Mentor author Deanna Adams’ latest book, ‘A Place We Belong,’ is set in 1940s Cleveland

As Mentor’s Deanna R. Adams wrote her first historical fiction novel, the story she told took on a life of its own.

During the four years Adams worked on “A Place We Belong,” she also held down odd jobs as a freelance writer, a hairdresser, a restaurant hostess/waitress and a caregiver for a daughter battling cancer. It was an hour’s drive to the home of her daughter and three grandchildren.

After getting to know Adams, it comes as no surprise that strong women are the main characters in the four novels she has written. Those women include Lydia, the protagonist of the latest.

In “A Place We Belong,” set in 1940s Cleveland, when lawman Eliot Ness was director of security, burlesque queen Lydia asks him for help finding her sister Tess. The sisters were separated as girls when their mother died, and by age 17, Lydia was earning her living as a fan dancer for Cleveland’s Roxy Theater, a top burlesque venue.

Ness accepts the challenge, but his growing friendship with Lydia causes friction in their personal and professional lives. To complicate matters, their search for her sister leads them to Tennessee and a gang that traffics in stolen children, who are then sold.

The book’s main characters often gather at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland for walks and picnics. Adams’ description of monuments and sites there reveals her fondness for the spot where Eliot Ness’s ashes were scattered after his death.

“While I enjoyed creating the story and the characters, you can’t mess with history,” she said. “The research I did led to the twists in the story.”

That investigation also led Adams—and later Lydia and Ness—to discover Georgia Tann and her children’s home in Tennessee, which was a front for a corrupt adoption ring well into the 1950s.

Adams, perhaps best known as the author of “Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Cleveland Connection,” is a lifelong writer who has worked many other jobs to make a living. After the success of her book about Clevelanders involved in rock music, she found that most readers thought she would get rich writing it.

“I can’t tell you how many people asked me if I was going to buy a bigger house, for example,” she said.

Author Deanna R. Adam’s ‘Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Venues’ celebrates concert hotspots

She lives and works in the modest home in the Mentor Headlands neighborhood that she has shared with her husband Jeff since 1983.

Adams, who turns 70 this year, never lived in the 1940s but has long been fascinated by that era when Cleveland was the nation’s fifth-largest city and Ness was brought there to fight organized crime. The book’s carefully curated details about the then-famous Roxy Theater and the nearby Theatrical Grill, where mob leaders would meet, are based on Adams’ years of observation as a restaurant hostess and waiter.

She is a familiar face to those who frequent local eateries such as Mean Mugs Pub and Noosa Bistro and the now-defunct Willoughby Brewing Co. She still follows local rock bands and dances to their music.

Writing has always been an important part of her life, she says. She wrote poetry about teenage angst during high school at what was then the Andrews School for Girls in Willoughby. Demanding a career goal at the time, Andrews studied cosmetology and became a licensed hairdresser. At Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, she took journalism classes and became a staff writer for the Lakeland student newspaper, where professor Gene Dent, the faculty adviser, helped arrange a summer internship for Adams at The News-Herald.

Dent was her first writing mentor. Another important influence was Lea Oldham, who ran the Western Reserve Writers Conference, which Adams attended to hone her writing. When Oldham died, Adams took over as its director. Under her leadership, it continues twice a year at the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library, where she met librarian Rebecca McFarland, an expert on Eliot Ness. It was McFarland who arranged for Ness and his family’s ashes to be laid to rest at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland in 1997.

Working on “A Place We Belong” sustained Adams and allowed her to escape to a simpler time during her daughter Danielle’s long journey with cancer, which took her life earlier this year. Now, Adams is focused on helping herself, her three grandchildren, their father, her husband and their daughter Tiffany cope with that loss, and is also working on another book.

Photographer Janet Macoska asked Adams to write captions and text for a book about Cleveland rock star Michael Stanley, who died in 2021. Like Adams, Macoska was fascinated by rock ‘n’ roll from a young age and made a career out of photographing rock stars.

“We expect the book to be published in time for the Christmas holidays,” Adams said.

In the meantime, she’s been promoting “A Place We Belong” with readings and performances around the area. Her next session is from 7 to 8 p.m. Sept. 9 at the Willowick Public Library, 263 E. 305th St. Details: 440-943-4151.

The books of Deanna Adams

Many of Deanna R. Adams’ books can be found online and in local bookstores, including Barnes & Noble.

Non-fiction books: “Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Cleveland Connection” (2002); “Confessions of a Not-So-Good Catholic Girl” (2008); “Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Roots” (2010); and “Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Venues.”

Novels: “Peggy Sue Got Pregnant” (2013); “Scoundrels & Dreamers” (2014); and “The Truth about Justyce” (2020), which was number one on Amazon’s new releases list in May 2020.

Originally published: August 26, 2024 at 3:00 PM