Nighthawk’s Wing had a different title when I sent the manuscript to the publisher. I was calling it Shadow of Thy Wing, from these lines in an 1834 shape-note hymn: “Cover my defenseless head/With the shadow of Thy wing.” I used the couplet as an epigraph in the front of the book to help set the mood.
A Stranger Here Below, the first Gideon Stoltz historical mystery, also drew its title from shape-note lyrics: “I am a stranger here below/And what I am is hard to know.” Those lines were used as an epigraph, too. I wanted to follow the same pattern for the second mystery and for any others that might follow.
Shape-note hymns are an American music form popular in the 19th century. Their lyrics, or “poetry,” are full of vivid, often dire phrases that lend themselves to mystery titles and epigraphs.
My editor loved the book but wasn’t keen on the title. I was disappointed, because I really liked Shadow of Thy Wing. “Shadow” was spooky, “Thy” suggested the past, and “Wing” acknowledged the bird images that flit through the novel. But I got to work and tried to come up with some other possible titles from shape-note hymns:
The Road to Death (“Let sinners take their course,/And choose the road to death”). Ominous, and there are more than a few sinners in the mystery, but roads aren’t all that pertinent to the story.
Death is Nigh (“The storm of justice falls,/And death is nigh”). The justice angle is appropriate, but the title sounds clichéd and flat. The Storm of Justice sort of works, though it suggests a massive and powerful law-enforcement response, whereas my fictional sheriff Gideon mostly works alone.
The Night of Death (“O may we all remember well,/The night of death is near”). Probably used as a book title before, perhaps by many authors.
Death’s Iron Gate (“My soul would stretch her wings in haste,/Fly fearless through death’s iron gate”). That actually would have been a decent title for my first mystery, which focuses on the early ironmaking industry in central Pennsylvania. For the second mystery, the epigraph would acknowledge the novel’s many descriptions of birds, including an eerie doppelgänger, or fetch, that appears to the primary murder victim, Rebecca Kreidler, from whose point of view a series of flashback chapters are presented.
A friend suggested The Newborn Witch (some people accuse Rebecca of being a witch), but that doesn’t come from shape-note lyrics, and anyway it sounds more like a scary children’s book than a mystery.
I was leaning toward Death’s Iron Gate until my editor asked if I could think up a title with “Nighthawk” in it, since the bird known as a nighthawk plays a major role in the story.
I couldn’t find a reference to a nighthawk in any shape-note index or concordance. After racking my brain, I finally came up with Nighthawk’s Wing. It seemed provocative and edgy. It departed from my shape-note-only title strategy, but I could still use the epigraph “Cover my defenseless head/With the shadow of Thy wing” in keeping with the shape-note theme. My editor liked the title, and I did, too.
I started looking for a nighthawk for the book’s cover. It turns out that the National Audubon Society offers free high-resolution images of John James Audubon’s Birds of America, originally printed between 1827 and 1838. Plate 147, “Night Hawk,” is exquisite.
Book designer Erin Seaward-Hiatt tightened in on one of the birds in the painting to create a haunting cover featuring a close-up of a nighthawk, wings spread and bill agape, against a backdrop of oak leaves.
Abandoning my self-imposed shape-note title restriction is probably a good thing, since it frees me to come up with the best and most appropriate titles for future Gideon Stoltz mysteries. I’m about to send my editor the manuscript for the third one. Set in 1837, it involves abolitionism and fugitives from slavery who steal their way to Adamant and Colerain County. Its working title is Lay This Body Down, from these lines in an African American spiritual: “One cold freezing morning/I lay this body down.”
