Bruce MacBain

Like Indiana Jones, Bruce Macbain was drawn to far-away places and yearned to know the mysteries of the past.

Macbain lived in London for a while as a child, and was lucky enough to witness the coronation parade of Queen Elizabeth II. He was fascinated by the pomp and ritual and the colorful hats, swords, and uniforms of the guards who marched past; costumes became a lifelong interest.

Later, in college, Macbain studied archeology, but got bored trying to put together small pottery shards. He took a break from his academic studies to join the U.S. Peace Corps which took him to the remote island of Borneo, about as far away from his Chicago home as one could get. It was a bit of time travel, too. There was no electricity, and few signs of modern life. He found a culture where people knew how to start fires without matches, went upriver in dugout canoes, and kept the skulls of enemies hanging from the rafters. Paganism was still alive there.

As an academic, Macbain learned Latin and Greek and taught ancient history at Vanderbilt and Boston Universities with a scholarly interest in the Late Roman Empire where senators and citizens alike had to deal with the whims of tyrannical emperors whose power over life and death terrorized their subjects. During this time, he began neglecting his scholarly publications in favor of fiction and produced two books in the popular genre Roman mysteries.

The next chapter of Macbain’s life involved Latin teaching and catapult building at a suburban high school. He much preferred the latter. After a few years he decided he’d had enough of the Romans.

Next, he began helping recent immigrants learn English and gain job skills by day, and at night, read Icelandic sagas for his next immersion into ancient cultures. Instead of Latin inscriptions set in stone he studied hand-carved runes. Out of this came Odin’s Child, the thinking man’s Viking -- a coming of age story that took young Odd from his sod cottage in Iceland to epic battles in Norway and the first siege of Kiev in the land of the Rus (now Ukraine). Book three of the series led Odd to the splendor and intrigue of the Court in Byzantium, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire where he joined the Varangian Guard.

While working with the Chinese immigrant community in Boston’s Chinatown, Macbain met a fellow teacher who had been a member of Mao’s Red Guards as a young teen in post-Revolutionary China. Her cadre rooted out remnants of the elite, educated class for reeducation in rural camps. He began wondering what conditions in early 20th century China would inspire a young woman to join this movement.

His research led him to Shanghai, an international hot spot, controlled by colonial financial interests and Chinese drug gangs, an important city for both Stalin and Japanese imperialists, a destination for refugees fleeing from the Red army, but a place where Chinese were second-class citizens. Curiously, it was a city crazy about American jazz, thanks to the invention of the gramophone, and young people thronged to clubs to dance to the tunes of Kid Ory, King Oliver, and Jelly Roll Morton.

After finally retiring from teaching, Macbain continued working part time at the Brookline Library while completing Shanghai Blues. He passed away in 2019 and the book was published by his family with Jesselton Books.

If you love history, mystery, and adventure with a touch of humor and romance; if the clash of culture and religion interests you, you’re in the right place.