Dad singing his heart out in the 1930s.

Dad was still performing when he met my mother in the Catskills. Only the responsibility of marriage and family could make him take a hiatus from acting in exchange for more predictable employment. Still, my childhood memories are filled with him accompanying himself (and me) on the piano while singing standards from both the 20th-century-popular-music songbook and Broadway.

This explains why I’m a bit of a Broadway geek. It also explains why I loved Kristina Riggle’s newest book, Vivian in Red (Polis Books).

Vivian tells the story of octogenarian Milo Short, a Broadway producer and famous lyricist who, on his way to the office one day, encounters a woman he hasn’t seen in over sixty years. As if that weren’t impossible enough, Vivian is as young and beautiful as she was when he last saw her in the 1930s. The sight shocks Milo into a stroke, leaving him unable to communicate the flurry of thoughts that now race through his still-active mind. Vivian, you see, has arrived on a mission, and Milo suspects he knows what it is. It will take his granddaughter, Eleanor, to dig through his theatrical past to uncover the truth that can potentially set him free.

Of course, the theater part of this novel is a lot of fun. Ms. Riggle brings not only the research skills of the journalist she is, but a love of the stage fueled by her own past experiences in community theater productions. The reader follows Milo’s career from song-plugger on Tin Pan Alley through Broadway lyricist to successful producer. We are flies on the wall for the mounting of a 1930s musical (Ms. Riggle’s lyrics for Milo’s songs fit perfectly into the era), and once we sweat through the production/rehearsal process, we’re invited to opening night. We even get to mingle with celebrities like Cole Porter, Jimmy McHugh, and Dorothy Fields. But you don’t need an interest in theater or history to enjoy Vivian in Red. This is Ms. Riggle’s sixth novel, and she brings to it the same understanding of human frailty and strength that infuses all her work.  If you’ve ever had a dream or a relationship, you’ll recognize Vivian‘s  heart. You might even find yourself in the mix as well.

Milo’s rise from a poor Jewish family to Broadway success echoes the trajectory of a long list of great early-20th-century lyricists and composers (Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, and Yip Harburg to name but a few). My father’s story resonates against this; with so many Jews succeeding in show business, why wouldn’t theatrical success seem within the reach of both a young Jewish boy from Brooklyn and his immigrant mother? It was their version of the American Dream, and my father never quite left it behind.

Dad was back onstage before I left my teens, performing in Annapolis, Washington, and Baltimore. He did print ads and commercials, appeared in movies and on TV. He performed his last role between rounds of chemo; as far as he was concerned, missing a show was not an option.

Even now, over a decade past my father’s last performance, people still tell me how much they enjoyed watching him onstage. I remember the stories he told with the comic timing of a master. Sure, maybe we’d heard some of those stories before, but who cared? With Dad, there was always the chance for something more entertaining than mere conversation.

Milo Short reminds me of him, and I am grateful for the visit.

I’ve been thinking about my love affair with historical fiction. It goes way back to my childhood, when burying myself in the pages of a book meant a trip to other times and places.

Books were better than movies for me. A book provided the set, characters, and plot but allowed my imagination to fill in some details. My very favorite books inspired me to write my own version of fan fiction before fan fiction was cool. Some authors might have been surprised to learn that a character they’d never created had hijacked their plot and now starred in a whole new version of the storyline.

My preferred historical “vacations” changed as I got older. My favorite era in middle school was colonial America, which made sense since I grew up in 18th century Annapolis. But then I started sliding backward. I slipped through the Jacobite risings in the Scottish Highlands, down past Charles II and the English Restoration, and straight into Tudor England.

By the time I hit college, I was a history major with an emphasis in medieval studies. But after I’d written a few novels, I changed course again and found myself drawn to the late 19th century, an era that had never enticed me before. From there it’s been a continued upward drift. Newport takes place in 1921; the novel I’m currently working on is set in the early 1930s.

It’s even more fun to write historical fiction than it was to read it. Once again, I get to immerse myself in a time period different from the one I inhabit on a daily basis. I get the opportunity to research random events and inconsequential details to my heart’s content. And this time my characters aren’t photo-bombing somebody else’s story. The setting and plot details are my own.

I worry that despite all of my best efforts to accurately re-create the texture of an era, some pesky anachronisms might creep in. But even with that pressure, I believe that authors of contemporary fiction have a much tougher time telling their stories than I do. Why? Because technical advances have made it difficult to build tension in any story set in modern day.

I offer the following examples:

Your protagonist, an amateur sleuth with a nose for solving crime, has a hunch the popular new guy in town isn’t on the up-and-up. But how to prove it? (Well, what do you think Google is for?)

The gorgeous woman who just introduced herself to the protagonist stirs faint memories; he knows he knows her, and he knows she knows he knows her. But, how? (Check Facebook first. If that fails, back to Google.)

The protagonist has information that could change the course of humanity. He must find a way to share this information immediately! (All right, then. Let’s just try a few cell phone numbers, because just about everybody is accessible all of the time these days.)

So, it’s pretty clear I lack the imagination to write a contemporary novel at the moment. We’re all better off if I stick with historical fiction.

And that’s just fine with me.