Sherlockian Interview - Dorothy Ellen Palmer
Posted by Steve Emecz on
In a fascinating interview and engaging Q&A with fans from all around the world, Canadian author Dorothy Ellen Palmer talks about bringing disability into the Sherlock Holmes canon. Her book, Wiggins: Son of Sherlock has received excellent reviews.
Wiggins: Son of Sherlock is available from:
Amazon USA Book Depository (free worldwide shipping)
Amazon Canada Barnes and Noble Amazon UK
“Wiggins is full of surprises, pulling us back into the world of 221B from an entirely original angle - as if Palmer had found a secret hiding space even the Great Detective had never accessed!”
Angela Misri (Portia Adams Adventures).
On New Year’s Day 1891, Sherlock Holmes summons the limping street urchin, Wiggins, to Baker Street and decrees he must die at dawn. Wiggins, however, has other plans. To fulfil the dying wish of his mother, Irene Adler, he schemes with his two formidable American aunties to keep two important facts from the great detective: Mrs. Hudson is actually his Aunt Grizelda, and he is both Holmes’ child and a girl pretending to be a boy. Through a series of mysterious letters Adler bequeathed to Wiggins, the dark backstory of her parents and all their long-kept family secrets unravel. To flee the mad King of Bohemia trying to claim Wiggins as his heir, Holmes and Wiggins begin their Great Hiatus. From Mycroft to Moriarty, from Dr. John H. Watson to the Baker Street Irregulars, from P.T. Barnum to Jumbo the Elephant, Wiggins learns little is what it seems. Slowly learning to trust each other, Holmes and Wiggins travel from London to Reichenbach Falls to New York City to a small farm in Canada which holds the secrets of their family history. Together, they correct the errors in Watson’s tales, bond over Wiggins’ disability, drop their masquerades, and deduce a father and daughter future.
Author’s Biography, Publications and Speaking Engagements
Dorothy Ellen Palmer is a binge knitter, a disabled senior writer, a retired English/Drama teacher, improv coach and union activist, and a former member of the Sherlockian society The Bootmakers of Toronto. Her adoption-disability memoir, Falling for Myself, (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019), is acclaimed by The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and Quill & Quire. Longlisted for the ReLit Award, her novel, When Fenelon Falls, (Coach House, 2010), features a disabled teen in the Woodstock-Moonwalk summer of 1969. Her fiction and nonfiction appear in literary and disability anthologies and journals, including Reader’s Digest, Refuse, This Magazine, Canthius, Wordgathering and Nothing Without Us. Her article in Broadview Magazine about her mobility scooter, Rosie, won the 2020 Helen Henderson Award for disability journalism. Her novel in progress, My Gables were Never Green, won the 2021 Cecils Award. She serves on the Accessibility Advisory Committee for the Festival of Literary Diversity and has appeared at many festivals and events including FOLD, WOTS, GritLit, The Next Chapter, The Eh List, and CBC Radio. She can always be found tweeting @depalm.