Acknowledgments and Historical Notes

A CITY’S RICHNESS LIES IN ITS NEIGHBORHOODS. THEY HAVE their own history and traditions, their own architecture and identity. They evolve, adapt, stumble, and recover, and getting to know them was one of the joys of living in Seattle as a college student and young lawyer, and remains one of the joys of visiting—in real life and on the page.

My Gold Rush Hotel is fictional, built on what was, when I last saw it, a parking lot in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. I first started thinking about sending Pepper to the CID after visiting the Wing Luke Museum, located in the historic Kong Yick Building, in 2016. In creating the Gold Rush, I also borrowed from stories of the Panama Hotel and Hotel Louisa in Seattle, and the fascinating history recounted in Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels, by Marie Rose Wong, PhD.

The Wing Luke Museum, named for Seattle’s first Asian city councilor, is a treasure trove in the heart of the CID. It also maintains a permanent exhibit devoted to Bruce Lee, the martial artist, actor, and philosopher who lived in Seattle from 1959 to 1964. Bruce and his son Brandon are buried in Lakeview Cemetery on Capitol Hill. But while Bruce Lee remains a powerful presence in the CID and throughout Seattle, rumors that he haunts the place are entirely my invention, just for fun.

Although Uwajimaya and the Tai Tung restaurant are real, all other businesses in my version of the CID are fictional.

I first discovered the purple prism skylights of Pioneer Square and the doors and windows partially buried by the regrades as a wide-eyed college freshman. I picked up a few facts about the regrades and their effect on the streets, alleys, and buildings of Pioneer Square and the CID from Seattle Walks: Discovering History and Nature in the City by David B. Williams. More history came from a brochure promoting the reclaimed Nord, Maynard, and Canton Alleys, published by 4Culture, the cultural funding agency for King County. Building Tradition by Marie Wong, mentioned previously, is a fascinating account not just of the residential hotels in the CID but of the history of the community. Property ownership in the CID, as in Chinatowns and other Asian communities around the country, was complicated by the Chinese Exclusion Act and other laws designed to limit the ability of Chinese and Japanese immigrants to own property. As a result, some buildings, like the Kong Yick, were owned by corporations; by buying shares, individual investors acquired merchant status, easing the restrictions they faced. I have ignored all that by assuming Dr. Chen and old Mr. Wu were American citizens, at least on paper.

Two books provided helpful personal accounts, photographs, and historical research: Divided Destiny: A History of Japanese Americans in Seattle by David Takami, and Reflections of Seattle’s Chinese Americans: The First 100 Years by Ron Chew and Cassie Chin. I pored over photos and stories on the websites for the Kam Wah Chung Chinese Heritage Site in John Day, Oregon, and the Mai Wah Society and World Museum of Mining, both in Butte, Montana. Although it covers a slightly different time period and region, I got lost in the pages of the memoir Long Way Home: Journeys of a Chinese Montanan by Flora Wong and Tom Decker.

I am grateful to our friend Gloria Wong, Flora’s daughter, and Gloria’s husband, David Snyder, for reading the manuscript and commenting. Thanks to Gloria and our friend John Webster for lending me their names.

The story of Dr. Henry Locke’s training is based on the experience of my husband, Dr. Don Beans, who studied in the early 1980s with a Chinese Canadian doctor who preferred to teach a white American man rather than train his own daughter. Fortunately for me, in this case, the student did not marry the teacher’s daughter! Although Washington, like several other states, has changed its laws to refer to “Acupuncture and Eastern Medicine,” I have used the terms I think my characters would use. My thanks to Tamara Venit-Shelton, PhD, professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and the author of Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, for answering my questions about the practice of Chinese medicine in Washington State in the 1930s.

A note on the name Chinatown-International District or CID: That’s the present-day name, used by both the city and residents, although the name and boundaries have evolved over time. In general, it encompasses areas once known as Chinatown, Japan-town, and Koreatown. Little Manila came later, and more recently, Little Saigon.

Of course, mistakes are inevitable, and they are my own.

As always, I ask you to forgive me if the city on the page does not match the city of your memory or experience. Cities change, and I have occasionally renamed or relocated a business to better suit the story. At this writing, the permanent relocation of the totem poles in Victor Steinbrueck Park and the proposal for a new transit substation in the CID are still under discussion.

The heart of the cozy is the community. I hope this story demonstrates the importance of communities like Chinatowns and International Districts, still vibrant and resilient, and still vulnerable. In many cities, as in Seattle, these neighborhoods were among those hardest hit by the pandemic, racist attacks, and other public safety issues. If there’s one near you, or you have the chance to visit in your travels, please show your love. And by love, you know I mean “eat.”

At the 2022 Malice Domestic convention celebrating the traditional mystery, reader Sandy Lynn Sechrest made an incredibly generous donation to the children’s literacy programs run by KEEN Greater DC-Baltimore, for the right to name a character in this book. She’s from Wisconsin, so naturally we decided she would run a cheese shop in the Market, and to spotlight one of her favorites and mine, smoked cheddar. If we’ve addicted you to the stuff, our work is done.

As always, I am inspired by everything I eat, the offerings from spice shops I’ve visited, especially World Spice Merchants in Seattle, and my creative sisters at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, the blog where mystery writers cook up crime and recipes.

It takes a village to make a writing career. Thanks to Debbie Burke for another terrific read and critique, and to Dan and Zhamal Harvey for many years of conversations about life in the fishing business. Marlys Anderson-Hisaw and her crew at Roma’s Gourmet Kitchen Shop in Bigfork, Montana have supported me since my first mystery was published, hand-selling books like crazy. Amanda Bevill and the World Spice staff have been my dream partners. Kit Dieffenbach spent an hour sipping tea on a friend’s front porch, recalling his years selling his jewelry in the Market, and later, showed me some of his favorite haunts. Dan Mayer, Ashley Calvano, and the other book lovers at Seventh Street Books have helped bring the Spice Shop books to life and put them in the hands of readers. Jo Piraneo of Glass Slipper Design keeps my website looking spiffy and designs my bookmarks. Pepper has her BFF and I have mine, Lita Artis, who listens, ground truths, and even tests recipes.

Special thanks to my husband, Dr. Don Beans, for his vast knowledge and experience of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and all the late nights watching Bruce Lee movies.