Guest Post by Susanna Kearsley + Giveaway of Mariana!

Passages to the Past is pleased to welcome back author Susanna Kearsley, who is here in honor of her novel, Mariana, which was just reissued by Sourcebooks Publishing!  

I had the recent pleasure of reading the fabulous Mariana and it now has a firm place among my favorites shelf, I highly recommend it and thanks to Sourcebooks I have one copy to give away to a lucky reader!

And now, please enjoy this post from Susanna....

Thanks so much, Amy, for having me back. 

The last time I was here, in October, I talked a bit about the differences between historical fiction and non-fiction, and how fiction can sometimes do a better job of humanizing history for its readers. And that got me thinking, afterwards, of some of the other things that we, as novelists, can do more freely perhaps than our non-fiction colleagues. 

One of the first things I thought of was how we, in writing historical fiction, can turn our focus to the outer corners of the bigger picture, like photographers shifting their lenses away from the stars on the red carpet to look instead at the chauffeur who’s holding the limousine door. 

Charles II

For example, the main action of my novel Mariana, in the past, takes place in 1665, throughout the summer that the Great Plague leveled London. A historian writing about that year would have to get into details of how the Plague spread, and how Londoners dealt with it—how many died, and the way they were buried, and all of that. Which is only fair, since one of the primary roles of a historian is to chronicle the key events of history and contextualize them. Any historian who wrote about England in 1665 and didn’t spend adequate time on the Great Plague of London, or the Second Anglo-Dutch War, or what was going on at Charles II’s court, would not be doing a good job. 

Even when a historian picks one aspect of that year—like the village of Eyam closing itself off voluntarily so that it wouldn’t spread Plague to its neighbors—or when a social historian chronicles everyday life in the country, they still have to reference the major events and include a few chapters explaining in detail what’s going on elsewhere. 

Historical novelists set things in context as well, but we’re also much freer to swing our own cameras away from the main action, showing the people who lived on the fringes of all these events, and just letting our characters talk about what’s going on in the world in the same way that we do. (Hint: We rarely quote numbers and data and details. A lot of what is going on we never even notice unless we’re directly affected by it.) 

By having this freedom, not having to focus on rulers and parliaments, generals and treaties, we’re able to tell a much different account of the Plague Year; one just as historically accurate, but from a different perspective, as narrow or broad as we need it to be. And both ways of looking at history, in my view, are valuable. 

About Mariana

 Publication Date:  April 1, 2012 | Sourcebooks | 384p

{SYNOPSIS}

Time slip historical fiction at its best by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Susanna Kearsley, whose novel The Winter Sea won the RT Reviewers Choice Award, and finaled for a RITA award.

When Julia Beckett moves into a beautiful old farmhouse, she finds herself transported into17th-century England, and into the world of Mariana. Each time Julia travels back, she becomes more enthralled with the past... until she realizes Mariana's life is eclipsing her own. She must lay the past to rest or risk losing the chance for happiness in her own time. 

About Susanna Kearsley

Susanna Kearsley studied politics and international development at university, and has worked as a museum curator.

Her first novel Mariana won the prestigious Catherine Cookson Literary Prize and launched her writing career. Susanna continued her mix of the historical and paranormal in novels The Splendour Falls, Named of the Dragon, Shadowy Horses and Season of Storms.

Susanna Kearsley also writes classic-style thrillers under the name of Emma Cole.

 

For more information on Susanna and her novels, please visit her WEBSITE.

Giveaway Information

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- Giveaway ends on April 14th.