Former Pasadena-Area Resident, Author
Recollects Growing Up in Sierra Madre
Former are resident and author Lyn Bohart has fond memories of her childhood, but chose to pattern the setting for her new novel “Mass Murder” in the town she grew up in. Bohart, who attended Pasadena schools before moving to Oregon, is a writer who used Sierra Madre as the background for a fictional town in her first major novel.
In Bohart’s book, a New York detective, who escapes to a small town in Southern California to avoid the city’s crime and murder, finds himself in the middle of a mystery when bodies show up in the small, quiet town. She says she drew on much of her childhood experiences to help her write the book.
“It’s part of what I am today,” says Bohart. “I’m happy that I had that experience, the 14 or 15 years in Sierra Madre when I was growing up. There’s not a sense of neighborhood in many places like there was there. Where I lived was a dead end street, we always barbecued together and grew up together. It was really different back then.”
A sophisticated version of Mayberry RFD, Sierra Madre thrives at the base of the San Gabriel Foothills just to the east of Pasadena. Bohart spoke about her reflections on growing up in Sierra Madre, on the character of the town she remembers, and about her book itself and her career.
“To me, it was the perfect place to grow up,” says Bohart. “To grow up in the 50s and 60s and 70s in a town like Sierra Madre was unique. I remember watching the 4th of July parade and, as kids, we were in the parade. My mom was part of the PTA and well known in the community.
“It was a lot like Mayberry,” Bohart recalls. “My daughter wishes she had grown up at the time when I did because she hears me telling stories about it when I used to walk two miles to SierraMadreElementary School. Nowadays you would never let a child do that alone. It was a time period when, and the type of community where, you didn’t have to worry about stuff like that.”
But her novel is about murder in a Catholic monastery, so how did she choose that in the town she once called home?
“We used to go out and play up on the monastery grounds,” Bohart explains. “We used to hang out there all the time, which was almost up in the mountains, in the foothills. It was a great a place to grow up and I miss it a lot.”
A graduate of San DiegoState, Bohart majored in theater and received her Masters degree is in Directing. She credits her mother and a teacher for her interest in the theatre, which culminated in her desire to write a mystery novel.
“My mother put me in a modeling class when I was about in 7th grade and the woman who was the modeling teacher, wrote a play called ‘The San Gabriel Bells’ about the San Gabriel mission,” says Bohart. “It was about the history of the mission and was set around the turn of the century when it was a Spanish mission. Both my mom and I were in the play and we rehearsed for about six weeks before doing the performances. We didn’t get much of an audience, but it was fun.
“That’s when I got hooked,” Bohart continues. “I went to junior high school in Pasadena and I got tapped as the lead role in a school play. That really got me interested. When I went to PasadenaHigh School, I didn’t get into acting, but I got interested in stage makeup and I took theater all through high school.”
Bohart now lives in Washington state. Her book, “Mass Murder,” is available as an ebook through Amazon at www.amazon.com/MASS-MURDER-ebook/dp/B0088GEOKK.
Copyright 2012 by S. R. Morris
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