of them all.