So when Johnny Temple, Akashic Books’ publisher, invited me to edit an anthology of original short stories called Providence Noir as part of the Akashic Noir Series, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Not only did my love and admiration of noir fiction make his invitation so appealing, but the opportunity to highlight my hometown of Providence, Rhode Island—a noir setting if ever there was one—added to my delight and eagerness.
Providence was founded in 1636 by a rogue named Roger Williams. He escaped here when Massachusetts was ready to deport him back to England. In the almost four hundred years since, we’ve become infamous for all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors, including serving as home base for the Patriarca crime family for decades. My very own Uncle Eddie—I can hear Mama Rose screaming at me: “He wasn’t a blood relative, he was related through marriage!”—was gunned down in the Silver Lake section of town in 1964, just a year after he drove me in his white Cadillac convertible in a parade as the newly crowned Little Miss Natick. The writer Geoffrey Wolff told me that once he went to a barber in Princeton, New Jersey, and the barber asked him where he was from. “Providence,” Wolff told him. The barber put down his scissors, raised his hands in the air, and said, “Providence? Don’t shoot!”
I’ve asked fourteen of my favorite writers to contribute short stories to Providence Noir. We have stories to make you shiver, stories to make you think, stories that will show you my beautiful, noirish city in a way it’s never been highlighted before.
Elizabeth Strout, whose book Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009, takes us to Providence’s esteemed theater company, Trinity Rep. Providence native, novelist, and short story writer Hester Kaplan, winner of the 1999 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, sets her story at our local mental hospital, Butler. Alabama native Taylor Polites writes about his own neighborhood, the Armory District, so named for the hulking 1903 armory that makes up one of its borders. Novelist Amity Gaige graduated from Brown University and returns to College Hill for her story. John Searles, who is not only a best-selling novelist but also the book critic for NBC’s Today show, drops his story on Arnold Street. LaShonda Barnett sets “Waltz Me Once Again” in the Mount Hope section and features Providence’s vibrant Cape Verdean population.
Olneyville is the setting for Robert Leuci’s eponymous story. Leuci is a former New York City police detective known for exposing corruption in the department; the book and movie Prince of the City are partially based on his career. Former Providence resident, essayist, and author Marie Myung-Ok Lee places her story in and around Brown University where she used to teach. I go back in time, to the downtown Providence I knew when I was a kid and people arranged to meet under the Shepard clock. Since 1994, sculptor Barnaby Evans has been igniting Providence’s rivers with one hundred bonfires. That’s where Pablo Rodriguez, a popular radio host on Latin Public Radio and an OB-GYN, tells his murderous tale.
New York Times best-selling novelist Luanne Rice has previously used Newport, Rhode Island as a setting. But here she writes about Fox Point and its Portuguese heritage. Edgar Award–winning crime novelist Bruce DeSilva has set three novels in Providence, and his short story takes place in the Federal Hill area. Dawn Raffel is a novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, as well as a graduate of Brown University. Her story takes place in the city’s train station. Thomas Cobb’s 1987 novel Crazy Heart was adapted into the Oscar Award–winning film of the same name. His story is set on the Triggs Memorial Golf Course. And the anthology closes with a story set in the Elmhurst section, written by director, screenwriter, producer, and novelist Peter Farrelly.
What a lineup of writers to illuminate Providence’s noir side! The city’s landmarks, streets, parks, and neighborhoods come alive in their storytelling.
Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote one of my favorite noir short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” lived here ever so briefly. Back in 1848, he became enamored with a Providence woman, poet Sarah Helen Whitman. Poe said that he fell in love with her at first sight when they met in her rose garden behind her house on Benefit Street. A condition of their courtship was that Poe stop drinking. When someone handed Whitman a note telling her that Poe had broken that promise, she immediately ended the romance. Poe left Providence, and died a year later. He had written “The Tell-Tale Heart” five years earlier, but its opening lines seem appropriate for introducing the stories I’ve gathered for Providence Noir: “Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”
Hearken, indeed.
Ann Hood
Providence, RI
February 2015
PART I
DOWN CITY
GOLD LEAF
BY LUANNE RICE
Fox Point