McDONOUGH – Murder and mystery abound in McDonough as twin sisters Bonnie Sherman and Betty Murray share the tale of their paternal grandfather and the controversy he sparked in 1903 in their novel, “Murder in McDonough.”
According to Bonnie Sherman, their father had always avoided the topic of their paternal grandparent and they therefore had no knowledge of the incident growing up in Cortland.
“We figured there was a reason, but we didn’t find out until we started researching our family trees in 2003,” she said.
Sherman explained the shock she and her sister felt while perusing a McDonough newspaper from the era and seeing that Frank Gale, their grandfather, faced a murder charge. The Sherman sisters proceeded to ask their mother about the incident which led to the full story being shared and their decision to turn it into a book.
However, said Sherman, even their mother did not have all of the facts which prompted the sisters to change their story from non-fiction to historical fiction with much of the minute details being unknown.
“We decided to turn it into a novel,” said Sherman. “But the strange part is, a few months later we started receiving other newspapers from a woman in McDonough with more information and so much of what we wrote was true.”
Fiction or not, the book has achieved a fairly large amount of success around the area, said Sherman. The sisters recently did a book signing at the McDonough Library and Calvary Community Center in McDonough which sold out, as did First Edition bookstore in Norwich.
“The book signing went incredibly well,” said Sherman. “People from as far away as Pennsylvania came.”
“We realized our father had always thought his father was a cold-blooded murderer,” said Sherman. “But we discovered there was more to it ... it makes the story all the more compelling.”
Sherman said more books will be available for purchase in the next few weeks at First Edition.