The month of Valentines usually calls up memories of great love affairs. But for women, great love and appreciation is owed to the trailblazers who broke free of traditional boundaries, forging paths that allow today’s women so many more choices for their lives and careers than were available to our sisters in the past. This month’s selections are Valentines written about the lives of these larger-than-life heroines.
We begin with QUEEN OF EXILES by Vanessa Riley (which releases in July 2023, available now for preorder.) In the wake of the violent Haitian Revolution, when the slaves of Haiti threw off both shackles and foreign rule, Henry I became their first king. Crowned Queen beside him in 1810 was his wife, Marie-Louise Christophe. But foreign debt crippled the new country, warring political parties battled for control, and Louise’s husband became incapacitated by mental illness. When he is overthrown and dies in 1820, Louise takes her daughters and their smuggled jewels and flees to Europe. There, she boldly continues her life as a former queen, touring Europe, attending events with other royals, and bartering with princes to find husbands for her daughters. Riley’s portrait illumines a woman who not only masters the male-dominated world, but triumphs over discrimination and political calamity to wrest a life of privilege for herself and her family.
Another pioneer of the early nineteenth century was a woman raised to be a courtesan who became instead an international celebrity: THE FIRST ACTRESS: A NOVEL OF SARAH BERNHARDT by C.W. Gortner. Pressed by her mother to enter the family trade after her convent schooling, Sarah rejects a life of ease as a “kept woman” and turns instead to acting. But her tempestuous style doesn’t please the directors of the Comédie-Francaise. Dismissed at nineteen, she reluctantly becomes a courtesan, but once again is cast out when, after discovering she is pregnant, she refuses to give up her child. Returning to acting in a bohemian theatre, she finds an audience who embraces her controversial style. Ever the rebel, she refuses to leave the city during the 1870 siege of Paris, remaining to tend the wounded. Her growing acclaim leads her back to starring roles at the Comédie, but her scandalous affair with her leading man brings new tumult. Continuing to live life on her own terms, she embarks on a London engagement that brings her an international reputation and sold-out tours throughout Europe and America. Gortner has us hear in her own voice the Divine Sarah’s views on such luminaries as the Prince of Wales, Oscar Wilde and Alexandre Dumas. From youth to old age, Bernhardt charted a course readers will thrill to follow.
Lauren Willig follows up BAND OF SISTERS, her exploration of Smith graduates who staff a World War I hospital in France, with the fictionalized story of another pioneering Smith graduate in TWO WARS AND A WEDDING. After studying archeology at Smith, new graduate Betsy Hayes heads to Greece to try to join on-going excavations. There she meets fierce resistance from the dig’s leaders, who believe women do not belong in the field. But archeology is shoved into the background for Betsy and Ava, her best friend from Smith, when war breaks out between the Greeks and the Turks. Despite having only rudimentary training in first aid, Betsy volunteers as a nurse. Horrific conditions and questionable decisions will change the course of her life and case a painful rift with Ava. The story continues two years later in another conflict when Betsy discovers Ava intends to accompany the Red Cross to Cuba to nurse those injured in the Spanish-American War. Wanting to dissuade Ava from participating, Betsy journeys to Cuba and is once again drawn into the conflict. Full of fascinating detail about these two little-known wars and illumined by descriptions of historical figures like Clara Barton and Teddy Roosevelt, Willig’s story highlights the challenges of wartime nursing and the difficulties of a woman fighting for her identity in a male-dominated world.
We finish with a glimpse into another Caribbean figure in THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN CUBA by Chanel Cleeton. In 1896, Evangelina Cisneros is an eighteen-year-old rebel wrongfully imprisoned for fighting for Cuba’s independence from Spain. When newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hurst hears of her plight, he runs a front-page story on “the Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba,” making her the image behind the campaign for American intervention. Newly hired Hurst reporter Grace Harrington is sent to Cuba to cover the story, and with the help of secret courier Marina Perez, tries to free Evangelina. But the incarceration of more civilians and the explosion of the USS Maine bring the US into the fight, broadening the war and deepening the risk for all three women. Told from the point of view of each woman, full of fascinating detail about Gilded Age New York, the circulation war between newspaper giants Hurst and his rival Joseph Pulitzer and conditions among the embattled citizen of Cuba, Cleeton’s tale further expands our knowledge of the war in which Betsy Haynes nursed while illuminating the story of the real Cisneros, a fiery Cuban patriot.
Ready to become an armchair observer of the lives of these amazing women? While you enjoy your Valentine chocolate, prepare to savor the stories of these triumphant ladies!
About Julia Justiss
Real, intense, passionate historical romance
Award-winning romance author Julia Justiss, who has written more than thirty historical novels and novellas set in the English Regency and the American West, just completed her first contemporary series set in the fictional Hill Country town of Whiskey River, Texas.
A voracious reader who began jotting down plot ideas for Nancy Drew novels in her third grade spiral, Julia has published poetry and worked as a business journalist.
She and her husband live in East Texas, where she continues to craft the stories she loves. Check her website for details about her books, chat with her on social media, and follow her on Bookbub and Amazon to receive notices about her latest releases.
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