For this week's #HistFicThursdays blog, I'm delighted to be welcoming Rosemary Hayward to the blog with a guest post about her new release Strait Lace , as part of her Coffee Pot Book Club tour. Read on to discover the history surrounding this fabulous book. But first, let's meet the book... Blurb It is 1905. Edwardian England. Harriet Loxley, the daughter of a vicar and niece to a prominent Nottingham lace manufacturer, spends her days playing cricket with her brother, scouring the countryside for botanical specimens, and never missing an opportunity to argue the case for political power for women. Given the chance to visit the House of Commons, Harriet witnesses the failure of a historic bill for women’s voting rights. She also meets the formidable Pankhurst women. When Harriet gets the chance to study biology at Bedford College, London, she finds her opportunity to be at the heart of the fight. From marching in the street, to speaking to hostile c...
This is a fascinating book, blending history and fantasy in a way which makes each seem somehow more believable. Marie Powell uses historical figures and settings to give an expert voice to her work and makes the reader believe that they could be reading an exciting history of Welsh culture rather than simply a work of fiction.
Powell’s descriptive writing is beautiful and evocative, although sometimes I feel a Young Adult audience may have preferred a slightly different descriptive to dialogue ratio.
Overall, a clever mix of fantasy and history to shed new light on a dark period of British history.
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