Winner of The Highest Stakes by Emery Lee

The winner of The Highest Stakes by Emery Lee is...

jtwebster books

Congratulations! We will be contacting you to get your mailing details shortly. If we do not receive a response within a few days we will draw a new winner.


Thank you to everyone who entered the contest!



Rachna Gilmore - Books of a Lifetime

Anne of Green Gables has been a book of a lifetime for me. Its impact has been far-reaching and life-changing. In a curious way, it is even connected to the writing of my most recent novel, That Boy Red – which is about a boy growing up in P.E.I. during the Depression.

Sometimes life is stranger – and so much neater – than fiction.

I first encountered Anne of Green Gables in school when I lived in Mumbai (then called Bombay) in India. I was in Standard Four – that’s Grade 4 – and the school I went to was Cathedral and John Connon School, an English speaking private school, and one of the best in the city. It was run by the Anglo-Scottish Education Society – yes, a hangover from Colonialism, even though India was then an independent country.

True to the British tradition of private schools, we wore school uniforms. The girls – girls and boys were in separate schools then, merging later – wore light cotton dresses with faint grey and white stripes and a sash denoting the house to which each girl belonged. I wore a red sash, as I was part of Red House.

Our class had the unfortunate reputation – just starting to emerge, only to fully blossom later – of being high spirited and difficult. My teacher that year was a western woman called Mrs. Chaubal. I have no idea if she was Canadian, British, American, or Irish – to us, all foreigners spoke with equally weird accents, because, of course, we kids spoke perfect English, with no accent. Or rather, the right one!

One morning, Mrs. Chaubal gathered us together in front of her desk to read to us. Perhaps she thought this would have a calming effect on our high spirits, or perhaps she just wanted to share a book she loved. It was that morning – squirming against the other girls on a hard floor, with the school room smells of chalk-dust, cleaner and sneakers wafting through the air, stirred by the overhead fan – that I first met Anne.

I was hooked from the start. Mrs. Chaubal read with great enthusiasm and expression, and she was clever enough to skip the long descriptive parts that would make us restless. When the school year ended but the book didn’t, I had to find the book and finish reading it to see what happened next; to see if Anne ever forgave Gilbert.

I was an avid reader – there was no TV back then in India. Reading was a source of escape as well as delight. My idea of a great day was to have a stack of books and no one to bug me so I could happily read myself cross-eyed. I spent most of my pocket money on books which I usually bought at second-hand bookstores – which were often just small, open-front kiosks off busy roads – to stretch my rupees to the max. When I finished them, I’d trade them for others – unless, of course, the books were keepers.

So, I hunted through my usual second hand bookstores for Anne of Green Gables, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I scoured the library as well, to no avail. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered the book in a new bookstore. I’d found it! Of course, it was rather expensive, not being second-hand, but I didn’t hesitate. I bought a copy, devoured it and read it again many times. I was elated to discover sequels; I bought every one that I could lay my hot little hands on, and I read them over and over again.

Perhaps I loved those books because the world Anne lived in – rural, green, peaceful, with a small contained community – was so different from my own sprawling, crowded urban world, full of traffic, people, and a cacophony of sound and colours.

In the way in which internalized worlds become more familiar than the external, Anne’s world soon became as familiar to me as my own. But I didn’t realize at first, that the world in which the books were set was real – that it existed outside the author’s imagination.

I think I made that discovery when studying Canada in school, when the name Prince Edward Island leapt out and settled with a satisfying click against the name I’d glossed over in the books.
When I did realize it, though, it was one of those blinding light-bulb moments. I decided, in a spirit of joy-filled adventure, that I would go there one day.

When I was fourteen, my family moved to England. I didn’t recognize it then, but the Anne books were a constant thread through my life, old friends who helped negotiate the uprooting and settling in periods of that move. When I graduated from University, I decided that I didn’t want to live in England anymore. Canada, for many reasons appealed to me, so I decided to go there – and of course, it had to be to P.E.I.

And in P.E.I. – which felt very much like home, because it was, of course, already familiar – I met the man I married.. I lived there for fourteen years and began my writing career there – making that leap, overcoming the fear of failure that had stalled me from starting sooner. I celebrated my first publication success there, a children’s book published by an Island publisher, and one that went on to become a Canadian best-seller.

Years later, after we’d moved away from the Island, when I heard again my father-in-law’s familiar anecdotes about growing up on a farm on the Island during the Depression, I realized that there was gold in them thar tales. And I knew with the eager fierceness that each new writing project generates when it catches fire in the belly, that I had to write a novel about a boy growing up in P.E.I. It had to be fiction, not biography, because that’s what I write. I felt freer too, creating characters and incidents rather than trying to restrict myself to facts. Besides, I strongly believe that I can tell a greater truth through fiction than through bald facts – it’s telling the truth through lies.

Seeing That Boy Red in print now feels like coming full circle, coming home. I don’t think I ever imagined when I was a child in India, reading Anne for the umpteenth time, that one day I would go to Anne’s world, live there, marry an Islander and, inspired by family stories, write a book about a boy growing up there, set in the era following the Anne books.

It feels even more satisfying that the publishers chose this as one of the shout lines for the book:

First came Anne Shirley – now meet Red MacRae

Here’s a brief blurb about the book:

It’s P.E.I. during the Depression – meet eleven-year-old Roderick “Red” MacRae, resourceful, pig-headed, and impulsive, and his large and lively family, as they weather the challenges of farming through a particularly turbulent year. This episodic novel traces the misadventures – some hair-raising, some hilarious – and coming of age of a remarkable young lad, while celebrating the strength and spirit of Canadian families living through the Depression.
For more about this book please see: http://rachnagilmore.ca/novels.html#red
For a sneak peek, check out: http://browseinside.harpercollins.ca/index.aspx?isbn13=9781554684595

Author Bio

Rachna Gilmore is a Governor General’s Award winning author of twenty or so books for children, with multiple honours and awards. When she isn’t writing stories, she’s dreaming up ideas for more. She calls the process of writing plarking, a mixture of play, work and lark. Her most recent middle-grade novels are The Trouble With Dilly and That Boy Red. Rachna Gilmore’s Writerly Plarks – her blog – explores, and offers tips on, the convoluted process of writing fiction.

http://www.rachnagilmore.ca
http://rachnagilmore.blogspot.com

Rivals in the Tudor Court by D.L. Bogdan *GIVEAWAY*

The death toll in Henry VIII's England can be counted in the thousands. No one was more aware of this than Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk. Relying on his indomitable force of will, cleverness, and sheer good fortune, Thomas Howard manages to be one of the king's only intimates to survive an unforgettable reign of terror. This impeccably researched companion piece to "Secrets of the Tudor Court" chronicles the ambitious duke's life, loves, and remarkable capacity to endure. Before he was the king's uncle, before he was his nieces' ultimate betrayer, Thomas Howard was a hostage at the court of Henry VII while his father was imprisoned in the dreaded Tower of London. There he would marry the queen's sister, his forever princess Anne Plantagenet. While he founded a dynasty, his career as soldier and sailor brought him acclaim and the trust of the Tudors. But when unspeakable tragedy robs him of family and fortune, Thomas must begin again.

Abandoning notions of love, Thomas seeks out an advantageous match with the fiery Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of the duke of Buckingham. Clever, willful, and uncompromising in principle, the young duchess falls victim to a love she cannot deny. When Thomas takes on a mistress, the vulnerable Bess Holland, Duchess Elizabeth prepares to fight for all she holds dear. Only then does she learn she faces a force darker than anything she could ever have imagined, an obsessive love that neither she nor Bess can rival.

Told from the perspectives of Thomas Howard, his spirited wife, and beautiful mistress, RIVALS IN THE TUDOR COURT is a riveting drama that sweeps across eight decades and the reigns of six English monarchs. It is the story of innocence lost, of passion that knows no bounds, and of a man battling an enemy even more formidable than the bloodthirsty Henry VIII: himself.

To celebrate the release of the Rivals in the Tudor Court, we have two signed copies to give away (thanks to the generosity of D.L. Bogdan):

- open to the US/Canada only
- leave a comment and your email address
- closes May 3 at midnight GMT

Meanwhile, don't forget to visit the author's blog: http://dlbogdan.blogspot.com/

Congratulations to Ana

I have been waiting what feels like forever for Ana to post about what it is that has kept her away from blogging recently, and now she has we can say this:

You can see a photo of Ana's gorgeous boys at her blog (click on the link above).

We miss you Ana! Lucky you have two good reasons for staying away!

Why I love the Georges by Emery Lee *giveaway*

As a lifetime history buff, I have always held a singular fascination with the 18th century and with the Georgian Age in particular. Although in courtliness it may be surpassed by the “Sun King,” and its intrigues by the Medici’s and Tudors, the Georgina age represents a fascinating paradox.

The naissance of this era, called after the scions of the House of Hanover, was the direct result of the Act of Settlement when with the death of Queen Anne’s death, Parliament bypassed over fifty Catholic aspirants to the throne, in order to settle it upon the closest Protestant, a German princeling who neither desired the crown, nor spoke the English tongue!

It was the birth of pluralistic government. What history says of the reluctant but avaricious Georg Ludwig, is that he left England to rule itself as much as possible, and took his living from it as much as achievable. During this rather apathetic reign, Britain began a steady transition as the true power gradually and bloodlessly (in contrast to France!) transitioned away from the absolute monarchy favored by the Stuarts of old, and toward a government led by a cabinet of ministers and a parliament largely elected by the people.

It was a time of intrigues, where for half a century the exiled and ill-fated “Pretender” sought to regain the throne he had lost for Catholicism. (It was joked of James Francis Edward Stuart that he traded three crowns for a mass!)

While called the age of enlightenment, criminals were yet pilloried or executed, and left to hang in gibbets for buzzards to pick their flesh, and debtors were incarcerated, sometimes for life, while the powerful aristocracy was protected from prosecution for their own crimes by the privilege of peerage.

This same nobility used an outer façade of honor and politesse to cover its multifarious sins. In the words of Dr. Johnson: “Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.”

In upper class society, marriage was seldom pursued without social or financial gain. Gin was cheap and readily available. The cities were rife with prostitutes and gambling. All of these harsh realities were readily exposed by the pencil and brush of the brilliant artist and social commentator, William Hogarth.

The Georgian age also saw tremendous growth of the arts especially geared toward the common man. At a time when Italian opera dominated Europe, the greatly beloved English composer Handel (German born but naturalized) usurped the Italians to introduce his English language operas and oratorios.

The modern romantic novel was crafted in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, and then spoofed by the brilliantly sardonic wit of Henry Fielding in Shamela. The stage was revived and flourished with bawdy satires led by men like John Gaye, whose Beggar’s Opera lampooned the blatant governmental corruption of the day.

The Georgians by-and-large were a profligate and riotous breed: hard drinkers, with little regard to sexual morality. Brothels abounded to suit any particular fancy from flagellation to sodomy, the English” vice. Mercury pills may have killed more patients than the syphilis it was meant to cure.

Those of rank and title pursued every manner of pleasure, dissipation, and gaming. They drank hard and played harder – wagering on bare-fisted pugilism, (sometimes employing cudgels), cock fighting, bear, and bull bating with astronomical stakes often laid out at the hazard and card tables. And let us not forget the horses that were particularly suited for this fast-living crowd who admired no virtue more than “bottom.”

The Georgian gentlemen of the turf applied themselves wholeheartedly to perfecting the racehorse by importing Eastern stallions, those kings of the desert known for unparalleled stamina. The Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian, and later the Godolphin Arabian were some of the very best horses selectively crossed with the blood of the early mares of Charles II to create an entirely new type of horse that became known around the world as the English Thoroughbred.

As fodder for an historical novelist, the Georgian era offers untold delights, and with such a legacy, how can I not love the Georges?

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Emery Lee is a lifelong equestrienne and history buff who resides in Northeast Georgia with her husband, sons, and horses. Her debut novel THE HIGHEST STAKES, SOURCEBOOKS April 2010 release is an epic tale of passion, intrigue and horse racing.


Her second novel, FORTUNES'S SON, set in the Georgian gaming world, will be released November 1, 2011.

To know more about Emery Lee and her novel, don't forget to visit her website: http://www.authoremerylee.com/

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THE GIVEAWAY

As a kick off for the spring horseracing season, Emery Lee is offering a copy of her book, The Highest Stakes. To participate, just follow the rules:

- open Worldwide (for those in the US this will be a signed copy)
- leave a comment and don't forget your email address
- the contest closes April 25 at midnight GMT

Good luck to everyone!

The Historical Fiction Challenge-April Reviews

First, an apology.  I am so sorry for the lateness of this posting.  I totally forgot!

In March, we collectively read 118 books! That makes our total for 2011 so far, 266 books!

There is still time to join the challenge, go to Historical Fiction Reading Challenge to sign up and then come back to leave your links each month.  There is a new post for your links each month.

Please leave your links for your April reviews in Mr. Linky, below or, if you don't have a blog, in the comments below.

*Note: if you missed posting your links last month, please always post "late" links in the current month's Mr. Linky.  For example, if you forgot to post a link in February, please post it on this Mr. Linky in this post.
 

Why I Love Emilie du Châtelet by Laurel Corona

It comes as a bit of a surprise to me that I have written a novel about Enlightenment France. I avoided the era in both my undergraduate and graduate programs in literature and history. I slogged with great resistance through every assigned poem, memoir, or essay, wishing time would speed up so we could get to the Romantics and ditch those stuffy men in wigs, and women in corsets and ridiculous skirts the width of a tennis court.
In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that I fell in love with Emilie du Châtelet, I would never have considered setting a novel in this era at all, but Emilie seduced me, as she did so many others, literally and figuratively.

I love her brain. I’ve always admired people who understand math and science, because I struggled so much with both in school. Though I could spot a grammatical or spelling error in those nasty “word problems” in math, I was clueless about what formulas would solve them. Taking science classes for non-majors to fulfill breadth requirements at the University of California at Davis, I was amazed that this was the watered down and simplified version of things I could barely comprehend.


Emilie du Chatelet



Emilie was a natural. Anecdotes from her early life have her sitting at the dinner table with Bernard de Fontanelle, one of the great names in letters and science in his time, discussing the nature of the universe and how its laws could be determined. She spent hours studying physics with her indulgent father, and she used winnings from card games to purchase the latest books of math and science. She could do unbelievably long calculations in her head. Because as a woman she could not attend university classes or sit in cafes where men met to discuss the latest scientific thinking, she used money from her patrimony to hire illustrious scientists as tutors, including the outstanding mathematician of his day, Pierre de Maupertuis. At one point, she rescued herself from a huge gambling debt (one of the royals was cheating, and she could say nothing) by coming up with the concept of derivatives.

She studied for the love of it. Early in her life, she did not think of making a contribution to science herself--women did not publish scientific work, and aristocrats had many social duties that kept them occupied. Only when she took up with Voltaire and became his lover did she begin seriously pursuing experimental science. Voltaire was not nearly the physicist he thought himself to be, and it was through their arguments that Emilie gained the confidence to begin writing scientific papers and books herself.

Her translation of Newton’s Principia Mathematica is her masterpiece. Presumably French scientists could read Latin as well as she could--Latin was the lingua franca of publication--but Newton’s thinking was so complex (and his writing so odd) that few could understand him. Emilie understood thoroughly, and did not merely translate but rather rewrote Newton’s masterpiece into French that her compatriots could understand. She then supplied commentaries to clarify and elaborate on Newton’s ideas. Finally, where Newton had not provided mathematical proofs, Emilie figured out what these would be and supplied them. He translation is still the standard one used in France.

I suppose it should be obvious that Emilie du Châtelet was unconventional, and this is the second thing I love about her. She defeated a young nobleman in a fencing match as a way of warding off his unwanted advances. She took lovers whenever it suited her. She home-schooled her son because she didn’t want him exposed to religious or scientific nonsense. She lived with Voltaire for fifteen years at her husband’s ancestral home at Cirey (he approved of the relationship), amassing a library rivaling any university’s, and setting up a state-of-the-art physics lab in one of the wings.

One feature of the Chateau de Cirey serves as probably the best symbol of Emilie’s irrepressible spirit and unconventionality. In the parlor of her apartment in the chateau, she arranged chairs and tables around a beautiful claw-footed bathtub, where she lounged in only a thin chemise rendered transparent by the water. Her guests sipped wine or coffee (the new rage) and nibbled on pastries while Emilie sloshed to her heart’s content. What a fantastic idea!

The third thing I love about Emile is her courage. She was one of the first women scientists to publish (although anonymously in her lifetime). She stood up to the greatest man of letters in France, her own lover, when she though he was wrong in his thinking about the nature of fire, heat, and light. She championed Newton over Descartes in the latter’s home country, to scientists who were not prepared to abandon a great French scientist for an English one, despite evidence of flaws in Descartes’ thinking.

I’m not sure Emilie would call her last love affair an act of courage, but I think it was. She fell madly in love with a dashing young soldier-poet and became pregnant at the unheard of age of forty-three. She could have ended the pregnancy, but that was not her way. She safely delivered the baby, a daughter, in September 1749, but died six days later of an embolism. It is that daughter’s search for information about her dead mother that drives the story of FINDING EMILIE.

Imagine Emilie today. Head of her own lab and member of every important academy of science, she is trotting off to Vegas for a meeting of top physicists, where, dripping with bling, she will party in the hot tub and gamble the night away. Emilie, I’m sorry you lived too soon.

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Why I Love to Write About the South by Lynne Bryant

From the redneck to the gothic, Southern fiction covers the muddy waterfront of genres and styles. The American South is barefoot and pregnant with possibilities for lies, fables, tall-tales, and other fabrications generally falling under the category of fiction. Writing as deep and wide as the fecund Delta cotton fields has produced a body of literature giving us such classics as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Edward P. Jones’ The Known World.

Southern historical novelists have as their canvas the sweeping history of a nation at war with itself, and the enslavement of an entire race of human beings for the perpetuation of a way of life that has been both reviled and romanticized. Southern humorists have at their disposal a vocal accent, joie de vivre, and classic sense of style that are unrivaled, not only for their beauty, but also for the opportunity they provide for eliciting a belly laugh. Southern thriller and mystery writers can mine the dark and deeply buried secrets hidden for generations in Southern lineages, or plumb the alligator infested Southern swamps and rivers for bodies sunk deep into the mud and covered by the trails of the bottom-feeding catfish.

Azaleas shutterstock

Southern writing can be as spare as Faulkner or as effusive as Conroy, and still cause the reader to give pause, to revel in an experience of sight, sound, scent, and texture. Whether it is a description of a delectable Southern culinary tradition handed down for generations, or the scents of a dark graveyard shadowed by wisteria laden oaks on a humid spring evening, or the sounds of Southern women calling to each other in muted diphthongs (“Hey y’all, how’s your mama?”), something about a story penned in the Southern backdrop is evocative of a sensory experience.

Cotton field shutterstock

For all of these reasons—the mud and the blood and the delicious thought of hot buttered biscuits slathered with muscadine jelly—I love to write about the South. I get to step back into my Mississippi childhood, revel in those sensations that surrounded me with a carapace of identity. Underneath that outer hull of a funny accent, an affinity for butter, and the constant requirement for a rear-view mirror (“Does my butt look big in this?”) is a deeply rooted core. I am a Southerner, and you can take the girl out of the South, but…

To learn more about me, and about that Southern sense of place, please visit my website and blog at http://www.lynne-bryant.com/.

India Black by Carol K Carr

In the red light district of London, India Black is in the business of selling passion her clientele will never forget. But when it comes to selling secrets, India's price cannot be paid by any man...

In the winter of 1876, the beautiful young madam India Black is occupied with her usual tasks - keeping her tarts in line, avoiding the police, and tolerating the clergyman bent on converting her girls. But when Sir Archibald Latham of the War Office dies from a heart attack while visiting her brothel, India is unexpectedly thrust into a deadly game between Russian and British agents who are seeking the military secrets Latham carried.

French, the handsome British spy, discovers India disposing of Latham's body and blackmails her into recovering the missing documents. Their quest takes them from the Russian embassy to Claridge's Hotel, from London to the English coast, all the while dodging Russians intent to do them harm.

But it is their own tempestuous relationship they will have to weather as India and French attempt to resist the mutual attraction between them - an attraction that can prove as deadly as the conspiracy entangling them...

What is it about the Victorian era that gives us such smart, sassy, witty and readable women with a knack for amateur sleuthing? Move over Lady Julia Grey. Shove along Amelia Peabody and dance off towards the sunset Emily Ashton, because there is a new girl in town - India Black.

I thought from seeing the cover that this looked like a book that I might like. Right from the start of the prologue, I knew I was going to enjoy it mainly because of the voice. Here are the opening two sentences:

My name is India Black. I am a whore.

If those words made you blush, if you hand fluttered to your cheek or your harrumphed disapprovingly into your beard, then you should return this volume to the shelf, cast a cold glance at the proprietor as you leave, and hasten home feeling proper and virtuous.

The main question was whether the voice could be maintained through the novel without becoming annoying, and I am glad to say that it was.

So what is the book about? India Black is the madam at the Lotus House. As she says herself "I'm out of the game myself  these days, but can set you up with a nice girl, any night after seven". One of the clients taking advantage of this deal is the man India calls Bowser, otherwise known as Sir Archibald Latham, important figure in the Disraeli government. When he dies in her establishment, India knows that it is bad new all round. With the assistance of the very enterprising urchin Vincent, India comes up with a plan to dispose of the body, but as she is disposing of the body she is approached by the spy only known as Mr French. A quick bit of banter and blackmail later and suddenly India finds herself involved in the spy game.

It seems that Bowser had bought some important government papers with him to her house of ill repute, but now they are missing and it is a matter of vital national importance that they are recovered. The government wants them, the opposition wants them, and the enemy (in this case the Russians) definitely want them. And so India suddenly finds herself in all kinds of unlikely situations.

It would be remiss of me to go much further without mentioning Black. Strong, intelligent, handsome, relatively quiet, gets things done type of guy - be still my beating heart! I am so glad that this is the first of a series because I can't wait to find out more about Black. At this stage he is so mysterious that neither the reader or India even know his first name. We are assured that it is not a run of the mill name like John or William and not totally outlandish. Perhaps we will find out in future books.

I did notice in the back cover blurb (above) that it talks about a relationship between Black and India but I didn't really feel the mutual attraction all that much. It was definitely there, and it is a good foundation to build the tension in future reads, but I didn't think it was as strong an influence on the storyline as it could have been or that it is inferred to be in the blurb.

When a book has you laughing out loud on the train, you know that it is a good one, and it would be a perfect pick me up book! I will definitely be putting a request in for the next book as soon as I can, and the cover for the next book is gorgeous too!


I was prompted to read this book in order to participate in the blog tour being run by Premier Virtual Author Book Tours, although I got my copy of the book from the library. To visit other stops on the tour, click on the link above. Thanks for the push. I really enjoyed the book!

HT News

The shortlist for the second annual Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has been announced. The inaugural winner was Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.

The shortlisted titles are:

Andrea Levy's The Long Song (Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy's C (Jonathan Cape)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Sceptre)
Ghostlight by Joseph O' Connor (Harvill Secker)
Heartstone by C J Sansom (Mantle)
To Kill a Tsar by Andrew Williams (John Murray).

Have you read any of these? Did you think they were prize worthy?

A Few Questions and Answers with Ciji Ware

Today we are pleased to welcome Ciji Ware to Historical Tapestry today to talk about her new novel, Race to Splendor.

QUESTION: Why do you love unusual settings?

In my former career as a reporter for ABC radio and TV, based in Los Angeles, and as a magazine journalist, I have travel extensively to cover stories all over the world, so I didn’t hesitate to head for the British Isles, or Wyoming, New Orleans, or Natchez to do the research required for the six historical novels I’ve published, thus far. For me, the exotic locales featured in my work, are, in themselves, “characters” in my novels. I love to take readers to worlds I know well, but places they may never have seen like the Scottish Highlands (Island of the Swans), or the West Country of Cornwall (A Cottage by the Sea), to the swamps of Louisiana (Midnight on Julia Street), or the plantation country of Mississippi (A Light on the Veranda)—and create surroundings as real as I can make them.


QUESTION: Why do you love writing about San Francisco, the setting for your latest historical novel, A Race to Splendor?

I am a California gal, through and through, born in Pasadena and raised in the bucolic village of Carmel, California. The biggest treat in my youth was to be taken on the old Del Monte Special train from Monterey to visit San Francisco, the setting for the classic radio drama, One Man’s Family, that my father wrote for 14 of its 27 years on NBC. I loved all the things abut the City by the Bay that tourists love: the cable cars, the majestic Golden Gate Bridge, the ferries plying back and forth across San Francisco Bay, the wonderful Dungeness crab that comes into season each January—and the stunning hotels like the St. Francis, the Palace, and the Fairmont atop Nob Hill (which endured despite the horrific 1906 San Francisco earthquake and firestorm). Most Christmases my family would take the old Del Monte Special train from my home town on the Monterey Peninsula up to “The City” and do our shopping. When my writer-father was in the chips, we’d stay at one of the gorgeously-decorated hotels and my parents would treat us to afternoon tea. Wonderful memories.

But I also embraced the incredible diversity of a port city that was built by citizens of every nationality on the planet, including Chinese immigrants who came from abject poverty in Asia to try to make a better life on our shores. All this background helped when I began the research for A Race to Splendor (Pub date April 5). I didn’t just leave my heart in San Francisco when I was a child, I spent thirty years trying to get back to the city I adore. After living in New York, Boston, and LA for a big chunk of my working life, I joyously started packing the second my husband was offered a chance to join the Silicon Valley “revolution” at Quicken.com at the end of the 1990s!

QUESTION: What drew you to writing about San Francisco and the aftermath of the cataclysmic 1906 earthquake and firestorm?


In 1998--long before Katrina and the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan--my husband and rented a flat in an early twentieth century building a few blocks from the fabled Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. These apartments, I soon learned, were designed by Julia Morgan, the first licensed woman architect in California. Our building manager mentioned in passing that Morgan was also the architect who, at age 34, won the post-quake commission in the spring of 1906 to restore the ravaged beaux arts-styled hostelry just down the street. I was immediately curious to know more about my new neighborhood and the history of that turn-of-the-century cataclysm that leveled 400 city blocks and left 250,000 of 400,000 San Franciscans homeless for up to two years. Before long, I stumbled across insurance pictures of the hotel’s interior destruction and the absolute obliteration of the surrounding area, including harrowing images of the corner of Taylor and Jackson, the exact spot where we were then living! Then I learned of the race against the clock during the rebuilding of competing hotels to open their doors by the first anniversary of the quake--April 18, 1907--to prove to the world that San Francisco would, indeed, rise from the ashes. What historical novelist could resist such a call to her computer?

QUESTION: What books have influenced you and your writing over the years?


Since I come from a writing family, as a child I grew up with books stuffed in every corner of my home. My father was also a huge fan of what he called “Swash-Bucklers” –films like Ivanhoe, The Three Musketeers, and stories set in the UK, such as Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, or Jamaica Inn. I was encouraged to read the original books on which the movies were based, so I devoured du Maurier, of course, along with Anya Seton’s Green Darkness, and the Winthrop Woman, and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Later I discovered Dickens and Jane Austen—which in their day were “contemporary” writers, of course, but give us such a glimpse into the past. Given these earlier influences, my idea of heaven is to curl up on the couch with a fire in the fireplace, a cup of tea by my side, and a good, juicy historical!


It’s been great fun visiting with you on Historical Tapestry. For more info about the other historicals I’ve written, please visit www.cijiware.com

Race to Splendour is released  today (1 April)