South Orange Municipal Attorney Steven Rother, who has represented the Village for 18 years, is also a writer who recently published his second book — an historical novel about a lawyer defending his cousin in a murder case in the Adirondacks.
When Rother, who grew up in a remote part of the Adirondacks, was a teenager, an experience at an icehouse planted the seed for his book, Icehouse.
His family home did not have electricity so they had to use an icebox and buy ice from an icehouse. One day while picking up ice, Rother pulled up a block of ice and found a rifle underneath it. He gave the rifle to the icehouse owner, and “she told me, ‘You’re lucky you didn’t find a dead body,’” he said in an interview with his publisher, Fulton Books.
“Mom asked if she was joking with us, and she told us she wasn’t; winters were so freezing that graves couldn’t be dug, bodies were stored in the icehouse,” he said. “The reasoning for that comment has driven me for years to write this novel; expanded upon by my experiences as an attorney.”
The front cover was drawn by Lyman Daily, a South Orange resident.
The novel begins in an Adirondack icehouse, where a decomposing body is found, Rother said. It follows a young man born in a remote Adirondack community who becomes a successful attorney in Manhattan. Years later, when he finally returns home, he finds his cousin has been charged with murder.
The book is described on the back cover this way: “This 1980s historical novel takes the reader from the Big Apple to Quebec Canada and the High Peaks of the Adirondacks, ending with a phone call to South Orange, New Jersey. The leading character is a young lawyer, who encounters several famous figures and seeks to defend his cousin charged with murder. Along that journey he discovers who his biological father really was, and the existence of a half-brother. Through this self-awareness odyssey, he came to love a Black woman and overcame his abhorrence of gay folks, both men and women.”
One of the themes of the book is importance of embracing diversity, equity and inclusion, he said, and in one scene, South Orange-Maplewood is mentioned as a community that does just that.
Rother brought in other SOMA residents to work on the project, with Lyman Daily of South Orange drawing the front cover and Ken Stanke of Maplewood drawing the map of the region where the murder took place.
Aurora McCaffrey, the Essex County, New York, historian and the Adirondack History Museum director, is quoted on the back of the book endorsing the book.
“Rother weaves well-researched historical detail with complex characters to create a compelling tale full of twists and turns,” McCaffrey writes.
The map of the region, drawn by Ken Stanke of Maplewood.
