Sharan Newman got a Ph.D. in medieval studies and has written 10 historically accurate mystery novels set in 12th-century France. She likes to keep the facts straight in her fiction and wrote two books, "The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code" and "The Real History Behind the Templars," to help clean up the mess Dan Brown made.
Newman reads five languages and knows the Middle Ages backward and forward, but the Washington High School graduate didn't know much about the history of her hometown until recently.
"I grew up here, and what I knew was Lewis and Clark, Narcissa Whitman, Woody Guthrie, Bonneville Dam -- the usual stuff," Newman said. "I didn't know anything about the (Chinese) Exclusion Act. . . . We don't know what happened in our own backyards."
Newman's interest in local history was piqued when she read an article in The Oregonian about Chinese burials not being recorded at the Lone Fir cemetery.
"Then I took the tunnel tour," she said, smiling at the memory of going under Old Town on a walking tour of the Portland Underground. "There were some urban legends, but the tunnels are authentic and there were tunnels in Seattle and Pendleton, too."
Newman started doing research at the city of Portland archives, the Oregon Historical Society and the special collections at Reed College. She found a gold mine at Reed: the diaries and papers of Thomas Lamb Eliot and his wife, Henrietta; the autobiography of Ned Chambreau, a scout for Gen. O.O. Howard; records of the college's founder, Simeon Reed.
Why go to France to research historical fiction when it's a short drive from Newman's Aloha home?
"The primary sources are right here," she said. "It really hasn't been used all that much for fiction."
Newman's aiming to change that. "The Shanghai Tunnel" (Forge, $24.95, 334 pages) is the first in a planned mystery series set in 19th-century Portland. It takes place in February and March of 1868, a time when the city was enjoying a post-Civil War boom and the first brick buildings were going up. People were coming from the East Coast to make their fortunes in the 33rd state and finding a place where frontier culture was hanging on and prejudice against Chinese immigrants was common.
"Harvey Scott (the editor of The Oregonian) did his best to fan that," Newman said. Newman said one thing she's learned about researching Portland history is there's a lot of documents and photographs floating around.
"There's so much material that's not in the archives, and I'm hoping people come forward," she said.
Source: Oregonian - Jeff Baker: 503-221-8165; [email protected]