This is my very first published piece and I’m sooo thrilled. It’s called Lady’s Night and is the first romance offering in the Fight-Card Series.
Click-through picture of Lady’s Night
Chicago in the early part of the century was a mix of races, religions and mob affiliations. In the midst of this chaos is a safe harbor for orphaned boys called St. Vincent’s Asylum. It’s run by an ex-boxer turned priest, Father Tim Brody, “The Fighting Priest,” who teaches these young unfortunately boys the finer points of “The Sweet Science.”
The Sweet Science coined by Pierce Egan, a British journalist and sportswriter in the early 1800’s, wrote volumes about what he entitled, “Boxiana.” What it featured was a series of articles known as the “Sweet Science of Bruising.” He had some lovely illustrations so I guess that’s what made the books such a hit.
Father Tim becomes both father and mother to some of these orphaned youngsters through the Great Depression to the Great War to the Korean War and beyond. Father Tim is timeless, his influence unlimited reaching across years and the globe.
The amount of research to create a book like Lady’s Night is phenomenal. I spent hours and hours researching sites for information about fight-card bouts in the 1950’s. One was especially helpful, the information timely coming from someone who actually lived through this time. Randy De La O has a extremely visual site that sparked my interest as well as my growing obsession with everything fight-card. Pictures and video enhance his site making it a research treasure.
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