Book Spotlight: The Undercover Heiress of Brockton

It's easy to take for granted the convenience of picking up a phone and having a firetruck come in an emergency. Author Kelly Goshorn did quite a bit of research for her newest historical fiction, The Undercover Heiress of Brockton. The story sounds wonderful and the information she's sharing today is fascinating. See if you agree.

​March 20, 2025, marked the 120th anniversary of the catastrophic steam boiler explosion at the R.B. Grover Shoe Factory that is central to the plot of the novel. My hero, Leo Eriksson, is a second-generation firefighter. His father and brothers are also firemen stationed together at the Campello firehouse, historically located on the same block as the ill-fated shoe factory.

Making one of my main characters an early 20th century firefighter meant researching a profession I had little knowledge about. And boy, did I learn a lot. Unfortunately, several chapters which showed my firefighter hero and his fellow firemen battling another blaze had to be cut from the book. So, I hope you’ll put on your history nerd girl hat as I share some of what I learned.
 
Around the turn of the 20th century, rubber became part of standard firefighting gear. A long woolen coat provided the first layer of heat protection. This was covered with a heavy rubber slicker which provided a waterproof covering. Rubber also replaced leather as the first choice for footwear. Respirator gear was minimal, with most firefighters covering their mouth with a wet bandana or handkerchief to help filter smoke from their lungs.

About the same time, mechanized vehicles arrived in some big city fire departments. Smaller departments, like the one featured in The Undercover Heiress of Brockton, still used horses to pull steam-powered pumps for water. Ironically, the steam engine was designed to use fire to fight fire. The advancement from hand pumpers to steam pumpers was about a 300 gallon per minute difference that played a huge role in saving both lives and property.
 
But in order to be effective, the water had to be hot enough to produce steam. While in the fire station, a hose from the steamer tank was connected to a pipe in the firehouse that kept the water in tank hot. When the alarm came in, a fireman would start a fire in the fuel box under the boiler using coals, wood kindling, and a kerosene-soaked rag. This combination of fuel would bring the water from warm to steam level by the time the fire steamer engine arrived at the disaster.
 
The deleted scenes from The Undercover Heiress of Brockton were set in the upper-class neighborhood of Beacon Hill in Boston where the heroine was attending a dinner party at the home of childhood friends. In order to learn about some of the modern equipment and techniques available to the city fire departments like those in Boston, Leo agreed to volunteer with Engine Company No. 3 in Beacon Hill, an affluent neighborhood in the city.
 
When a fire breaks out on the same street as the dinner party, an alarm box on the corner was used to notify the fire department. Fire alarm boxes were installed in Boston beginning in 1852, over two decades before the first telephone patent. Boston was the first city in the world to use the telegraph as part of a municipal fire alarm warning system. Each fire alarm box has a unique identification number. When the white lever is pulled, it sends an signal to the Fire Alarm Office with the number of the box. The emergency responders who received the alarm then look up the address of the box and send the closest available fire trucks to the spot.

​Boston has around 3,500 fire alarm boxes spread throughout the city which are often overlooked by passersby, but these red alarm boxes are still fully functional. In fact, just recently one resourceful citizen used the alarm box to notify the fire department when a fire broke out in a laundromat in the North End of Boston when the city’s 911 system had gone down.
 
Once the station received a signal of a fire in progress they needed to respond quickly. The firemen relied on trained firehouse dogs, typically Dalmatians, to snap into action, herding the horses from their stalls in the firehouse and position them below their harness. Then, the firemen would lower the harness using a system of pulleys and hitch the team to the steam engine. Then the dogs would dart through the large firehouse doors and clear the exit of oncoming foot and mobile traffic from wagons or automobiles. The Dalmatians protective nature and reputation for bonding with horses, led them to be an ideal choice for this job. I’m happy to say that I was able to rework the bit about the firehouse dogs into the scene when Engine Company No. 1 responds to the explosion at the Grover Shoe Factory.

​If this romp through firefighting history, or a love for historic firefighters, has sparked your curiosity, I’ll be sharing those deleted scenes from The Undercover Heiress of Brockton with my newsletter family later this month. I’d love for you to join us! Just head over to my website and click on the newsletter tab.

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A Socialite in Disguise Seeks Truth and Justice
 
Henrietta “Etta” Maxwell is a hard-hitting investigative reporter for The Enterprise Daily. The catch? Etta must pen her columns under the nom de plume, Henry Mason—a fact that routinely puts a knot in her knickerbockers.
 
Leo Eriksson is a second-generation firefighter with a passion for rendering aid to those in need.
When Leo discovers that Henry Mason is really Henrietta Maxwell, the fire department’s wealthy benefactress, he agrees to keep her identity secret.
 
After a sudden blast rocks the Grover Shoe Factory, Leo and Etta team up to determine if the explosion is related to a series of suspicious fires in the area. When an unnamed source reveals Etta’s secret identity to a rival reporter, she falsely accuses Leo of being the informant.
 
As the truth comes to light, Etta must persuade Leo to give her a second chance or lose the only man she’s ever loved.
 
Available at:
Amazon  |  Baker Book House  |  Barnes and Noble  |  Books-A-Million  |  Christianbook.com  | Target.com  | Walmart.com
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Kelly Goshorn weaves her affinity for history and her passion for God into inspiring stories of love, faith, and family set in America’s vibrant past. Her debut novel, A Love Restored, won the Director’s Choice Award for Adult/YA fiction at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference in 2019, and earned recognition as both a Selah Award finalist in the Historical Romance category and as a Maggie Award Finalist for Inspirational Fiction. When she is not writing, Kelly enjoys, binge-watching BBC period dramas, board-gaming with her family, exploring historical sights, and spoiling her Welsh corgi, Biscuit.
 
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Theme: Embracing who God made you to be, quirks and all.

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