GRAVES GATE HISTORICAL OVERVIEW By 1922, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, once one of the most respected intellects and patriots in England, was in serious trouble. He had become a public laughingstock. It happened like this. Deaths of several loved ones, including his son Kingsley, had led Sir Arthur to investigate Spiritualism as a means of alleviating his suffering. Along that path, he was duped into a wholehearted acceptance of the idea of ghosts and communication with the dead. In 1921, he was successfully hoaxed by two young girls who purported to have taken photographs of a band of fairies--yes, little winged people a few inches high. Conan Doyle had published this story in The Strand and then published a book titled The Coming of the Fairies, complete with the fraudulent photographs. Sir Arthur had also championed several unpopular causes, including the release of an "innocent" prison inmate who turned out to be guilty, after all. In a short time, he had alienated many of his best friends and supporters, including Harry Houdini, whom Conan Doyle had publicly accused of being a secret medium. Graves Gate takes place in the midst of this turmoil less than five years after World War I. That war, then called The Great War, was the most devastating the world had ever known, and it changed England forever. The class system began to break down. Women began to demand some rights--some of them got the right to vote. Many women of the middle and upper classes had served in the war as nurses and ambulance drivers. They had suffered along with men, and they wanted more equal status after the war. They wanted real control over their private lives as well. Adrianna is fashioned on this new generation of educated, worldly-wise women. It was also a time when many Americans who had traveled to Europe during the war began to expatriate to England and France. Many, like Ernest Hemingway, had found a curious sense of adventure in the war. Some saw opportunity there. The economics of Europe had shifted dramatically. Punitive economic measures against Germany and unsettled territorial questions made post-war Europe at once exciting and dangerous. Charles represents this breed of war-hardened young opportunists, trying to carve out a niche for themselves in a changing Europe. Read an excerpt. Buy the hardback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or from an independent bookseller. Buy the trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or from an independent bookseller.