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The Strand

About This Book:

“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: Dorothy Ellen Palmer
Pages: 286
Date: 8th March 2021
ISBN: 9781787057234

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.

Publications:

What my Mobility Scooter Taught me About Barriers (Feature article, Broadview Magazine, July 2020)
Kept Out is Kept Down (All Lit Up, Feb 2020 and FOLD program, May 2020)
Making End of Life Decisions in Covid-19 (Broadview, May 2020)
Practicing Community Care in Isolation (Broadview, Apr 2020)
Coronavirus Comments Expose Underbelly of Ageism and Ableism (Broadview, Mar 2020)
Both Feet Forward: An Excerpt from Falling for Myself (Reader’s Digest Jan-Feb 2020)
Alumna Explores Life’s Journey in Falling For Myself, (interview, Western News, Jan 2020)
Falling for Myself: A Memoir (Wolsak and Wynn, Nov 2019)
It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! No, It’s Rape Culture (Canthius, Oct 2019)
Crutch, Cage, Sword, Kerfuffle (Nothing Without Us Anthology, editors: Cait Gordon, Talia Johnson,
Renaissance Press, Fall 2019)
Two Canadian disability advocates allowing themselves righteous anger (UC Observer, Dec 2018)
When a Cow Saves Your Life, You Learn that Audre Lorde is Always Right (Refuse: CanLit in Ruins,
editors: Hannah McGregor, Julie Rack, Erin Wunker, Book*Hug, 2018)
Let Us Now Praise Accessible Suburbs (Wordgathering: Journal of Disability Literature, Fall 2018)
Men in the Park and Other Lame Things (Alt-Minds Inaugural Issue, Fall 2018)
Let’s Crip Can Lit (a monthly column in CCWWP newsletter, 2018-2019)
When Buildings do the Dirty Work Can Lit Hands Aren’t Clean (All Lit Up, Jan 2018)
Run, Gerald, Run, (Don’t Talk to Me About Love, Sept 2017)
Ruby Slippers for Stella and this Dorothy, (Many Gendered Mothers, May 2017)
Bigger Than a Shoe Box, (Little Fiction Big Truths, Spring, 2017)
Diverse Bodies: On Disability and Exclusion, Podcast, English & French trans., FOLD: Oct 2016
When I’m 64: A Call to Action on Senior and Disabled Writers (Guest Blog, 49th Shelf: June 2016)
Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Signs (Open Book, 2013 and Canadian Holmes, 2014)
Bastards and Bullies, interview by Niranjana Iyer, (Herizons Magazine: Winter, 2012)
Writer in Residence: Daily Blog (Open Book Toronto: October 2011)
When Fenelon Falls (Coach House Press: 2010)