04/21/2026
TAKING IOWA HISTORY INTO THE CLASSROOM
“I learned that you should write what you’re interested in,” stated Avery, a student in Angie Wagner’s writing class at Wapsie Valley, following a March 27th presentation by Fairbank native and award-winning author Betty Brandt Passick.
Ms. Wagner is in her 18th year of teaching at Wapsie, currently 7-12 grade Talented and Gifted students, 9th grade English, Creative Writing, Communications, and three college-level classes, including Comp. I and II, and Intro. to Literature.
“I keep an eye out on social media and newspapers for any author in the area who might be willing to come to my classes and share stories of how they got started writing and ended up where they are now. I was pleased Betty Brandt Passick, a Wapsie alum, was able to come during my seventh hour creative writing class,” Ms. Wagner said.
The 1965 Wapsie graduate shared highlights of her 12-year journey as an author, focusing her remarks on where the inspiration came from to write a gangster series.
“I was nine years old when my primary family moved into Fairbank. A neighbor stopped by the next day to welcome us to the community and said the most curious thing: ‘The town has a gangster’. Those words resonated with me, probably because by then, I already held the dream of growing up to one day write books.”
Passick noted that sometimes authors get to pick the topics they write about, while some stories seem to pick the author.
Growing up in Fairbank, she learned the gangster’s name was Louie La Cava. He had come to the town in the early 1920s and soon claimed to be bookkeeper for Chicago Kingpin Al Capone, but no one she ever talked with from the area seemed to know whether that claim was fact or myth.
Researching this gangster remained in the forefront of Passick’s mind for decades. She told herself she would investigate further once she retired from 3M Company in St. Paul. She had relocated to Minnesota many years earlier for employment.
Confirming that La Cava was Capone’s bookkeeper turned out to be pretty easy.
One day, she typed into Google, “Louie La Cava and Al Capone,” to see what might show up. Up popped La Cava’s testimony at Capone’s 1931 trial on tax evasion, and he was testifying as Capone’s bookkeeper. From there, she researched La Cava in newspapers, FBI and police records, and interviewed Fairbank locals who had known the gangster best. La Cava and his wife resided in Fairbank, off and on, for over sixty years.
She published Gangster in our Midst: Bookkeeper, Lieutenant, and Sometimes Hitman for Al Capone in 2017. The novel has won two awards—most recently, the 2025 Editor's Choice Award of Literary Excellence from Reader’s House book review magazine in the United Kingdom.
Danika, another student, stated: “I enjoyed the knowledge that this big thing happened in my small town.”
Passick pointed out that most authors write—at least, their first books—out of a sense of passion, wanting to tell stories they’ve longed to express.
“That definitely was my case with writing Gangster in our Midst.”
Adapting Gangster in our Midst for stage or motion picture has become a secondary dream. She took a script-writing class to help her write a short treatment of the novel, Gangster in our Midst—the Play. “Ongoing writing classes are essential in order to continue to improve one’s craft,” Passick added. She handed out the treatment to producers at a February Iowa Motion Picture Association mixer in Fairfield to give them a quick concept of the novel’s story. It has only five characters: Louie La Cava, Jake Guzik—Capone’s enforcer, the town’s Marshal Sweeney Delaney, the telephone operator, and a 10-year-old boy who delivers La Cava’s newspaper.
The author proposed a class exercise of reading the play out loud. The purpose behind the activity was twofold: to demonstrate that script writing is another form of writing that students might wish to consider down the road; the written word really comes alive when it’s spoken, if written well.
“I was surprised at the number of hands that shot up in the class of those wishing to read one of the character parts,” Passick said.
The reading turned out to be perhaps the most fun and rousing part of the ninety-minute class, particularly because of Marshall, the student who read the part of the Italian mobster, Louie La Cava. He often performs in plays at Wapsie.
Book 2 in the series, The Black Bag of Dr. Wiltse (2021), tells an earlier part of the gangster story about the family who built Hotel Wiltse, a prominent setting in the first novel. The book also won an Indie Book Award. A third novel, Anatomy of a Death, will be released soon, about a physician who, along with his wife, built Hotel Wiltse. He struggles with addiction to drugs and alcohol, while she manages the hotel, where notorious outlaws and odd ducks come to lay low. It’s a story of addiction, love, sacrifice, and murder.
The author also wrote two significant memoirs—five books in total, plus has contributed stories and poems for several anthologies. She administers an annual writing contest, and writes a column for her hometown newspaper, the Fairbank Islander.
Most nine-year-old girls never envision one day of writing a series of novels…about gangsters. It’s hard to predict where one’s future will lead as a writer, but Passick encouraged students to think big.
Student Bailey summarized her learning: “My biggest takeaway is probably to write from the heart. I always think really hard about what I want to write but now I’ll try to just let it roll out.”
Ms. Wagner added, “I appreciate how Betty’s author visit encouraged students to actively pursue their writing and to never give up on it. She explained how writers are ‘observers of the world’ and they use their many experiences to share their words and create meaning out of life”
