Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs novels immerse you so deeply into 20th-century British life that you could get lost in the past.

Just ask the author.

“I was sitting in my office, working away; air conditioning was on. I’m in London on a foggy, cold day in winter, and I thought I’d better stop for a bite to eat,” says Winspear during a Zoom interview a few days before the June 4 publication of her latest book, “The Comfort of Ghosts.” “I came out of my office into the garden, and went, ‘Oh my god!’ I had a real culture shock.”

Turns out, that dank London fog had all been in her imagination. She was at home in 21st-century California. 

“I was in Ojai writing. I’d had the curtains closed because, you know, it’s bright and sunny out there and it was a very hot day,” says the British-born author who has lived in the United States for 34 years, mainly in California and the Pacific Northwest. 

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“I just was so immersed I didn’t realize where I was. It’s easy to do that, but I guess I’m so well-practiced now that I can really drop into the era I write about. I can drop into the story.” 

However, the author says she isn’t planning to drop in on Maisie Dobbs anymore.

After 18 books about psychologist and investigator Dobbs and her supporting cast of characters, Winspear announced that “The Comfort of Ghosts” is the final book of the series, which she began writing 24 years ago and first published in 2003. Winspear says the novel, without giving away spoilers, aims to provide a satisfying accounting for all the main characters.

“It’s not a new decision,” she says about ending the series. “I wanted there to be an arc to the overall body of work, not just an arc to each story.

“It’s bittersweet because I’m saying goodbye to the characters. But the great thing is, I have my body of work. It’s there, it’s solid, and it’s not drifting off anywhere,” she says. “I didn’t see the point of carrying on a series or coming up with plots just to carry on … I had done what I needed to do with them, what I wanted to do.”

The novel’s publication also brings Winspear back to her first publisher, Soho Crime, which first launched the series. “The Comfort of Ghosts” is dedicated to the late Laura Hruska, Soho’s co-founder and Winspear’s first editor.

“There was just something right about the idea of coming full circle,” she says. “It was as if, you know, it was the arc to my story.” 

Way Out West

Winspear wrote a moving tribute to the character Maisie Dobbs in a newsletter published June 4, in which she also revealed the very California origins of this very British character. (She followed up with another update on June 10 to say she’d broken a bone in her foot while at the airport and needed to put her appearances on hold.)

“You certainly changed my life, the day you walked into my imagination while I was stuck in traffic,” writes Winspear about Maisie Dobbs. “By the time I reached the office, I had your whole story in my head, even though I had not written a word of fiction since childhood.”

Considering that Winspear has lived here so long, does she consider herself a California writer?

“I think a lot of there’s a lot of California in me,” she says in a crisp British accent, adding that she’s occasionally mistaken for an American when visiting friends in the U.K. “Have I changed? There are things about me that have changed, but there are also my foundations, which are very firmly British.”

Speaking from her home in the Pacific Northwest, where she spends a lot of time, she explained how she landed in Ojai.

“When I first came to California, I lived in Ventura County, and I always liked Ojai very much because it’s got that small-town feel, and it has a great bookshop, good old Bart’s books,” says Winspear. “It was actually for my husband’s health; he needed to live in a more stable climate. And also, my brother lived there … it’s nice to have family close by.”

Winspear speculated on another reason that might have led to her move out West. “My dad loved cowboys. We watched American TV shows when I was a kid,” she says. “America was the shining star on the hill.”

Family stories

Winspear’s 2020 memoir about growing up in rural England, “This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing,” is rich in detail about her early life and provides glimpses into the inspirations for her work. Her interest in the past was piqued during her peripatetic childhood, which at times involved living on a farm without indoor plumbing

“Storytelling was big in my family … Everything became something to talk about,” she says. “Where we lived, there weren’t many kids; there were actually a lot of elderly people. And ever since I was a little girl, someone only had to say, ’Well, in my day…’ and I was ears flapping, you know? I couldn’t wait to hear about ‘their day.’”

Jacqueline Winspear, author of the Maisie Dobbs historical-mystery novels, discusses “The Comfort of Ghosts,” the final book in the series. (Covers courtesy of Soho Crime, Henry Holt, Harper)

The Maisie Dobbs novels, which span the period between the two World Wars, combine history and mystery, often exploring the visible and invisible effects of violence and trauma upon soldiers and people back home. Winspear’s interest in the experiences of soldiers in the First World War arose in part from her interactions with her own grandfather.

“Veterans don’t have finite dates for their wars. My grandfather, who was severely wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, was still removing shrapnel from his legs when he died, aged 77, in 1966,” says Winspear, who wrote in her memoir about seeing her grandfather massaging his scarred legs and picking metal splinters from out of his skin.

She recounts a beloved teacher and neighbor who told her about seeing a WWI veteran with severe facial wounds, a story that both haunted her and helped inspire elements of the first novel. That teacher, Ken Leech, and his wife Pat, influenced Winspear in other ways: their passion and care for animals found a willing audience in the author. (In her recent essay, Winspear, a dog lover who trains in the equestrian sport of dressage, praises her “writing buddies,” the dogs who dozed under her desk as she wrote. During our conversation, she talked about volunteering at the Humane Society and spoke passionately about aiding horses endangered by the war in Ukraine.)

Winspear says the memoir helped her unearth memories that had played an important part of her life, but she’d not been consciously aware of.

“When I wrote my memoir, I recounted a conversation between me and my mother that I realized has underpinned everything I’ve written for the last 24 years,” says Winspear. “I only realized it a few years ago when I wrote the memoir.”

Winspear’s formidable mother – who told her daughter many stories, including that she’d been pulled from the rubble of a bombed-out building during the London Blitz – at one time worked as an administrator in Britain’s prison system, and Winspear recalls asking her mother about the young offenders at the detention center and how they had ended up there.

“She said, ‘You know, Jackie, it’s because someone, somewhere along the line, didn’t care enough,’” says Winspear. “That had such an impact, and I didn’t know it. It was almost as if it nestled in my heart and stayed there.

“I realized it’s underpinned the character of Maisie Dobbs. I wanted to write about people who cared enough amid everything that’s happened,” she says. “I wanted to write about a character that cares enough through the best and worst of times.”

Farewell, Maisie

Having concluded the series, Winspear has “several” new projects underway, including a more lighthearted story about a character who’d previously had a small role in the saga. For that one, or perhaps another, Winspear is already doing prep.

“I’m doing the research right now, and I’ve got a trip planned later in the year. I’m not even going to tell you where I’m going,” she says. “Because I’ll give the game away.” 

So she’s got plenty to do, but it must be asked: Won’t it be hard to say goodbye to Maisie Dobbs? 

“My story is wrapped up in the story of Maisie Dobbs,” she says. “I don’t think she’s ever going to leave my head.” 

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Jeff Ostrowski | Bankrate.com (TNS)

Inflation is still running well above plan, and that means the Federal Reserve is keeping its finger firmly on the pause button. The central bank raised rates 11 times in 2022 and 2023, with the expectation that it would reverse course this year. But as inflation has stayed above 3%, it is standing pat. Following the Fed’s June 12 meeting, its fourth gathering of the year, Chairman Jerome Powell held steady again, announcing no change in interest rates. The Fed also signaled that it’s likely to cut rates only once this year, down from its previous estimate of three cuts.

“Mortgage rates, which have remained higher for longer, will likely remain in the high 6s until later this year,” says Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, a large listing service in the mid-Atlantic region. “Some homebuyers who have been sidelined by affordability challenges are going to wait until rates come down to buy. Increasingly, home sellers may have to do more negotiating to attract offers.”

The Federal Reserve and the housing market

Earlier in the inflationary cycle, the Fed had enacted increases of as much as three-quarters of a point. Now that inflation is down to 3.3% — still higher than its official target of 2%, but not terribly far off — that round of tightening appears to be over. However, until inflation drops down closer to that target, housing economists wonder when the anticipated rate cuts will begin.

“We still look for mortgage rates to drop to about 6.5% by the end of 2024,” says Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

In an effort to rein in inflation, the Fed boosted interest rates aggressively in 2022 and 2023, including a single jump of three-quarters of a percentage point. The hikes aimed to cool an economy that was on fire after rebounding from the coronavirus recession of 2020. That dramatic recovery has included a red-hot housing market characterized by record-high home prices and microscopic levels of inventory.

The Fed’s rate hikes have slowed the housing market. Home sales have dropped sharply. But home prices remain near record levels. Because home values are not driven solely by interest rates but by a complicated mix of factors, it’s hard to predict exactly how the Fed’s efforts will affect the housing market.

Higher rates are challenging for both homebuyers, who have to cope with steeper monthly payments, and sellers, who experience less demand and lower offers for their homes. After hitting 8% last fall, mortgage rates have dipped back down a bit. As of June 12, the average 30-year rate stood at 7.10%, according to Bankrate’s national survey of lenders.

How the Fed affects mortgage rates

The Federal Reserve does not set mortgage rates, and the central bank’s decisions don’t move mortgages as directly as they do other products, such as savings accounts and CD rates. Instead, mortgage rates tend to move in lockstep with 10-year Treasury yields.

Still, the Fed’s policies do set the overall tone for mortgage rates. Lenders and investors closely watch the central bank, and the mortgage market’s attempts to interpret the Fed’s actions affect how much you pay for your home loan. The Fed bumped rates seven times in 2022, a year that saw mortgage rates jump from 3.4% in January all the way to 7.12% in October. In 2023, mortgage rates went higher still, briefly touching 8%.

“Such increases diminish purchase affordability, making it even harder for lower-income and first-time buyers to purchase a home,” says Clare Losey, an economist with the Austin Board of Realtors in Texas.

What happens to the housing market if interest rates rise?

There’s no doubt that record-low mortgage rates helped fuel the housing boom of 2020 and 2021. Some think it was the single most important factor in pushing the residential real estate market into overdrive.

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When mortgage rates surged higher than they had been in two decades, the housing market slowed dramatically. And, while sales volume remains slow, prices are high. The nationwide median existing-home price for April was $407,600, according to the National Association of Realtors — up 5.7% year-over-year and perilously close to NAR’s all-time-high median price of $413,800.

In the long term, home prices and home sales tend to be resilient to rising mortgage rates, housing economists say. That’s because individual life events that prompt a home purchase — the birth of a child, marriage, a job change — don’t always correspond conveniently with mortgage rate cycles.

History bears this out. In the 1980s, mortgage rates soared as high as 18%, yet Americans still bought homes. In the 1990s, rates of 8% to 9% were common, and Americans continued snapping up homes. During the housing bubble of 2004 to 2007, mortgage rates were high, yet prices soared.

So the current slowdown may be more of an overheated market’s return to normalcy rather than the signal of an incipient housing crash. “The combination of elevated mortgage rates and steep home-price growth over the past few years has greatly reduced affordability,” Fratantoni says.

But if mortgage rates pull back, affordability will become less of a factor. For instance, borrowing $320,000 at the mid-June rate of 7.10% translates to a monthly principal-and-interest payment of $2,151, according to Bankrate’s mortgage calculator. Borrowing the same amount at 8% translates to a monthly payment of $2,348. That’s a difference of nearly $200 per month.

A continued decline in mortgage rates could create a new challenge, though: It will likely draw new buyers into the market, a surge that could further intensify the ongoing shortage of homes for sale.

Next steps for borrowers

Here are some pro tips for dealing with elevated mortgage rates:

—Shop around for a mortgage: Savvy shopping can help you find a better-than-average rate. With the refinance boom considerably slowed, lenders are eager for your business. “Conducting an online search can save thousands of dollars by finding lenders offering a lower rate and more competitive fees,” says Greg McBride, Bankrate’s chief financial analyst.

—Be cautious about ARMs: Adjustable-rate mortgages may look tempting, but McBride says borrowers should steer clear. “Don’t fall into the trap of using an adjustable-rate mortgage as a crutch of affordability,” he says. “There is little in the way of upfront savings, an average of just one-half percentage point for the first five years, but the risk of higher rates in future years looms large. New adjustable mortgage products are structured to change every six months rather than every 12 months, which had previously been the norm.”

—Consider a home equity loan or HELOC: While mortgage refinancing is on the wane, many homeowners are turning to home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) to tap into their home equity. The rationale is simple: If you need $50,000 for a kitchen renovation and you have a mortgage for $300,000 at 3%, you probably don’t want to take out a new loan at 7%. Better to keep the 3% rate on the mortgage and take a HELOC — even if it costs 10%.

(Visit Bankrate online at bankrate.com.)

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