Write a commentOswego native Patricia Crisafulli's career as a journalist and writer has taken her to New York City, Chicago and elsewhere throughout the country. She now resides in Eugene, Oregon. The latest turn in her writing, as a mystery novelist, has brought her full circle.
Her first two novels The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor and The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm, are set in and around Ohnita Harbor, a fictional port city along the shores of Lake Ontario, which is based on Oswego.
A graduate of Bishop Cunningham High School in Oswego, Crisafulli for a time went to Oswego State. "I interned at the Palladium-Times in Oswego when I was in high school and while I was in college," she said.
She left Oswego to take a job with Watertown Daily Times, and eventually this led to a career in business journalism in New York and Chicago. "My last journalism job was with Reuters, the international news agency," she said. At around the age of 40, she went out on her own as a communications consultant, working with large companies, a business she continues in today, adding that her son is now her partner.
Along the way, Crisafulli has authored several non-fiction books, publishing her first in 1999. Her book The House of Dimon: How JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon Rose to the Top of the Financial World was a New York Times Bestseller in 2011. Another non-fiction book, Rwanda, Inc., co-written with Andrea Redmond, was an Editor's Choice on Amazon.
Having achieved success in her chosen field, Crisafulli made the decision to take on a new career challenge.
"At age 52, I enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program for creative writing at Northwestern University," she said. "My masters thesis ended up becoming the basis for my first novel, The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor."
"I love storytelling," Crisafulli continued, "...and who doesn't love a good mystery?"
When asked why she chose to set her novels in a fictional version of her hometown, the author said, "Oswego's terrain is fertile ground for a mystery. With Lake Ontario, the Oswego River, the rolling hills, and its proximity to the Finger Lakes and the Adirondack Mountains, there are any number of locations for mysterious events to take place here."
Crisafulli's newest novel, The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm, continues along a similar vein. "The new book's setting isn't an actual location but is more of a composite of places I've visited in the area," she said. "It is similar to Salmon River Falls, but connected to an inland lake like Seneca Lake, then add in steep rocky walls like Au Sable Chasm in the Adirondacks - fertile ground indeed."
The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm was published in September of this year by Woodhall Press. When Patricia decided to come to Oswego with her family over the Thanksgiving holiday to visit relatives and friends, she spoke to owner Emil Christmann about holding a book launch at the river's end bookstore. "It's the perfect place to celebrate my new novel," she said.
The book launch and signing event will take place on Saturday, November 25th at 3:30 pm. "That also happens to be Small Business Saturday," Crisafulli said, "so we're hoping there will be a large crowd of shoppers downtown who will stop by to support a hometown author as well as our vital local small businesses." The store will have copies of both of Crisafulli's novels available for sale on the 25th. The river's end bookstore is located at 19 West Bridge Street in downtown Oswego.
Crisafulli said that she is working on a third installment of her Ohnita Harbor series. "These characters have stories to tell," she said, "and I am looking forward to finding out just what they might be."
