Widowed and destitute, Lucy St.John is fighting for survival and makes a
terrible choice to secure a future for her children. Worse still, her daughter
Luce rejects the royal court and a wealthy arranged marriage and falls in love
with a charismatic soldier. As England tumbles toward bloody civil war, Luce’s
beloved brother Allen chooses to fight for the king as a cavalier. Allen and
Luce are swept up in the chaos of war as they defend their opposing causes and
protect those they love.
Will war unite or divide them? And will they find love and a home to return
to—if they survive the horror of civil war? In the dawn of England’s great
rebellion, love is the final battleground.
A true story based on surviving memoirs, court papers, and letters of Elizabeth
St.John's family, By Love Divided tells of the war-time experiences of Lucy
St.John, the Lady of the Tower. This powerfully emotional novel tells of
England's great divide and the heart-wrenching choices one family faces.
Growing up in England where the weather promotes reading and the countryside is full of castles and ancient churches, I spent much of my childhood buried in old books, family papers, and walking around ruins. My parents loved history and passed that gene on to me. Our favorite days were spent “St.John-hunting” where we would follow some thread in our family tree and end up in a forgotten churchyard or country house, face-to-face with an ancestor. When I came to write The Lady of the Tower, I felt I knew the characters intimately because of my familiarity with their correspondence and diaries, and that so many of their portraits are preserved at our ancestral home of Lydiard House.
I’m very fortunate since my family kept some personal documents,
and an extensive family tree preserved on great pieces of Antiquarian sized
paper which had been handed down by generations. Those inspired me to want to
write only relying on primary sources, and so I then visited museums and
libraries where records might be stored. By Love Divided draws on Lucy
Hutchinson’s seventeenth-century memoirs, which are archived at Nottingham
Castle. When I first encountered them twenty years ago, they were hidden in a
battered file cabinet in the castle offices, and by asking and poking around I
was thrilled to see the notebooks firsthand. So although pretty much all my
records are accessible to the general public, it can take a lot of detective
work to find them.
However, reading about the past is not the same as writing about
it, and for me, the most challenging part of capturing my ancestors on paper
was to ensure that I stayed as true to their characters as I could. I did this
by reading as many extant documents as possible – even fragments of a letter, or
the inventory accompanying a will can give so many clues into a person’s life.
And then, looking at the actions across their lives can sometimes inform their
character. In researching Allen Apsley, Lucy St.John’s son in By Love Divided,
I came across a record that he frequently came drunk into Parliament. That
started a whole train of thought that perhaps he was suffering from PTSD as a
result of his action in the Civil War, and so I then sought to find evidence
that might support that.
Writing about the English Civil War in By Love Divided, I was
really determined to bring independent fresh eyes to the conflict, and that
made for an extremely interesting journey. Firstly, the ambiguity of the war as
it unfolded struck home. A credible historical fiction writer has to “write in
the now”; our characters don’t know what lies ahead, although we (often
tragically) do. In the 1630s and ‘40s, so many people were making decisions
based on very limited knowledge, hear-say, and confusing information. And, they
really didn’t think that their actions would lead to armed conflict. Loyalties
were fluid – often more to their Land Lords than to any particular cause. And,
as in any war, the masses just wanted to get on with their daily lives.
circa 17th Century
When I was writing The Lady of the Tower, I didn’t intentionally
set out to write a series. And yet, I knew there were many fascinating stories
to be told of my ancestors. Reaching the end of the novel, I realized that I
could not leave Lucy’s world. My readers wanted to know more, and so By Love
Divided was born. A much broader landscape than the first book, this novel is
readable as a stand-alone but also satisfies those readers who wanted to know
what happened to The Lady of the Tower. And of course, there’s always more to
tell.
In By Love Divided, we left the family at the end of the first
Civil War, hoping for a peaceful negotiation and a resumption of normal life.
We all know it didn’t work out that way. And both Allen Apsley and John
Hutchinson played a key role in the world-changing events that followed. The
third book in the Lydiard Chronicles, Written in Their Stars, brings the family
full circle back to the Tower of London. Only not, this time, as keepers — but
as prisoners.
Elizabeth St.John
Elizabeth St.John spends her time between California, England, and the past. An acclaimed author, historian, and genealogist, she has tracked down family papers and residences from Lydiard Park and Nottingham Castle to Richmond Palace and the Tower of London to inspire her novels. Although the family sold a few country homes along the way (it's hard to keep a good castle going these days), Elizabeth's family still occupy them-- in the form of portraits, memoirs, and gardens that carry their legacy. And the occasional ghost. But that's a different story.
Having spent a significant part of her life with her seventeenth-century family
while writing The Lydiard Chronicles trilogy and Counterpoint series, Elizabeth
St.John is now discovering new family stories with her fifteenth-century
namesake Elysabeth St.John Scrope, and her half-sister, Margaret Beaufort. A
new medieval short story featuring these women, Road to the Tower, is within
the recently-published Historical Fiction anthology Betrayal.
Connect with Elizabeth
Website • Twitter • Facebook • Instagram • Amazon Author Page • Goodreads
Such an interesting post.
ReplyDeleteThank you for hosting today's tour stop!
Mary Ann, thank you so much for hosting me and the fam!
ReplyDeleteHappy to have you. Best of luck with sales.
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