Any book that opens with a quote from George Eliot is going to intrigue me, and especially if it's a novel about the early 20th century struggle for women's rights. So it's with particular pleasure that I invite Clarissa Harwood to share some thoughts about her debut historical fiction, Impossible Saints.
First, a little about the novel:
In 1907 England, Lilia Brooke, an agnostic militant suffragette, believes marriage to a clergyman is a fate worse than death. Paul Harris, a quiet, intellectual Anglican priest, is well aware that falling in love with Lilia is incompatible with his ambition to become the next cathedral dean. Lilia and Paul must decide which compromises they’re willing to make and whether their love is worth fighting for.
Sounds fantastic, doesn't it?
Clarissa says the idea for the book first popped into her head twenty years ago. "I saw a confrontation in a meadow between a studious boy who didn’t know how to play, and a fiery girl pretending to be Jeanne d’Arc, leading her army of brothers. That scene haunted me for many years before I finally gave in and started writing Paul and Lilia’s story. The scene doesn’t appear in the finished novel, but both Paul and Lilia refer to it and remember it as their first meeting."
Paul and Lila aren't based on real people, she says, but there's plenty of history.
"The only real person who makes an appearance in Impossible Saints is Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the best-known British militant women’s suffrage organization in the early 20th century. I’ve already mentioned that I based Paul’s personality on my own, and I do rely quite a bit on the Myers-Briggs personality typology when I create characters. If I’m struggling to understand a character’s motivations, I’ll often ask someone with a personality similar to my character’s for help."
Part of the fun of writing historical fiction is doing the research, so I wanted to know what sources Clarissa turned to for Impossible Saints. She says:
"As a doctoral student and later an English professor, I specialized in nineteenth-century British literature, so the poetry and fiction of that era always sparks my research and leads me to primary sources. An early influence on Paul’s development as an Anglican priest was Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers, with its delightful melodrama surrounding the lives and loves of cathedral clergy. Poets associated with Anglo-Catholicism inspired Paul’s story too, such as Gerard Manley Hopkins and Christina Rossetti. First-person accounts of the suffragettes’ destruction of property, hunger strikes in prison, and the brutal force-feeding they endured, especially Emmeline Pankhurst’s My Own Story and Constance Lytton’s Prison and Prisoners, were especially influential in shaping Lilia’s experiences."
Are you excited yet? Here's what Booklist had to say:
“The perspective is refreshing in that the church is not the villain, nor are all the suffragettes cardboard cutouts. One interesting aspect is the novel’s exploration of the contrast in ideologies between the more conservative, peaceful suffrage groups and the militant, property-destroying Women’s Social and Political Union. This parallels the spectrum in today’s protest-heavy atmosphere, lending the novel contemporary social relevance in addition to its romantic plotline.” - Booklist
And here's where you can find it!
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Impossible-Saints-Novel-Clarissa-Harwood/dp/1681776243
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/impossible-saints-clarissa-harwood/1126706953
Chapters Indigo: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-CA/home/search/?keywords=impossible%20saints%20harwood
This book is at the top of my TBR pile this month, and I hope you enjoy it too.
If you want to learn more about Clarissa, please connect with her here:
Website: www.clarissaharwood.com
Facebook: @ClarissaHarwoodAuthor
Twitter: @clarissaharwood
Goodreads: Clarissa Harwood