2024 Gangster Tour — Fairbank, IA announced: (Press Release-GangsterTour – IA, 2024)

2nd Annual Wapsie Writing Contest, winners announced: Press Release – Newspapers May 22, 2024

KMCH Radio, March 15, 2024, Fairbank Native and Author Hosting Wapsie Writing Contest – Mix 94.7 KMCH

Be a writer: Award-winning author Betty Brandt Passick sets contest for children and adults (wcfcourier.com), Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier, Jan. 10, 2023

(December 7, 2022) 2022 Top Notable Indies Book Award, Award-winning novelist Betty Brandt Passick is pleased to announce The Black Bag of Dr. Wiltse, Murder on the Prairie (2021) has been honored with an Indie Book Award in the 2022 Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition. Her debut novel, Gangster in Our Midst, Bookkeeper, Lieutenant and Sometimes Hitman for Al Capone (2017), won a 2019 Indies Book Award, also from Shelf magazine. Both historical crime fiction novels are set in “Oxbow,” a small community loosely based on Fairbank, Iowa, the author’s hometown.

“I am thrilled to receive this award for book two in the Gangster Series and thankful for all its support. Over 45 venues have invited me in the first twelve months to talk about “The Legacy of an Iowa Pioneer Physician.” I believe the Indies Book Award states, more than anything, that this immigrant’s story resonates with readers — even today.”

Oct. 13, 2021 link: Iowa native Betty Brandt Passick announces the publication of her most recent historical mystery crime novel, The Black Bag of Dr. Wiltse, Murder on the Prairie. The book launch happened at the Strawberry Point Public Library on Oct. 13, 2021, Passick welcomes invitations from libraries and other groups and organizations to talk about this neglected Iowa story. 

“The Black Bag of Dr. Wiltse is a period piece of northeast Iowa’s earliest history, particularly relevant as Iowa prepares to celebrate 175 years of statehood in 2022,” Passick said. “The novel tells the forgotten legacy of an Iowa pioneer, Dr. Alexander Wiltse—who, in the mid-1850s, leaves behind his beloved ancestral home of Wiltsetown, Ontario, Canada, to establish roots in the new state of Iowa, established in 1846. Ultimately the family settles in Strawberry Point. Only Dr. Wiltse’s wife Phebe knows of his attraction to murder (investigation). When the American Civil War happens, he tells the saga of war through the lens of a pioneer physician.”

(August 13, 2017) Fairbank, Iowa native Betty Brandt Passick has reached a new threshold as an author with her first book of historical suspense, Gangster in our Midst: Bookkeeper, Lieutenant and Sometimes Hitman for Al Capone (2017). The novel quickly became a favorite read of book clubs, and was the recipient of a 2019 Indie Book Award from Shelf Unbound book review magazine. This is her third book.

Gangster in our Midst tells the neglected fact-based Iowa story of an Italian American man Louie La Cava, who came to her small hometown of Fairbank, Iowa (called “Oxbow” in the book) in the 1920s, where he lived off and on for the next sixty years. He told locals that he worked for Chicago Kingpin Al Capone, but no one knew for certain if bravado was fact or fiction.

Ninety years later, Betty says she got the sleuthing bug to research La Cava to see if he really had been a gangster for Capone. Through FBI and police reports, newspaper accounts, and the embellished tales of Fairbank locals who knew the gangster best, she weaves this unique and sometimes wacky neglected true story.   

Additional La Cava gangster stories came her way soon after the book’s launch in 2017 that were included in a second edition (April 2018). The author updated the book cover (third edition) in 2019.

Gangster in our Midst is available in paperback, large print, and e-book.

Talk to the Author: Betty Brandt Passick – YouTube, Nadia Giordana interview.