By Maya Rodale

The beats of Nellie Bly’s life are legendary: she got her start writing for the local paper as a young woman, a few years later she took off for New York City to make it as a reporter and the only assignment she could get was to feign insanity, get herself committed to the local asylum and write about it. “I said I could and I would. And I did,” she writes. From there, Nellie’s unique approach to journalism launches the era of “Stunt Girl”  reporting and culminates with the ultimate stunt: a solo race around the world. As a young woman. Alone. In 1889. She then married a millionaire and became a “Gilded Age Girl Boss” when she took over her late husband’s business. Through it all, Nellie Bly championed women’s stories and voices. Though Nellie Bly died a hundred years ago, but her well-known professional life qualifies her as a feminist icon by even modern standards.  

Much less is known about her personal life, however, especially her years as a famous single twenty-something woman living and working in Manhattan. Having been a twenty-something in Manhattan myself once upon a time, I had a hunch that maybe Nellie’s adventures didn’t stop when she hit her deadline. I thought she’d be a very fun heroine for a novel.  

It was with that perspective that I wrote The Mad Girls of New York, which is based on her first big story after her arrival in New York City in 1887. The only assignment she could get was to feign insanity, get herself committed to the notorious Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum and write about it. But my version of Nellie’s big break wouldn’t just be about her professional success, it would be about her personal life, too. 

As I read her writing—and she produced a lot of writing—I was captivated by her voice, as so many of her readers were. Nellie centers herself in every story, and writes as if she’s speaking to a best friend, which makes her writing easily read even today. Even when she’s being evaluated for insanity by doctors, she still comments on how handsome they are. Even as she’s being stripped of her clothes and forced to bathe in horrific conditions, she still worries about her hair. Nellie, I realized, was not a machine, she was a young woman—unapologetically so.  

What fun it would be to write Nellie Bly, feminist pioneer, as a young woman in Manhattan! I was thinking Sex and the City with social justice and longer skirts. The next step was to make up the characters in her world—the crew of lady friends who challenge and support her, plus the romantic leads.

For her female friends—I believe no feminist heroine is complete without female friends!—I drew inspiration from other real life women in journalism, like Harriet Hubbard Ayer who oversaw the ladies pages of The New York World (before there was Anna Wintour, there was Harriet Hubbard Ayer) and two fellow female reporters, Marian and Dorothy, who understand Nellie in a way no one else does and share her ambition. They’re supportive and competitive all at once—especially when it comes to a subplot in the novel about the mysterious origins of one woman Nellie meets in the asylum (to say more would be a spoiler!). My favorite scenes to write are the ones with Nellie and her female friends, bantering over lunch.  

And romance...there must be romance! I knew I had to write Nellie’s story when I stumbled across one of her lesser known articles in which she interviews the bachelor mayor of New York City name Hugh Grant about whether women should propose marriage. Every drop of that sentence is true and delicious. As a historical romance novelist, I was required by sacred vow to make a romance out of it, so sparks start flying between Nellie and Mayor Hugh Grant in The Mad Girls of New York. A romance between a mayor and a reporter is riddled with complications, which makes it all the more fun!

But then there was another hero of my own invention: Sam Colton, an earnest and determined reporter who is competing with Nellie for a job at the New York World because I believe every story is improved with a rivals to lovers plot. One of my favorite scenes to write in the novel was the one where Nellie crashed Sam’s interview and they vie for one open position at the paper. Fierce competition plus grudging attraction and glimmers of admiration is a wonderful start to a romantic relationship. Indeed, much of Sam’s journey in the novel is falling hard for Nellie and discovering some elements of her past that she doesn’t want to share.

In researching and writing the lives of historical figures like Nellie or the real life inspiration for her fellow cast of characters, I’m reminded that they were people with hopes, dreams, ambitions and feelings of their own. It reminds me why I think so many of us love historical fiction: it allows us to experience historical figures as intimate acquaintances, and it allows us to live in their world. It makes for a fun, fast-paced and entertaining story that also happens to make history come alive. My hope with Nellie and The Mad Girls of New York is that readers have a rollicking good time discovering what a legend she was.  

For more about Maya Rodale and The Mad Girls of New York, visit www.mayarodale.com or find Maya on Twitter and Instagram as @mayarodale.