Joan M. Drury

Background

Joan M. Drury was born on February 2, 1945, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the United States, to Edward (co-owner of a waste disposal business) and Barbara (co-owner of a waste disposal business; maiden name, Houghtaling) Drury.

Education

Drury studied at the University of Minnesota and graduated with a bachelor's degree.

Career

The youngest of a family of readers and storytellers, Joan M. Drury devoured poetry, fiction, and plays virtually from the moment she learned to read.

Particularly attracted to mysteries - especially those that starred a female sleuth - Drury grew up to create her own heroine, feminist writer/detective Tyler Jones. Jones - “a down-to-earth, sensual woman who is not afraid to be who she is - a recovering alcoholic, single lesbian,” as she’s described in Publishers Weekly - made her bow in 1995’s The Other Side of Silence, which garnered a Minnesota Book Award finalist nomination. (Drury is based in Duluth, Minnesota, where she is active in feminist causes and helps run the local Spinsters Ink publishing company.) Two more “silent” whodunits followed - Silent Words in 1996 and Closed in Silence in 1998. In the former, Jones travels from San Francisco to her childhood home in rural Minnesota, heeding the advice of her dying mother to “shake the skeletons in the closet” and discover new truths about her family. “She hasn’t a clue about what to investigate,” Booklist reviewer Whitney Scott noted, but her encounters with town elders and old acquaintances stir up a hornet’s nest of dramatic possibilities.

Calling Silent Words “[a] solid addition to most [mystery] collections,” Library Journal's, Rex E. Klett praised Drury’s “seductive prose.” Publishers Weekly was less enthused with the author’s storytelling that “could be a little sharper,” but recommended the novel as “a fine addition to the lesbian mystery Category.” Taking another tack. Booklist contributor Scott suggested “Buffs of family tree research should enjoy” the goings-on in Silent Words, which went on to win a Minnesota Book Award.

In Closed in Silence, Tyler Jones joins a handful of her feminist friends on a remote island to celebrate their twentieth college reunion. During reminiscences and re-flection, a dead man’s body is washed up onshore. The mystery is fueled by the connections many of the group members had with the victim. The verdict was mixed in the novel, with some critics suggesting Drury produced too much soul-searching, and not enough sleuthing. “Disappointing,” declared Publishers Weekly. While Booklist critic Whitney Scott had praise for the author’s “style and tantalizing detail,” Scott concluded that Closed was “only marginally satisfying” for feminist readers and “not at all as a murder mystery.” “But if efficient storytelling is not Drury’s strong suit,” noted Marilyn Stasio in a New York Times Book Review article, “she certainly knows how to establish the right atmosphere for a whodunit.” Library Journal writer Rex E. Klett declared Closed in Silence “[a] fine addition” to the Tyler Jones series.

In 2000, Drury’s novel Those Jordan Girls was published. The book, described as “heartfelt” by Lisa Nussbaum in Library Journal, features a family of four generations of women with the focus being on narrator Maddie, the youngest among her activist family members. The women are witness to several important historical events over the years, including women’s suffrage and the Great Depression, and Maddie passes down in her narrative the stories she has been told by her older relations. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly stated: “Part social history, a part spirited defense of unconventional female behavior, the narrative lacks plot and reads more like a tribute than a novel, but the Jordans’ story is warmly told and honestly inspiring.” Nussbaum, who called the work “inspiring” as well, noted that Those Jordan Girls contain “powerful, eloquent voices ... of most of the pivotal American reform and protest movements.”

“I wanted to write books about real women’s lives and issues, and I wanted my books to reach a broader audience than the one I’d reach writing, for instance, a nonfiction book on violence against women. Mysteries seemed the perfect vehicle for reaching that larger audience.”

Achievements

• Joan M. Drury was an outstanding novelist. Her books were bestsellers in the United States and received high praise from readers.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Silent Words

    (With her mother's last words still echoing in her ears, T...)

    1993
  • Those Jordan Girls

    (With Those Jordan Girls, the author of the Tyler Jones my...)

    2000
  • Closed in Silence

    (When five women meet up at a reunion to share stories of ...)

    1998
  • The Other Side of Silence 1993

Views

Drury is a feminist.

Connections

Father:

Edward Drury

Mother:

Barbara Drury

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 189
  2001