What an exciting day your book’s birthday must be – especially when it’s your first novel! So I’m thrilled to help celebrate the publication today of Fireburn and to welcome its author, Apple Gidley, to What Cathy Read Next.
When Apple contacted me about adding her book to my review stack, she only had to mention ‘historical fiction’ and ‘set in the Caribbean’ before I was sold. Regrettably, I haven’t yet been able to read Fireburn. In the meantime, I’m delighted that Apple has agreed to talk about the book – its inspiration, and the process of research and character development. You can find her guest post, ‘History Won The Day’, below.
About the Book
The Danish-owned island of 1870s Saint Croix vibrates with passion and tension as Anna Clausen, a young Anglo-Danish woman, returns to her childhood home after her mother’s death. Her heart sinks at what she finds on arrival. Her father is ailing and desolate and her beloved plantation, Anna’s Fancy, which has been in the Clausen family for three generations, is in shambles. The unwelcome lust of one man and forbidden love for another makes Anna’s return to Saint Croix even more turbulent. Despite the decline in the sugar industry, she is determined to retain Anna’s Fancy but must first win the trust of her field workers, of Sampson the foreman, and the grudging respect of Emiline the cook and local weed woman.
Fireburn tells of the horrors of a little-known, bloody period of Caribbean history. Anna weathers personal heartache as she challenges the conventions of the day, the hostility of the predominantly male landowners and survives the worker rebellion of 1878, 30 years after Emancipation.
Praise for Fireburn
“Rich in description, Fireburn is a well-researched novel that shines a light on a historic period in St. Croix that has received little attention in literature until now.” (Gillian Royes, author of The Goat Woman of Largo Bay)
“Gidley is a skilful and assured story-teller, unafraid to take on complexities of race, class and gender, while at the same time creating unforgettable characters and a story that kept me reading deep into the night.” (Matthew Parker, author of The Sugar Barons)
Format: ebook (309 pp.), Paperback (354 pp.) Publisher: Author
Published: 1st October 2017 Genre: Historical Fiction
Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Kobo
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme
Find Fireburn on Goodreads
Guest Post: ‘History Won The Day’ by Apple Gidley, author of Fireburn
Job descriptions over the years have been a nebulous affair. A few have been self explanatory – secretary, interior designer, honorary consul – but most have involved a myriad of roles which defied one definition. Then about ten years ago I started filling in those inquisitive government forms asking for job title with the word ‘writer’. I felt a fraud until my first book was published in 2012. Expat Life Slice by Slice was just that – a memoir of a global life. Fiction though has always tempted me – whether reading or writing. To be taken out of our day-to-day life and invited into someone else’s is escapism of the most reverent kind.
Fireburn is an historical novel set in the Danish West Indies, now the US Virgin Islands. The seed of the story was sown as I listened to local dignitaries talk about the then upcoming celebrations for the centennial of American rule in 2017. What, I wondered, was life like on St Croix in the lead up to the sale? I would write about the 20 or so years prior to the transfer in 1917. It would be a story about life on a plantation dealing with the by then less-than-lucrative sugar industry. It would be told in a couple of voices and would catalogue the changing times on an island whose lingua franca has been predominantly English despite having flown under seven flags. The main character would be a white landowner, with the secondary voice being a black foreman.
Then I started the research.
I studied the architecture, the food, the clothing, speech and living habits. Glimpsing life through the eyes of Danes stationed on the island – school teachers, soldiers and sailors, planters and businessmen – as they wrote to their families and superiors back in Denmark, sent me further back in time. I read old accounts and modern takes on history, pored over records of slave ownership. I learnt Governor Von Scholten might have emancipated the slaves in 1848 but life did not improve for the newly free, and in some ways worsened.
Then I came across ‘fireburn’ – a violent though short-lived worker rebellion in 1878, also known as the Great Trashing. And there it was – the event around which my timeline would revolve, with the actual transfer from Danish to US ownership being the full stop on the story.
Women are traditionally the glue in the family, on an estate, in a village, and the more I researched the more I wanted strong female characters. Anna was born: an Anglo-Danish woman returning to the island to rejoin her ailing father on the family sugar plantation after an absence of ten years. No woman in those days would travel without a companion/chaperone, so Ivy, her English lady’s maid, insinuated herself into the picture and became instrumental in discussing issues of race and class. I needed a black voice as counterbalance and Emiline, the cantankerous estate cook and local weed woman, was introduced and quickly became a favourite. Who doesn’t like a bolshy woman?
But a story needs tension, so death, an unpleasant man and, of course, ‘fireburn’ were woven in. Writing proceeded apace, with good days and bad days and worse days, though the characters saw me through. Anna, Ivy and Emiline lived with me. They talked and I listened. How, Anna asked, could I properly describe the terror invoked by inflamed workers as they stormed the fort in Frederiksted if she was not there to witness it? Regurgitated stories are not nearly so dramatic as first-hand accounts. I needed a man.
Sampson, the black foreman, was given his voice back. And, as so often happens when someone is given a role, he became ever-more important until he was writing his own script. ‘Fireburn’, the event, was integral to a change in Danish policy, but it had just as much impact on the day-to-day lives of those living at Anna’s Fancy. In the interests of brevity and cohesion, the timeline was abruptly cut to the early 1890s when a natural ending occurred to the characters. ‘Fireburn’ became the focus and the transfer could wait for the sequel.
History had won.
Thank you, Apple. I love learning about the evolution of a book from initial idea to finished work and this has made me even more impatient for Fireburn to reach the top of my review pile. Plus, now I’m excited that there might be a sequel as well.
About the Author
Apple Gidley is an Anglo-Australian author whose life has been spent absorbing countries and cultures so considers herself a global nomad. She currently divides her time between Houston, Texas and St Croix, in the US Virgin Islands. She has moved 26 times and has called twelve countries home (Nigeria, England, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Papua New Guinea, The Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Scotland, USA, Equatorial Guinea). Her experiences are described in her first book, Expat Life Slice by Slice.
Her roles have been varied – from magazine editor to intercultural trainer, from interior designer to Her Britannic Majesty’s Honorary Consul. Now writing full time, Apple evocatively portrays peoples and places with empathy and humour, whether writing travel articles, blogs, short stories or full-length fiction. Her first novel, Fireburn, set in the Danish West Indies of the 1870s, will be launched on October 1st, 2017 (OC Publishing).
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