BLAST, BLITZ, PROMOS, REVEALS, & TOURS . . . : SPOTLIGHT w/EXCERPT - HISTORICAL

The Jewel Garden

by Marilyn Pemberton

Publication Date: February 28th 2018

Williams & Whiting

eBook & Paperback; 388 Pages

ISBN-13: 978-1912582037

Genre: Historical Fiction

BLURB
It was a time when women were starting to rebel against Victorian conventions and to strive for their independence. This is a story of Hannah Russell’s physical, emotional and artistic journey from the back streets of the East End of London to the noisy souks and sandy wastes of Egypt; from the labyrinthine canals of Venice to the lonely corridors of Russell Hall in Kent. Hannah thinks she has found love with Mary De Morgan, a writer of fairy tales and one of William Morris’s circle of friends. But where there is devotion there can also be deceit and where there is hope there also dwells despair.

Available on Amazon

EXCERPT
Mary spent much of her time in her bedroom writing; she was still working on her new collection of fairy tales. I enjoyed nothing more than when she sat in the evening and read her work out to me, or asked for my opinion. I reminded her that she had once said she would base one of the characters on me.

“It is very odd that you should say that, Hannah, for I want to read you that very fairy tale. Perhaps it is you who is the seer, rather then me? I am going to call it ‘Dumb Othmar.’”

“That is a strange name for a girl.”

“No, it is the boy’s name. He has his voice stolen by a wicked gnome, which is why he is dumb. It is the girl who is the hero and goes on adventures to recover his voice. Her name is Hulda, that is you.”

“Well, that is a strange name too. Where on earth do you get them from?”

Mary tapped her head with her pencil.

“They are all in there, in my imagination. Do you want me to read you this story or not?”

It was a wonderful, magical tale that I enjoyed all the better knowing that she had based the feisty, brave hero on me. As she had promised she would, Mary described Hulda as being a normal girl who was not frightfully clever or terribly beautiful, but she was caring and always helped others when she could. She loved Othmar, needless to say, and when she found that his beautiful voice had been stolen she decided to go out into the big world to search for it. So instead of the girl waiting patiently to be saved by the boy, as in most fairy tales, in Mary’s it was the boy who had to wait patiently for the girl to come back with the prize - his voice. I listened spell-bound from start to finish.

“And Othmar married Hulda, and his voice never left him again; but when long years after folk would tell him his voice was sweet and far more beautiful than the birds, he would say, ‘But it is not really my voice, it is my wife’s, Hulda’s, for I should have been dumb for ever if she had not sought it and brought it back to me.’”

Georgie had come into the sitting room without either of us noticing her, but before I could say how good it was Georgie took the words out of my mouth.

“Oh! Miss De Morgan, that is truly, truly, wonderful! How good it is to hear a story where it is the girl that has all the adventures. It made it far more exciting for me to imagine myself doing all those daring deeds, rather than sleeping for one hundred years, or waiting at the top of a tower as we girls usually have to do!”

“Thank you kindly, Georgie. I am very pleased that you like it. I wrote it with Hannah in mind, but really it is for all girls everywhere who would rather be vigorous and active than submissive and meek.”

“I’m glad they married at the end. After all the trouble she went through it would have been a shame if he had just said “thank you very much” and then married the local farmer’s daughter!” Then Georgie asked something she had obviously wanted to ask for a while. “Why have you two never married? I know you are both rather old now, but you were young once and must have been quite pretty then? Perhaps I should make it my aim in life to get you both married to some rich Englishman, would you like that?”

Mary and I were quite used to Georgie’s abruptness but even so we both howled with laughter at her candidness. I was the first who was able to speak. “Well, thank you for saying we must have been quite pretty once! And it is a very kind offer, but no thanks you, we do not need you to be a match-maker. It may surprise you to know, Georgie, that many women are quite content to remain unmarried. We don’t all need a man to make our lives meaningful. Do we, Mary?”

Mary hesitated for longer than I liked, and then grinned at the expression on my face. “Of course we don’t, Hannah. Men are bores. And anyway, who would marry us now that we are rather old? I’m going to write some letters now, so I’ll say ‘goodnight’ to you both.”

Author Info
Marilyn Pemberton has always worked in IT and is still a full-time project manager, but is hoping to retire very soon. At the age of 40, she decided she wanted to exercise the right side of her brain and so commenced a part-time BA in English literature. This progressed to an MA and then to a PhD on the utopian & dystopian aspects of Victorian fairy tales. During her research, Marilyn “discovered” Mary De Morgan, a Victorian writer of fairy tales, amongst many other things. She became somewhat obsessed with De Morgan and as she wanted to share her research she wrote Out of the Shadows: The Life and Works of Mary De Morgan, which was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2012. Despite her intensive research, there were still many gaps in her knowledge and because she just could not let De Morgan, or the act of writing, go she decided to write a fictional novel based on De Morgan’s life – the result being "The Jewel Garden." Marilyn is currently looking for representation for her second novel, "Song of the Nightingale," which is set in 18th century Italy and tells of two young boys who are bought from their families, castrated and then trained to be singers. The fate of the boys as castrati is an integral part of the tale, of course, but it is also a story of adulterous passion, deceit, murderous revenge, guilt, and enduring love. Marilyn is now working on a third novel called "Grandmothers' Footsteps" that will tell of four generations of women and their attempts to tell their “herstories” to a world deaf to the female voice.