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...
Review After the disaster which was my last read for this Challenge, I immediately realised that this book was perfect for laying that ghost to rest, which is topical because that is the theme of this entire story: Brigid Cleary is driven to avenge the brutal torture and murder of her mother, Bridget Cleary, who was a real-life victim of extreme domestic violence in 1895. A historical note at the beginning of the book shares the facts. Mathilda Zeller creates the world clearly and the characters are mostly very well developed. You find yourself longing for Brigid to find the peace that she's so desperate for; being thankful - or perhaps wishing - for friends like Florence and Adelaide, and falling in love with Edmund and willing him not to let you down. Perhaps the only character who convinced me less than entirely was Mr Baxby. I felt like the whole story could have been rewritten from his point of view and he would have been a sorry character. How lovely to be back with charact...