Review Tuesday (Slightly Late)...and a Diatribe on Historical Romance

My apologies for being slightly late for "Review Tuesday". I blame the Labor Day holiday on Monday as yesterday did not feel like a Tuesday.

Today I'm reviewing "The Day of the Duchess" by Sarah MacLean. It is a historical romance. Some of you may be thinking, "Why is Caroline reading historical romances?" Well, here goes. For those of you have been long time readers, you probably already know that my own writing is essentially historical romance. I have always preferred "historical fiction with strong romantic elements" but the publishing field does not always recognize this as a genre. They should. Really. Why? Because I find that people who write "historical fiction with strong romantic elements" spend a great deal of time getting the historical part right. I'm obsessive about getting the details correct--everything from language to clothing, and all things in between.

Recently, I've noticed a lot of chatter on the Historical Novel Society's Facebook group (and other places) about the trend in historical fiction towards making characters a bit too unique, as in taking one historically documented person who did terrific things or went against the grain, and using that as a backup to characters doing very unhistorical things. I will admit that I verged on that with "Rebel Heart". My heroine Julienne was pretty bad ass to start with--sort of like Mati Hari (who didn't come on the scene for many more decades) and Belle Boyd (a real Civil War spy) rolled into one. Sure, there are plenty of documented Civil War female spies on both sides of the fight, so I feel like Julienne's part in the spy ring was justified. She probably is a little too independent for the time period, but I like to believe that when dealt the hand she was given, the human spirit kicks in and does what it needs to do, no matter what the time period.

My issue with "straight" historical romance (meaning those novels with scantily clad ladies and gents on the cover), is that the authors often twist the time period and characters to suit modern day attitudes. This is what I encountered in "The Day of the Duchess". I was initially attracted to this novel because it features one of my favorite tropes, the second chance romance. In the novel, which is set in 1830s England, Seraphina Talbot and Malcolm, the Duke of Haven fall in love, but "Sera" is the daughter of a new earl, who won his title playing cards with Prince Regent many years before. I'm thinking that this is a stretch as well. Prinny, as the Prince Regent was known, was not a model citizen, so I could see this happening, but still, it's a stretch. In any case, Seraphina and her many sisters are known as the "Soiled S's". They all have "S" names which gets pretty ridiculous when you get down to Sesily (instead of Cecily). But I digress.

Because she is considered "beyond the pale", Seraphina doesn't trust the Duke to propose, even as they have imperiled her reputation with a lot of furtive glances and hand holding. Worried that her sisters will not be able to make decent marriages, Sera and her mother concoct a scheme to ensure that Duke makes an honest woman of her. Of course, the Duke does and when he finds out that he has been trapped, he is not a happy camper. Loads of bad things happen and Sera leaves Malcolm. She finds her fortune in a Boston tavern, and this is where I start to roll my eyes a bit. Sera has quite the singing voice, and after making friends with an enterprising American, takes to the stage as "The Dove".

Three years pass and Sera has decided that she wants to return home to England. She is hell bent on getting a divorce from Malcolm and running her own tavern in Covent Garden. The one thing that MacLean did get right was the fact that married women could not own property--anything that they owned belonged to their husbands. Also, divorces required an act of Parliament, which MacLean does detail, but it is a very simplistic explanation. Prior to the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, the only cause for a full divorce was adultery, at least for the husbands suing their wives for adultery. If a wife brought a case against the husband, she had to prove adultery and life threatening cruelty. So when Sera storms Parliament demanding a divorce, I found myself rolling my eyes once more. While Malcolm was a brute and cheated on Seraphina, there is no life threatening cruelty involved. Maybe emotional cruelty, but even then, that's a stretch, and it certainly wouldn't have held up in the 19th century. Sera convinces Malcolm that she is involved with her American business partner, so he promises to give her a divorce...if she helps him find a new wife. Of course, this is all an elaborate plot to win Sera back because Malcolm still loves her, even though he was a major idiot when they first married. But once again, this is starting to get outside of the realm of historical reality. MacLean leans heavy on the fact that Malcolm is a duke and therefore a "catch". The ladies that line up to vie for his hand are all newly minted debutantes. I am thinking that their families would not have wanted their daughters to marry a divorced lord, no matter what his title was. But we have very little information to figure this out as only 337 divorces were granted by Parliament before things changed in 1857.

I could go on about all the historical things that were just plain wrong in this novel, but I won't. And this is why I shy away from calling my novels "historical romances". I'm too entrenched in telling the truth, and so when I read something that plays hard and fast with the established facts of history, I get a bit touchy. I love romance, though you probably couldn't see that from looking at me. Is it so hard to write a historically accurate historical romance? What drives the established authors of the genre to commit such acts of...well fiction? Does the average reader of historical romance not know, or perhaps even worse, not care?

So, my review of "Day of the Duchess". MacLean is actually a great author. She does an excellent job with characterizations, even if some of them are a bit far fetched. Her prose is bit to "pretty" for my tastes but I'm sure it appeals to a lot of readers. Should you pick up this novel? Sure. If you are not acquainted with random historical nuances (such as I am) or you just want a fun read. There is a happy ending, though in some of the other reviews that I read, folks were not happy with sappy, predictable epilogue. To each his own, I suppose. "Day of the Duchess" is the third book in the "Scandal and Scoundrel" series by MacLean. Sera and Malcolm first appear in the first book of the series, "The Rogue Not Taken", which features Sera's younger sister, Sophie.

For more insight on marriage and divorce laws in England, check out the life and work of Caroline Norton. She is the reason that the Matrimonial Causes Act was passed. Her story is actually extremely sad, and when you compare the circumstances to fictitious renderings of divorce during the period, you might feel a little ashamed.

Interview with an Author: Deborah Lincoln and "Agnes Canon's War"

Today I would like to welcome Deborah Lincoln to the blog. Her new novel "Agnes Canon's War" is set during one of my favorite time periods--the American Civil War. There is more information after the jump as well as an interview.


Publication Date: October 1, 2014 
Blank Slate Press 
Formats: eBook, Trade Paperback 
Pages: 300 
 Genre: Historical Fiction
    

“I saw a woman hanged on my way to the Pittsburgh docks..” Agnes Canon is tired of being a spectator in life, an invisible daughter among seven sisters, meat for the marriage market. The rivers of her Pennsylvania countryside flow west, and she yearns to flow with them, explore new lands, know the independence that is the usual sphere of men. This is a story of a woman’s search for freedom, both social and intellectual, and her quest to understand what freedom means. She learns that freedom can be the scent and sound of unsettled prairies, the glimpse of a cougar, the call of a hawk. The struggle for freedom can test the chains of power, poverty, gender, or the legalized horror of slavery. And to her surprise, she discovers it can be found within a marriage, a relationship between a man and a woman who are equals in everything that matters. It’s also the story of Jabez Robinson, a man who has traveled across the continent and seen the beauty of the country and the ghastliness of war, as he watches his nation barrel toward disaster. Faced with deep-seated social institutions and hard-headed intransigence, he finds himself helpless to intervene. Jabez’s story is an indictment of war in any century or country, and an admission that common sense and reasoned negotiation continue to fail us. As Agnes and Jabez struggle to keep their community and their lives from crumbling about them, they must face the stark reality that whether it’s the freedom of an African from servitude, of the South from the North, or of a woman from the demands of social convention, the cost is measured in chaos and blood. This eloquent work of historical fiction chronicles the building of a marriage against the background of a civilization growing – and dying – in the prelude to civil war.

Praise for Agnes Canon's War

"Impressively researched, it captures the brutality of the war in the West and the complicated, divided loyalties of the people who are caught up in it. Agnes Canon’s War will have readers anticipating the romance and dreading the battles in equal amounts." -Steve Wiegenstein, author of Slant of Light and This Old World 

"The characters are likeable, intelligent, humorous, spunky and passionate people whose zest for adventure is met and then some! Superb historical fiction this reviewer highly recommends." - Historical Novel Society 

"Agnes Canon’s War is brilliantly researched and written. Deborah Lincoln has successfully described the occurrences of the Civil War era in the border state of Missouri and the resultant emotions upon the inhabitants of the area. Many neighbors were bitterly opposed to one another, and severe heartache touched everyone. Lincoln’s writing places the reader in the midst of that turmoil. Her research is accurate and lends to a skillfully-designed background for Agnes Canon’s story. An example is her reference to Westport Landing. It is a little-known fact (even to most Missourians) that this original port on the Missouri River, located in the vicinity of today’s Grand and Main Streets, resulted in present-day Kansas City. This heartfelt book will likely impress even the most seasoned historians." -William R. Reynolds, Jr. author of Andrew Pickens: South Carolina Patriot in the Revolutionary War and The Cherokee Struggle to Maintain Identity in the 17th and 18th Centuries 

"Years ago in fiction workshop, this manuscript leaped out at me with the most memorable opening line I’d seen in forever: “I saw a woman hanged on my way to the Pittsburgh docks.” On revisiting this story several years after my first beta-read of the whole novel, I was struck by how many details and scenes I remember. Historical fiction is not for the lazy writer. The tremendous amount of research that skilled writers weave into the narrative are simply amazing. I’m afraid I’ll be guilty of plot spoilers if I mention some of my favorite scenes or the tragic events that really happened. I will say Jabez has a first wife, and Agnes befriends her to her dying day. That first wife has a fascination for what today would sound like New Age mysticism. Any reader who hates reading about war should keep going, because all sorts of intriguing historical issues and beliefs come to light in Agnes Canon’s world. The prose is polished, the story spellbinding, the authenticity both inspiring and heartbreaking. Five stars!" -Carol Kean Blog, Book Reviews, Cosmic Rants

Interview

CW: Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get into writing?

DL: Like most writers, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. I remember earning the Writing Badge as a Girl Scout (I was maybe ten?) by writing and illustrating a book about elves (and binding it in blue cloth). And a short story about – surprise – a Civil War incident based on my family’s visit to Gettysburg. I still have both those astonishing pieces of literature. Somewhere.

I lived in Ohio, in a little farm town in the western part of the state – the REALLY flat part – and grew up on Nancy Drew. I hoped my dad, who was an engineer, would retire and become a lawyer so I would have cases to solve, which I would then write about. But we were a very ordinary, very vanilla-pudding middle-class family who loved each other and never did anything that could be translated into a plot, so I turned to history to find my stories.  

CW: What kind of research did you conduct for this novel?

DL: First of all, lots. And lots and lots. I started it in the early nineties, before the Internet, with only a small city library available (I was living in Oregon by then – am still living in Oregon, on the coast, and the local library is even smaller). So the book languished until the web made all sorts of information available. Did you know you can learn in graphic detail how to amputate a man’s leg (without anesthetic) just by googling “Civil War Medicine”?  Of course you did; everyone knows you can find anything on the Internet. And some of it is even accurate.

I also travelled to the locations. The town of Oregon, Missouri (the Lick Creek of the novel) appears to be little changed from the time when Jabez and Agnes Robinson lived there. There’s a big new high school, and the courthouse is now a little one-story affair, but other than that the houses along the square and the brick stores appear to be at least a hundred and fifty years old. The cemetery is full of kernels of stories to feed a writer’s imagination.

We (my patient husband and I) also spent time driving up the Missouri River (wish we could have steamboated up) from St. Joseph to Ft. Benton in northern Montana, the route that Agnes takes in the book. Then we drove down to Virginia City (in a March snowstorm) and visited Boot Hill there (read the book to find out why that’s important). We also explored the Gallatin Valley looking for the site of the Montana homestead. Came close, but there’s nothing there to identify it. Decided we really like Bozeman.

And my mother and I visited Uniontown, Pennsylvania, which also figures in the book. And I hope will be the setting of the sequel. (Watch for it!)

CW: Do you have a favorite character in the novel?

DL: Agnes, of course, has a big claim on me, mostly because I want to be like her. And I see a lot of my mother in her. (We are, after all, her spawn, or the sand in her hourglass, to use the somewhat inapt analogy I used in the book.) But of the other characters, I’m partial to Rose McDonald – there’s a beautiful tale somewhere there, but I’m not sure I’m the one to write it – and I loved little James and his black arrowhead.

CW: Who are your favorite authors (or books)?

DL: At the risk of being a cliché right now, I really enjoy Diana Gabaldon. I envy her productivity and what appears (on Facebook, at least) to be her unbounded joy in her work. I discovered M.M. Kaye’s historical novels years ago; there are two that are my particular favorites, one set in India during the sepoy mutiny and one in Zanzibar. I love Ivan Doig’s earlier works, and I’m re-acquainting myself with Paulette Jiles (Enemy Women). I also like a good cop story, particularly John Sandford’s Davenport and Flowers books (his dialog and character development are masterly). I could go on and on (Russell Banks’s Cloudsplitter, Geraldine Brooks, Martha Grimes). But I won’t. I will say, though, that I’m a book hoarder: I have a degree in Library Science, but never use the library. I want to own my books, have them at hand, pick them up and leaf through them whenever the mood strikes.

CW: Bonus Question: If you could time travel, what era would you go to?

DL: Start with maybe 1790, when the Enlightenment had provided all sorts of interesting thoughts to think and intelligent books to read, but being a romantic was okay, too.

Thanks Deborah for joining us here today. For more information on Agnes Canon's War or to purchase a copy, follow the links below.

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About the Author

Deborah Lincoln grew up in the small town of Celina, among the cornfields of western Ohio. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Michigan State University and a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Michigan. She and her husband have three grown sons and live on the Oregon coast. Of her passion for historical fiction, she says: “I’m fascinated by the way events—wars and cataclysms and upheavals, of course, but the everyday changes that wash over everyday lives—bring a poignancy to a person’s efforts to survive and prosper. I hate the idea that brave and intelligent people have been forgotten, that the hardships they underwent have dropped below the surface like a stone in a lake, with not a ripple left behind to mark the spot.” Agnes Canon’s War is the story of her great great-grandparents, two remarkable people whose lives illustrate the joys and trials that marked America’s tumultuous nineteenth century. For more information on Deborah Lincoln please visit her website. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Agnes Canon's War Blog Tour Schedule

Monday, December 8 Review at Forever Ashley Review at Back Porchervations Tuesday, December 9 Interview at Caroline Wilson Writes Wednesday, December 10 Review at Too Fond Friday, December 12 Review at Just One More Chapter Guest Post at Mina's Bookshelf Monday, December 15 Review at Luxury Reading Wednesday, December 17 Review at Book Babe Guest Post at Let Them Read Books Thursday, December 18 Review at Griperang's Bookmarks Friday, December 19 Review at Boom Baby Reviews Interview at Layered Pages