Guest Author Patricia Crisafulli

Today, we welcome bestselling and award-winning guest author Patricia Crisafulli. Her Ohnita Harbor Mystery Series launched in 2022 with The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor, followed in 2023 by The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm. Her latest in the series, The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery, released last month. Find her at www.FaithHopeandFiction.com.

The Traitor’s Map: A Mysterious Artifact That Never Was

By Patricia Crisafulli

I can picture the scene so clearly: sitting in a sixth- or seventh-grade classroom in northern New York State and listening as the teacher told the story of a map dating from the American Revolution. It was a spy map, showing all the hiding places along the Lake Ontario shoreline.

The cartographer had carefully recorded every stream, creek, nook, cove, and marsh along a craggy beachfront. Here was where the Continental Army hid its boats; there was where they concealed a cache of weapons. But in an attack of conscience, the mapmaker changed his mind and altered the depiction of the landscape to make it worthless to the British.

From my preteen years until now, I’ve held onto the memory of the Traitor’s Map. When I began writing the third novel in my Ohnita Harbor Mystery Series, I couldn’t wait to research this map—to uncover its provenance, perhaps even find a picture of it.

Except it doesn’t seem to exist. No map matches the story I’d been told so many years ago. In fact, there’s no mention anywhere of a purposefully inaccurate spy map dating from the Revolution (though plenty of accurate ones). Every time I Google “Traitor’s Map” all I get are descriptions of my own novel—The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery.

But trust me, the story of the Traitor’s Map feels like a memory of something so real, I can envision it clearly. And that’s a gift to me as a writer, making this artifact all the more authentic in my mind and I hope, in my novel.

The Story Behind the Artifact

As my protagonist, Gabriela Domenici—librarian, authenticator, and amateur sleuth—observes, artifacts are objects whose stories are waiting to be told. In fact, it’s the story that often makes an artifact valuable—who made it, owned it, cherished it, lost it, found it, stole it …

Each of my three mystery novels features an artifact. In the first book it’s a medieval cross; in the second, an early 19^th century nautical schematic; and in the third, the Traitor’s Map. In the opening of The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery, Gabriela, who is also teaching a class at the community college, takes a group of students to the local maritime museum for a first-hand look at this artifact that needs authentication:

She turned to the map, which had been drawn in ink on parchment the color of autumn leaves. A heavy line showed the shoreline, with indentations for coves and inlets, and a few spits of land that jutted out into the water … As Gabriela scanned the map, her chest swelled with excitement and longing, a feeling she associated with the most compelling artifacts and documents she’d handled throughout her career.

Given that the Traitor’s Map is apparently completely fictional, I needed to invent its backstory. And so I came up with the tale of two brothers—Colonel Jacob Thorsen, a commander during the American Revolution, and his brother, Henry, a mapmaker and spy for the British. When Henry was captured, it was Jacob who condemned him to death for spying—no matter that the map he handed over to the British was worthless. Henry escaped and faded into the footnotes of history. Jacob became an even bigger hero in the Revolution and then the War of 1812.

Conflict, political intrigue, betrayal—a story as old as time. And the Traitor’s Map stands as a symbol of that deceit and deception—through the centuries and the generations. And it’s mysteriously linked to the murder of one of Gabriela’s college students who had his heart set on unlocking its secrets. The fact alone leaves Gabriela inconsolable, with feelings of guilt that, had it not been for her assignment, the student never would have been killed.

And what of my own backstory of an old spy map that apparently never existed? Perhaps one day I’ll find evidence of the Traitor’s Map that substantiates what I heard (or at least think I heard) all those years ago. In the meantime, my fictional artifact can stand as a proxy.

The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery

An Ohnita Harbor Mystery, Book 3

In this much-anticipated third book in the Ohnita Harbor Mystery Series, reuniting readers with beloved protagonist Gabriela Domenici, the smalltown librarian whose accidental sleuthing puts her on the frontlines of death and danger. At the heart of the mystery is the Traitor’s Map—a highly inaccurate spy map from the American Revolution. When Gabriela assigns the map as a research project to a group of college students, one of them is found murdered on the lakeshore—triggering a spiral of death and deceit that soon embroils Gabriela and the man she loves. The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery tells a riveting story that explores love, betrayal, murder, and a chance for redemption.