Fire at the Stymie Club-Stories from the Mississippi to Chesapeake Country

Fire at the Stymie Club is a retrospective collection of storiesset mainly in St. Louis, in Springfield, Illinois and in Maryland,along the Chesapeake Bay's western shore, where author Sandra OlivettiMartin was co-founder and publisher of a widely read newspaper, BayWeekly. The book includes versions of her prize-winning stories forthat paper.. The title of the books stems from Sandra's girlhood, in St. Louis above a restaurant and supper club operatedby her father, a charming bookmaker, and her mother, the glamorousdaughter of Italian immigrants. Her family's Stymie Club offers anenticing setting for the book's first story with its extralegal doingsand the perfumy sensuality of female clientele and waitresses lookingout for precocious little Sandra.The book also includes features andcolumns written for the flourishing sister independent, Illinois Times, Springfield, Illinois, and reflecting the ethos of acapital deeply connected to Abraham Lincoln in an era when women'srights and freedoms took center stage in lawmaking.Journalism continues with memoirs of her life and family into the 19th century.Other memoirs are personal essays of deeper intimacy.