Simple Remedies

Plantain and house-leek, boiled in cream, and strained before it is put away to cool, makes a very cooling, soothing ointment. Plantain leaves laid upon a wound are cooling and healing.

…presented to you from The American Frugal Housewife – Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy, by Mrs. Child…

In Search of a Setting

The process of writing a novel involves many steps. From plot to characters to setting, all the elements must be there, no matter what order you work on them. For most historical fiction writers, my guess would be that setting comes first. Here at The Damsels, we’ve even talked about other time periods we’d like to write about. (Click on the History category below right to see those posts.)  But upon thinking about this, I realized that I had developed the plot of my historical fantasy novel before I decided where I wanted the action to take place.

I could have plopped this plot down just about anywhere in history. It would have been a completely different story if I had, but I chose the late-Victorian era because I’ve enjoyed reading novels of that time period. I wanted the setting to be in Europe, but not England, since so many Victorian stories are based there (see, there was this queen named Victoria). Anyway, I’ve been fortunate to have traveled some in Europe and knew I wanted a small city to base my fictional town on.

Enter Bruges, Belgium.

The Market Square, Bruges © JY Cavalier

This city of approximately 120,000 people has a historic city center that is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site. When I visited many years ago, I fell in love with its canals, the medieval architecture, and the windmills. What better place to set a fantasy novel?

Below are some photographs of Bruges, including a few from the Library of Congress that date between 1890 and 1900. It seems only the clothing and mode of transportation have changed. Enjoy!

Canal and belfry in background. Between ca 1890 and 1900.

Bruges canal. ca 1890-1900

Convent bridge. ca 1890-1900

The canals in Bruges are no longer used for commercial traffic. Only tourist passenger boats are allowed.

Kruispoort—Gate of the Holy Cross. ca 1890-1900

Kruispoort, modern day. The Kruispoort is one of the four preserved old city gateways. ©Wolfgang Staudt

Contest: Alchemy and Meggy Swann

Since Meggy’s last name is Swann and her best friend is Louise the goose, our contest will have an animal theme.  Briefly tell of the most interesting animal you have befriended (or who has befriended you).  It can be a pet, someone else’s pet, or an animal you met on a hike one day, but be sure to post by Friday, April 30, when I will draw a name to win a signed copy of Alchemy and Meggy Swann.  You get your name in the drawing an extra time if your story involves a goose or a swan:)

Book Review: Alchemy and Meggy Swann

Alchemy and Meggy Swann
Karen Cushman
Historical
Grades 7-10
176 pages

If there is a Grand Duchess of children’s historical fiction, it is Karen Cushman, this month’s featured author on Damsels in Regress.  For all my efforts to blend into the time period of which I’m writing, capturing public sentiment from primary sources and using vintage pictures to decorate houses, they pale in comparison to what Karen Cushman does with her latest novel, Alchemy and Meggy Swann.  In it, you feel the London of early Elizabethan times.  You truly feel claustrophobic on the narrow, twisting medieval streets Meggy walks.  You smell the refuse of a major city before modern plumbing and trash removal.  Your arteries literally clog at the mention of sausage pie and buttery tarts.  I have never read a book so visceral in all my life.

For all that, it has an engaging story as well.  Meggy Swann is thirteen years old and walks with the aid of two sticks her beloved grandmother fashioned for her.  She’s spent her whole life in a small village where her mother is the keeper of the alehouse, and villagers and passersby believe she’s marked by the devil.  When her long-lost father sends for her to join him in London, though, she meets a few city-dwellers who are coming out of the medieval mindset toward disease and disabilities.  A troupe of players, a printer, and a cooper all look past her crooked legs and give her the first real friends she’s ever had.

Her father, the alchemist, is another story.  He has a single-minded focus on being able to turn metal into gold, it’s “true essence,” and it blinds him to everything else, including Meggy’s welfare.  The story unfolds with as many twists and turns as London’s cobbled streets, and Meggy must keep all her wits about her to save herself and her father from his “great work.”

The other thing Karen Cushman doesn’t shy away from is period language.  I read this just before working on my post on this topic, and it was my unconscious example as I wrote. Characters say “in sooth” for “in truth,” “anon” for “soon,” “belike” for “it seems,” and not just once or twice to make a point.  It’s a delightful way to transport the readers back to this time, using vocabulary Shakespeare has either put into their heads or will in a few years.  And the Elizabethan insults will have you rolling on the floor with laughter.

Your chance to win a signed copy of this delightful book will begin Friday, so stay tuned!

Author Interview: Karen Cushman

Another first for Damsels in Regress: we’re a stop on a blog tour!  We’re teaming up with five other Seattle-area authors, Kirby Larson, Laurie Thompson, Kimberly Baker, Jaime Temairik, and Allie Costa to promote the latest release from the amazing Karen Cushman!

Since Karen has a lot of questions to answer between all of us, this interview is shorter than most we’ve done.  However, just follow the link to the Chinook Update in our sidebar to find out more about Karen and her new book, Alchemy and Meggy Swann.  In the meantime, here’s what she had to say for the Damsels.

1.  How did you balance your use of period language with giving readers the clues to figure out strange words?  Was it a challenge or something that came easily?

I wanted to suggest the flavor of Elizabethan speech–florid, colorful, and exaggerated–without writing something incomprehensible.  I worked hard at finding words similar to modern words or understandable by their sound or in context.  It was time consuming but great fun.  I’d get lost in the thesaurus or Oxford English Dictionary or one of the many helpful online language tools.  

2.  What was your favorite period word or phrase that you got to include in the book?

I pick gallimaufry though beslubbered, dampnified, and gorbellied come close.

3.  You’ve written books in so many time periods, set both in the US and in England.  What are some periods you’d like to explore in future projects?

I am intrigued by the state of the brand new United States immediately after the Revolutionary War.  In terms of U.S. history, we tend to think of the revolution in 1776 and then skip right to the War of 1812.  There’s a story in-between there somewhere.

Winner of A Conspiracy of Kings

And the winner of this months contest for a copy of A Conspiracy of Kings is Adalanne! Please email us at damselsinregress AT gmail DOT com.

And as promised we had some interesting entries! My favorite entries were:
– The Annux Chronicles
– Of Kings and Thieves

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Book Review: The Loud Silence of Francine Green

This is the last of our reviews of Karen Cushman’s previous titles for this week, though there are more lovely ones we could talk about.  Next week is all about Meggy Swann, but for now, I’m going to talk about her latest book prior to Meggy, set in the early days of the Cold War.

The Loud Silence of Francine Green
Karen Cushman
Historical
Grades 5-8
225 pages

Thirteen-year-old Francine Green lives within walking distance of Twentieth Century Fox studios in 1949.  She sees most of the world in terms of her favorite movies, but her own life isn’t nearly so exciting.  She has a hardworking father, a homemaker mother, and is the middle child with an obnoxious older sister and cute but pesky younger brother.  She goes to a strict Catholic girls’ school and never questions the nuns or her family until Sophie Bowman, who lives down the street, transfers to her school.

Sophie is full of radical ideas instilled in her by her widowed father, and she takes on the strictest nun in school, Sister Basil the Great, with questions ranging from why hats are required for church to whether crossing the international date line on a Friday enables you to eat meat.  While the nuns are exasperated with her nit-picking of church teaching, things grow more serious when she questions the growing hysteria over communism.  And Francine slowing begins to ask the same questions in the midst of going through puberty and dreaming of Montgomery Clift.

This book has much in common with Karen Cushman’s other books, not the least of which is superb story telling firmly grounded in a particular time and place, but it also offers something a little different.  Maybe because it’s closer to the modern day and the issues it raises can still be felt in America.  Maybe because modern Americans feel much the same way toward Arabic Muslims as post-WWII Americans felt about communist Russia.  Francine also has an “every-girl” quality about her that other Cushman heroines don’t, largely because her story is more recent.  Young girls (and not-so-young girls, a-HEM) can relate to Francine’s dilema of wanting to seek truth but wanting to keep a low profile all at once.

Like every good Karen Cushman book, though, Francine has her favorite expression of disbelief, annoyance, or anger.  In fact, she has two: “Ye gods!” and “Oh nausea.”  No one has Karen Cushman’s way with historical explitives, and it is one of the many reasons she gets two whole weeks of lovin’ here on Damsels:)

Book Review: Matilda Bone

Matilda Bone
Karen Cushman
Historical
Ages 9-12
167 pages

In the Middle Ages, fourteen-year-old Matilda, the orphaned daughter of a local Lord’s clerk, grows up in the manor house, living “somewhere between servants and those they served.”  She can read and write, and is taught Latin, French and Greek. Father Leufredus, her tutor, teaches her of the saints, to be meek and obedient, and to be wary of the evil in the world. When the story opens, Father Leufredus is on his way to London and drops Matilda at Blood and Bone Alley to begin her new life as the bonesetter’s helper.

Needless to say, Matilda doesn’t have a clue about what she’s about to encounter. All she knows is book learning and relative ease of living. Peg, the bonesetter, is surprised to find that her new helper doesn’t know how to make a fire, go to the market, or cook. But despite Matilda’s resistance, Peg begins the process of teaching her how to set broken bones, make ointments and tonics, and ease arthritic pain.

Matilda is a classic “fish out of water” character. Some readers have had trouble with Matilda’s tendency to look down on the simple ways of the people around her, referring to her as a snob. But I think she’s an authentic character—her actions and feelings are based on what she’s been taught all her life. She truly doesn’t know any better.

As Matilda meets more people and even makes friends, she slowly learns to trust the knowledge that she sees in the common folk and to understand that the best method of accomplishing something doesn’t have to come from a book.

Author Karen Cushman does a wonderful job filling Matilda Bone with both colorful and realistic characters who experience laughter and joy despite the harshness of their lives. The story shows a picture of medieval medicine that makes me extremely glad I didn’t live during that time period.

I recommend this story for anyone who loves a medieval setting for fiction. Be prepared to have patience with Matilda. After all, most of us can remember times when we were slow to learn from others.

Book Review: Rodzina

This week and next week will be featuring books by Karen Cushman as we lead up to an author interview and book review of her latest novel Alchemy and Meggy Swann.  I’ll start the week of with a review of one of my favorite books of Karen Cushman’s.

Rodzina
Karen Cushman
Historical
Grades 5-8
224 pages

In the words of Rodzina herself:

“That’s pronounced Rodzina,” I interrupted, making that sound between a D and a G and a Z that it seemed only Polish mouths could make, sort of like the G-sound in bridge or cage or huge, but not quite.  The lady doctor sounded like a bumblebee with her Rod-zzzzzz-ina.

About a girl and her journey on an Orphan Train.

After losing her father to an accident, her mother to ‘the fever’ and her brothers to a fire, twelve year old Rodzina is left all alone to fend for herself on the streets of Chicago.  Rodzina is brought to an orphanage where they have no room for her and force her to board an Orphan train , in hopes that she’ll find a family to take her in.  Set in 1881, the story follows her journey west with a slew of lovable characters from rambunctious Joe and Sammy, to timid Gertie, and lovable but gullible Lacey.

Despite her tough exterior, Rodzina is a vulnerable girl, scared and alone, and not as grown up as she pretends to be.  She dreams and hopes to be placed in a loving home, but fears she will become nothing more than a slave to some family who doesn’t want a daughter but an indentured servant.  She uses her wit and stubbornness to get herself out of a couple difficult situations while still holding on to the hope that she’ll find a loving family.

When I started writing the second novel in my Abigail Wenworth Series, it led me to research the orphan trains (even though I didn’t end up going in that direction).  So I already knew a good deal about the orphan trains when I started reading, and I have to say the historical details and accuracy in this novel are wonderful.  It’s incorporated into the story seamlessly, giving the reader a history lesson without them ever realizing it.  It is definitely a historical book worth the read.  You won’t be disappointed.

Alternate Cover

There were two covers for this book.  I’ve used the one of Rodzina on the train, but the book I read had a cover of Rodzina looking like a thug with Lacey cowering behind her.  It’s slightly misleading.  It gave me the impression that Rodzina would be a “bully” when nothing could be further from the truth.  If you’re like me and will sometimes pass a book over just because of its cover, don’t skip this book!  You’ll miss out on a wonderful story!

Contest: A Conspiracy of Kings

Before the release of A Conspiracy of Kings Megan Whalen Turner held a contest to see who could come up with a name for the series. It’s commonly referred to as the “Queen’s Thief” series.   The fourth book gives Sophos his own story.  And while after finishing the book I can make the argument that “Queen’s Thief” still works I want to hear what other suggestions you can come up with!

So your challenge, to be entered to win a copy of A Conspiracy of Kings, is to come up with a name for the series. Be creative!  Have fun!  What would you call the series?

Obviously, this is much easier to do if you’ve read the books! So if you haven’t read them you can still earn an entry into the contest by leaving a thoughtful comment to either the author interview or the book review!

All entries count!  I will draw a winner next Friday and I will also post my favorite suggestion.