I love books that take me someplace familiar. Reading The Prohibited, I found myself moving through places I’ve visited countless times: Duluth, the Twin Cities, Hurley, Bessemer, and Hinckley. Yet the real fun came from imagining what those places looked like a century ago, when Prohibition, organized crime and social change were reshaping the Upper Midwest.
Some of the buildings from that era still stand today. Others, like the St. Paul liquor store once owned by author Matt Goldman’s great-grandfather and his brothers, exist only in memory. That family story became one of the inspirations behind Goldman’s first venture into historical fiction.
When he began digging into the history surrounding Prohibition, Goldman quickly realized the era was far more complicated than he’d imagined. He discovered the 18th and 19th Amendments had been ratified within months of one another and learned that many supporters of women’s suffrage also backed Prohibition because of alcohol’s devastating effects on families.
“The more research I did, the more interesting it seemed to me,” Goldman said.
Unlike many writers, Goldman said he doesn’t begin with a detailed outline. Instead, he follows the story where it leads.
“I almost approach it the same way I approach a book as a reader. Like I wonder what’s going to happen today,” he said.
That approach led him to unexpected places while writing The Prohibited. Although the novel features bootleggers, organized crime figures and the illegal liquor trade that flourished during Prohibition, Goldman found himself increasingly interested in the women living through that era.
“It was really the women in their lives who became the heroes of the book, which was not my intention going in,” he said.
As he researched the years surrounding women’s suffrage and Prohibition, Goldman found himself drawn to the complicated realities women faced during the 1920s. While gaining the right to vote marked a major step forward, many women still faced limitations and expectations at home that were slow to change.
Those tensions ultimately find their way into several of the novel’s central characters. Readers may also notice that, despite the large cast of characters, Rose emerges as the emotional center of the novel. Goldman said that wasn’t entirely planned from the beginning.
“Rose did seem like a good heroine to have at the center,” he said.
Other characters evolved in ways Goldman hadn’t anticipated as well. Pearl, for example, began as a much smaller character before taking on a larger role in the story after encouragement from Goldman’s agent.
“Pearl’s role really grew in the book, which did surprise me,” he said.
He was also struck by how familiar some of the issues still feel all this time later.
“One thing I discovered in The Prohibited is that a lot of the big issues from 100 years ago are the same issues we have today,” Goldman said, pointing to debates surrounding immigration, personal freedoms, public health, and the role of government as examples of questions that continue to resurface generation after generation.
His research continually opened new doors. Among the details that fascinated him were Prohibition-era loopholes that allowed medicinal whiskey prescriptions and sacramental wine sales. He also found himself diving deep into the history of organized crime in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
“I had always known St. Paul was a sanctuary city for criminals back then,” he said. “But I didn’t realize to what extent.”
For North Shore readers, some of the most interesting portions of the novel may be the connections to familiar Upper Midwest communities.
Goldman said Hurley, Wisconsin, developed an outsized reputation during Prohibition despite its small size. Known for gambling, bootlegging, and other vices, it attracted everyone from ordinary visitors to some of the biggest names in organized crime.
“I’d heard about Hurley, but it was legitimately a sin city for the upper Midwest,” he said.
Those regional connections were especially meaningful because many of the places featured in the novel were already part of Goldman’s family history.
His father’s side of the family operated Ableman’s in Bessemer, Michigan, a business that still exists today. Stories of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, northern Wisconsin and Minnesota were a familiar part of his upbringing long before he sat down to write historical fiction.
As much as he enjoyed researching the past, Goldman admits the genre presents unique challenges. Along with studying photographs, maps, and newspapers from the period, he found himself paying attention to something many readers never consider: language.
“The one thing I don’t know and I’ll never know is how close I got to the syntax people used in their speech back then,” he said.
While The Prohibited marks his first historical novel, Goldman said it likely won’t be his last.
Before turning to novels, Goldman spent decades writing for television after beginning his career as a standup comedian. The skills required to create compelling characters, dialogue and story arcs translated naturally to fiction, he said.
“The only thing that doesn’t is prose,” he said. “And that I learned as just being a reader.”
Today, he writes full-time and shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, he describes writing almost like a compulsion.
“I have kind of like almost a disease where I have to write a certain amount almost every single day or it drives me nuts,” he said.
It’s a disease, he joked, that he has no interest in curing. He currently has multiple projects in the works, including another novel scheduled for release this spring.
For readers who enjoy historical fiction, The Prohibited offers more than gangsters, bootleggers and crime. It provides a window into a pivotal moment in Upper Midwest history, one that still echoes in surprising ways today.
And for those of us who know these roads, towns and landscapes, it offers something extra: the chance to see familiar places through entirely different eyes.
Visit mattgoldman.com to learn more about the author and his novels. The Prohibited can be purchased at upress.umn.edu and in many local bookstores.
