Tag: historical fiction

Hungry for scandal, the villagers of Rathmichael congregate in the grand Hatchwood House.
Before the night is over, the elusive Kate Millington will lie dead at the bottom of the Hatchwood stairs – her death opening a disturbing window into the past for three women.

Alice, Kate’s daughter, is faced with her grief for a mother who was forever distant. As the circumstances of Kate’s death, and her state of mind, are drawn into question, Alice struggles to understand the appalling truth about her mother’s past.

In New York, a death bed secret brings Faith Cranston to Ireland, where news of a shocking accident in a rural community leads her to a distressing discovery.

Nancy Canning has only seen Kate from afar. Ashamed of her past, an overwhelming fear of human relationships drives Nancy. As the news of Kate’s death spreads through the village, she is forced to overcome her fear of connection, and come to terms with the fact that the shame she feels may not be hers alone.

Over the course of a harsh Irish winter, the women battle misogyny and impediment as they struggle to reveal the secrets about Kate’s past.
But will they ever be able to make peace with the devastating truth they’re about to uncover?

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Antoinette’s dream in life is to be paid to read books but as a close second, she’s happy to write them instead. She studied English and History at NUI Maynooth, followed by a career in public relations. Her debut novel, Home to Cavendish, was published by Poolbeg Press in 2019, the same year that Antoinette decided she’d had enough of 9 to 5 life and endless commuting. 

Her decision to set up her own writing consultancy coincided neatly with the start of a global health pandemic but despite some setbacks, she has established herself as a successful business and ghost-writer. She recently moved to the Costa Blanca with her partner Ahmed. True to her Irish roots she spends most of her days convinced that it is going to start raining, any minute now.  

The Secrets Left Behind, her second novel, is a multi-layered tale of the savage severing of maternal ties, a crumbling marriage built on conjecture, and the devastating impact on the next generation of women. It is set against the backdrop of the patriarchal regime once imposed by the Catholic Church in Ireland and spans the period from 1952 to 1981.
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My thoughts: this was really interesting, covering one of the saddest things that women in the recent past were subjected to – religious run homes for unwed mothers and forced adoption of their babies. Kate Millington is a deeply unhappy woman, carrying secrets and shame all her life. Even married she can’t shake the pain of her past and it wrecks her relationships.

After her death, her daughter starts to dig, at the same time two other women, Nancy and Faith, on opposite sides of the Atlantic are also asking questions about their pasts. Nancy was raised in an orphanage and Faith was adopted, but on her deathbed, Faith’s adored mother tells her a secret.

Between them, these women (and a few helpful men) investigate their pasts, the terrible cruelties done to young women and finally bring two very different mothers some peace in their deaths.

The story is sad and shocking, but ultimately redemptive for Alice, Nancy and Faith. Situations like Kate’s should never have happened and the terrible secrecy around it needs to be lifted. The Catholic Church doesn’t come out well in this book – it’s the priests and nuns who did these terrible things after all. Thankfully it doesn’t happen in modern Ireland, though probably in some developing countries something similar goes on but there are people living now who are affected by this and they need all the support and understanding that Faith finds completely absent.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

A compelling novel of female perseverance and the role of women in society set in the aftermath of the American Civil War. For readers of Tracey Chevalier and The Second Mrs Thistlewood

It is 1865, the American Civil War has just ended, and 18-year old Vita Tenney is determined to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a country doctor like her father. But when her father tells her she must get married instead, Vita explores every means of escape – and finds one in the person of war veteran Jacob Culhane. Damaged by what he’s seen in battle and with all his family gone, Jacob is seeking investors for a fledgling business. Then he meets Vita – and together they hatch a plan that should satisfy both their desires.Months later, Vita seemingly has everything she ever wanted. But alone in a big city and haunted by the mistakes of her past, she wonders if the life she always thought she wanted was too good to be true. When love starts to compete with ambition, what will come out on top?

From the author of The Floating Theatre, The Physician’s Daughter is the story of two people trying to make their way in a world that is struggling to escape its past.

Martha Conway has been nominated for an Edgar Award and won the North American Book Award for Best Historical Fiction. She teaches creative writing for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, she is one of seven sisters. She now lives in San Francisco with her family.

My thoughts: I really enjoyed this book, Vita was so determined and brave, striking out on her own – thinking that that was the only way to get to be a doctor. Jacob was equally determined to find her and support her – he didn’t want to hold her back or force her to be someone she wasn’t. I felt sorry for Mitty, her life wasn’t what she’d invisioned and it was only by following Vita’s example in the end that she got to use her brain again and engage with learning.

Women were so stifled, and banned from doing so much, the incredibly limited medical schools who would take female trainees, and even then only a handful. I know it was the same case here too – this ridiculous idea that women, who deal with blood and bodily fluids all the time (especially if they have children) would faint and be too delicate is absurd. Even now fewer women attend medical school – put off by the patriarchal medical establishment, told they’d be better off elsewhere. The old boys network has a lot to answer for. But reading this book, hearing Vita’s voice reminds me of all the incredibly brave, pioneering women who struck out and stuck up for themselves and forced society (and men) to see them as equals.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

London, 1905. A show. A stuttering romance. Two squabbling actresses.
Is it Shakespeare? Is it Vaudeville?
Not quite. It is Mrs Morphett’s Macaroons, a satirical play about suffragettes which its creators – friends and would-be lovers Robbie Robinson and Violet Graham – are preparing to mount in London’s West End.
It is the play rival actresses Merry and Gaye would kill to be in, if only they hadn’t insulted the producer all those years ago.
For Robbie and Violet however the road to West End glory is not smooth. There are backers to be appeased, actors to be tamed and a theatre to be found; and in the midst of it all a budding romance that risks being undermined by professional differences.
Never mix business with pleasure?
Maybe, maybe not.
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Patsy Trench has spent her life working in the theatre. She was an actress for twenty
years in theatre and television in the UK and Australia. She has written scripts for stage and (TV) screen and co-founded The Children’s Musical Theatre of London, creating original musicals with primary school children. She is the author of three non fiction books about colonial Australia based on her own family history and four novels about women breaking the mould in times past. Mrs Morphett’s Macaroons is book four in her ‘Modern Women: Entertaining Edwardians’ series and is
set in the world she knows and loves best. When she is not writing books she teaches theatre part- time and organises theatre trips for overseas students.
She lives in London. She has two children and so far one grandson.

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My thoughts: as a lifelong theatre nerd and feminist, this book appealed to me on several levels, both women’s history and theatrical history being things I will happily read about all day long. It was also very clever and funny, which was a bonus. We often think of Edwardians as being quite stuffy and traditional, women being confined to corsets and the house, but plenty of women were working – including as actresses and theatre producers.

And of course the 1900s saw the rise of women’s suffrage as a political cause, with the Pankhursts and Fawcetts at the forefront – both pop up in this story.

But the story belongs to Violet, Merry and Gaye (I have a great-great-aunt Gaye, who was an Edwardian, funny old world!) and to a lesser extent the other women who people it. All three are women making their own way in a world still hostile to the idea that a woman might want more than a husband and children. They’re living alone and making their own money, not relying on fathers or husbands to help them out. Not an easy thing to do, as Merry and Gaye discover as they try to make a go of their double act.

Violet, who once worked for the famous theatre producer Henry Beerbohm Tree, is a little in over her head but Robbie, who loves her, doesn’t really care, and she’s resourceful enough to pull it all together. As the old saying goes – it’ll be all right on the night!

Really enjoyable, funny but with a serious message at its core, this is a highly entertaining and thoughtful read.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

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The sixth novel in a stunning series set in eighteenth-century Cornwall, perfect for fans of Bridgerton.
Cornwall, 1800.
Imprisoned on false pretences, Madeleine Pelligrew, former mistress of Pendenning Hall, has spent the last 14 years shuttled between increasingly destitute and decrepit mad houses. When a strange
man appears out of the blue to release her, she can’t quite believe that her freedom comes without a price. Hiding her identity, Madeleine determines to discover the truth about what happened all those years ago.
Unsure who to trust and alone in the world, Madeleine strikes a tentative friendship with a French prisoner on parole, Captain Pierre de la Croix. But as she learns more about the reasons behind her imprisonment, and about those who schemed to hide her away for so long, she starts to wonder if Pierre is in fact the man he says he is. As Madeleine’s past collides with her present, can she find the strength to follow her heart, no matter the personal cost?
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Nicola Pryce trained as a nurse at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. She has always loved literature and completed an Open University degree in Humanities. She is a qualified adult literacy support volunteer and lives with her husband in the Blackdown Hills in Somerset. Together
they sail the south coast of Cornwall in search of adventure.
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My thoughts: I was excited to read this for a number of reasons; the heroine and I share a first name, it’s set in my beloved Cornwall, during the beginning of Napoleon’s war with Britain, which is a period I’m fascinated by, and as well as a love story, it’s the story of a woman fighting back, at a time when she was considered property and incapable of doing as she pleased. Indeed her nemesis, Sir Charles has her locked up in asylums under false names to keep anyone from finding her and helping her.

Thankfully it was a really good read, otherwise I’d have been incredibly disappointed so that’s good! Madeleine is a brave woman, far stronger than even she thinks and with the help of some wonderful friends and their circle, she’s able to fight back and regain her life, free from fear and the possibility of being sent back into the horrific asylum she’s escaped from. Although it doesn’t go into the terrible conditions of these madhouses, there’s enough from just the state of Madeleine when she escapes to give you some idea of what hellish places they were, fourteen years would break most people, but she has an inner core of steel and somehow clings onto her sanity.

I loved the people she found in Cornwall, connecting her to those who could help her the most – Mrs Pengelly especially and obviously Mr Pitt the cat, a delightfully grumpy moggy. Her foster daughter Rowan had stayed with her and helped her keep together in terrible times and is rewarded with happiness and family.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own

A country torn apart by war. A woman fighting for her future…

Ely, 1643. England is convulsed by Civil War, setting King against Parliament and neighbour against neighbour. As the turmoil reaches her family home in Ely, 19-year-old Bridget Cromwell finds herself at the heart of the conflict.

With her father’s star on the rise as a cavalry commander for the rebellious Parliament, Bridget has her own ambitions for a life beyond marriage and motherhood. And as fractures appear in her own family with the wilful, beautiful younger sister Betty, Bridget faces a choice: to follow her heart, or to marry for power and influence, and fight for a revolution that will change history…

My thoughts: it was interesting to go back to before the events of The Puritan Princess, about Cromwell’s youngest daughter, to this, about his eldest. Bridget’s story takes us through the two civil wars, the execution of Charles I, right up to her father being made Lord Protector. Suddenly you’re seeing a whole different angle on a familiar story. Bridget has quite a radical streak and empathised with the Levellers – wanting a fairer society for all. She actually believed that the new Parliament hasn’t gone far enough. That more could be done, even though it was all rather messy.

This is, at its heart though, a love story. Between Bidding Biddy and her Henry – she even rides to him at a war summit to declare she’ll marry him after all. Even though she finds much about marriage confining, and chafes at the lot of women, being clever and having opinions of her own, she does love him, very much.

As always I enjoy a book about history’s women, so often a footnote to their fathers, husbands, sons, but without whom very little would have ever been accomplished. Biddy was centuries too early for her talents and quick mind to be seen as they should be, instead relegated to running a household and managing a few servants, rather than a country and dozens of MPs.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.