Researching Beguiled: How Miriam's World Came to Life
by Karma Kitaj | Blogging | Jul 24, 2026
A street in Boston's Old West End, c. 1910 — the neighborhood where Miriam grew up.
Writing historical fiction means becoming a detective. You can't interview your characters — they lived a hundred years ago. You have to find them in archives, in photographs, in the words others wrote about them, in the neighborhoods they walked through. That process of discovery was one of the great joys of writing Beguiled.
My Mother's Life — and the Life She Didn't Live
Miriam was prompted by what little I knew of my own mother's life. My mother grew up in Baltimore and Cleveland, but since I lived in the Boston area, I decided to use a local community as Miriam's home so I could visit and get a real sense of it from friends who had grown up there. My mother was born in 1912, so I made Miriam born in 1900 — close enough that I could know her age at any given moment in the story.
The early 1900s in large American cities were a mystery to me. I loved the idea that my grandfather had taken my mother to the theater from a young age — even to vaudeville, which had a reputation for being off-limits for little girls of the time. But vaudeville was largely a family affair back then. No stripping, no offensive language. I discovered a wonderful book of photographs of Boston vaudeville theaters that brought that world vividly to life.
Walking the Old West End
Some of my friends had grown up in the gritty old West End of Boston — or their parents had. They took me on tours and shared their remembrances of a neighborhood that became famous among city planners for having been demolished for high-rise redevelopment, obliterating a vibrant immigrant enclave. My first husband had been an architect for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, so I was already exposed to the fallout from that demolition.
At the West End House and Museum in Boston — where Duane Lucia had been the director — I found huge, wall-sized photographs of the streets that Miriam had "walked" as a child. Standing in front of those images, I could see her world.
Frank Shay's Blue Door
Miriam and her friend Minerva traveled to Provincetown as young women to visit their new friend Frank Shay, who ran a noted Greenwich Village bookshop. There they met many famous people and were gaga about it, of course.
Frank Shay's bookshop had a blue door that was eventually acquired by the Harry Ransom Library at the University of Texas at Austin. I was in touch with their archives to learn more about the life of Frank Shay — one of those wonderful research rabbit holes that leads you somewhere unexpected.
Romany Marie, Queen of Greenwich Village
One of the most colorful figures Miriam encounters is Romany Marie Marchand, who ran a legendary café-salon in Greenwich Village for decades. She was a Romanian Jewish immigrant herself — a natural connection to Miriam's world — and her café attracted Buckminster Fuller, John Sloan, and countless other artists, writers, and thinkers of the era.
I have a biography of Romany Marie written by her nephew, which gave me an intimate, personal view of this remarkable woman. She was one of the "influencers" of her period — someone who gathered the creative class around her and made things happen.
The Workmen's Circle and Secular Jewish Life
Miriam's family was secular, non-observant — cultural Jews who were into education and culture, though her parents were uneducated working-class people. I had to learn about secular Jewish immigrant history to write about them realistically. The Workmen's Circle, an educational association for immigrant secular Jews, was part of that world — my own grandfather was a member.
Learning the Theater World
Miriam's entry into theater led me to learn about a world I knew almost nothing about. I met a theater teacher from Smith College — where a theater is named after Hallie Flanagan, who once taught there — and he was instrumental in teaching me about theater training and how difficult it is to enter that world. That knowledge gave Miriam's ambitions their proper weight.
All of this research — the West End, vaudeville, Frank Shay, Romany Marie, the Workmen's Circle, the theater world — took years. And I was fascinated every step of the way. I could have gone on writing historical novels indefinitely, had not my passion for making visual art eventually taken over.
But that's a story for another post.
The Greenwich Village bohemian scene that Miriam entered as a young woman.