The Threads of Destiny

 

When I was sixteen years old and had just received my driver’s license, I drove my brother and myself to the Warren Public Library, where we browsed the Local Authors shelf and discovered Earl Derr Biggers, creator of Charlie Chan. Never did I think — as we stood in that dark corner and pulled old, well-worn hardback books off the shelf — that I would end up writing a book about the author whose works I held in my hand.

But destiny, if we want to call it that, is woven of many threads, and finding those books in the public library was the first thread.

Had that been the only time I encountered the novels of Earl Derr Biggers, I’m sure I wouldn’t have written a book on his life. Destiny does not dangle by a single thread.

But in the 1970s, when my husband and I were both letter carriers for the US Post Office, during a very cold and very snowy (90 inches) winter, we won a trip to Hawaii. Which, I assure you, we took immediately: January 3, if I recall. And there, greeting us as we stepped off our plane, was a book rack. And on that rack were paperback editions of the Charlie Chan novels. So of course I bought one and read it. After we returned home I bought the other five and read them, too. Thread number two.

Twenty years later I was searching for topics to write magazine articles on. Being from Ohio, and having read the Chan novels twice, I came up with the idea of writing about Earl Derr Biggers who, although he was a world-known author of the Golden Age of mystery, was a name most people don’t recognize today. I wrote a 4,700-word article that was published in Timeline, the magazine of the Ohio Historical Society. And then I wrote a 1,000-word article that was published in Harvard Magazine. (Biggers was a Harvard graduate.) Thread number three.

 

Around about then (1999) I began to wonder if I should write a book on Earl Derr Biggers. I decided not to, for two main reasons: (1) Because Biggers left very little behind in terms of letters, papers, and manuscripts, it would not be a very large book — and trade publishers like large books; (2) I was not keen on the thought of writing a manuscript and then marketing it to various publishers who probably wouldn’t accept it for publication, Biggers being relatively unremembered.

But in 2010 I began to experiment with self-publishing some of my manuscripts. I’ve been very pleased with the process and the results. There you have thread number four.

After 2010 I knew that sooner or later I would get around to writing a book on Earl Derr Biggers. When, though — that was the question.

Little did I know that the answer would bring me full circle. In 2017 the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library (the new one, not the old one I visited in my teens) invited me to speak on Earl Derr Biggers on March 3, 2018. Thread number five!

I wasn’t about to give a speech without having a book to sell after the speech. And so, at long last, I braided the threads together and published my book, which is titled Charlie Chan’s Poppa: Earl Derr Biggers. You can look inside the book by clicking here.

 

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Earl Derr Biggers deserves to be remembered, and Barbara Gregorich is glad she can contribute to people learning about him.