My sister has been really getting into genealogy now that she’s retired. She had the bug already, but little time to spend on it.

A few weeks ago, she asked me to take a day trip to our parents’ hometown. That was an easy yes. We grew up about an hour away — serious planning on our father’s part — and spent at least a couple of weekends there every month while we were kids. I estimated once that I spent five years of my first eighteen there on the weekend- and occasional-summer-week-installment plan.

My sister wanted to have lunch with some relatives, stop in a few downtown shops, and — the main event — find the graves of our mother’s great-grandparents.

I didn’t even remember the name of mom’s great-grandparents, although I read a family genealogy once that may have included it. (The focus was on our grandfather’s family.) And I really didn’t have it firmly in my mind that parts of the family had been in Ottawa since the 19th century.

But my sister used an online resource to find their graves. And it turned out they’re in a cemetery neither of us knew we had relatives in.

She had a description of the location and I managed to find a map of the cemetery. Between us, we “orienteered” our way to three, mostly grass-covered slabs over our grandparents and a great-great uncle we’d never heard of.

But that’s just one journey into history I’ve been on lately. The other is a journey through the history of the mystery. A book club I belong to — founded more than 100 years ago to study Shakespeare — is spending several months on the mystery. I offered to do our “opening presentation,” a talk to set the context for our studies.

I mean, I’m writing mysteries. Shouldn’t I know a little about whence they came?

Of course, I knew about Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. I’d even heard of Wilkie Collins and Anna Katherine Green and Gaston Leroux. But in the last month, I’ve also met a number of early — and some not-so-early — contributors to what today we call crime fiction.

I find myself doing what I always did when I’ve had to write a paper. I’m getting lost in the research.

I hear my thesis advisor’s voice in my head. “Get out of the library and write!”

I’m on a deadline. I have to be done by Labor Day.

But I just need a little more time in the library.

So it’s back to the past for me.