Arts Alive! podcast: Author L.L. Kirchner

Author L.L. Kirchner guests on this edition of Arts Alive! The St. Pete resident will be a familiar figure to Catalyst readers, and to listeners of this podcast.

She’s with us today to talk about Havana Girls, the third and final installment of her Queenpin Chronicles series. Like its predecessors (Florida Girls and Vegas Girls), the novel is a work of historical fiction, blending real-life characters, events and locations with others manufactured by Kirchner’s fertile imagination.

Thelma Wright, who began the series as a young woman in a St. Petersburg song-and-dance revue, in the World War II era, has – along with her scrappy friends – clawed her way through a series of adventures that included the mob, the feds and members of her own family who were never quite what they seemed.

A woman of steely resolve, masking a wall of insecurities, she is now in pre-Castro Cuba, running a nightclub and hoping her life will finally straighten itself out.

Of course, that’s not exactly what happens, as Havana Girls – which fast-forwards to the late 1970s and a new generation of strong “girls” – unspools at a page-turning, heart-stopping pace.

Kirchner’s fifth book, Havana Girls is published this week by LILA Books.

Click on the arrow to listen to the interview.