Strait Lace
Blurb:
It is 1905. Edwardian England.
Harriet Loxley, the daughter of a vicar and niece to a prominent Nottingham lace manufacturer, spends her days playing cricket with her brother, scouring the countryside for botanical specimens, and never missing an opportunity to argue the case for political power for women. Given the chance to visit the House of Commons, Harriet witnesses the failure of a historic bill for women’s voting rights. She also meets the formidable Pankhurst women.
When Harriet gets the chance to study biology at Bedford College, London, she finds her opportunity to be at the heart of the fight. From marching in the street, to speaking to hostile crowds, to hurling stones through windows, just how far will Harriet go?
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The story of writing Strait Lace
In 2017, when I published my first book, Margaret Leaving, I knew I wanted to write another. I was lost without characters to interrogate and scenes to dream up. What was I going to think about in those moments before drifting off to sleep? Those moments when scenes unfold with glorious clarity, although words are like clay in the hands of an inexpert potter the next morning.
When I sent Margaret Leaving to agents I got very little feedback but one piece I did get was to write Margaret’s part of the story in real time, instead of as a series of things Jenny, Margaret’s stepdaughter, finds out about Margaret. As a comment it was way off the mark.
Margaret Leaving is a mystery plot with a theme running through it of how you can never fully know what happened in the past. However, I thought, back in 2017, if that’s what readers want, I’ll write a dual timeline novel. It will be a fun challenge.
I decided to write a book that centred on a problem faced by women that was particular to the age they were living in. My modern day character would be dealing with infertility and IVF, my past character would be a suffragette. I’ve long been fascinated by the suffragettes. The women would be members of the same family and it would be a family from Nottingham, where I had lived and worked for several years.
I was no more than two chapters into my first draft when my modern-day character’s mother demanded a role in the story, a major role. She was living in the 1970s and her female problem was being a single parent and holding down a professional career.
By the time I was finished with the first draft I had a monster of a book.
I entered a competition and submitted two sets of first chapters, as if there were two books. One of the side events of the competition was editorial review of my work for a modest extra fee. The editor was very enthusiastic about both pieces and asked if I would like to work with him. I liked his detailed and perceptive approach. I sent him the manuscript and explained that I didn’t know if I had one, two or three books.
His response was, “What is the book you want to write?”
The book I wanted to write was one with interwoven timelines. So I took out whole subplots, whole scenes, whole characters, until I got the book down to a reasonable length. I sent it to the editor. It came back with lots of, “You need more here” and “This should be a scene not a transition”.
We talked.
Meanwhile a friend I had sent the manuscript to as a sensitivity reader effectively did a thorough beta read and said, “Why don’t you structure this like Margaret Leaving. That worked.” I didn’t want to do the same thing again, but I got the point. What I had done wasn’t working.
I talked to the editor some more and we decided that the modern mother / daughter story was too firmly intertwined to be teased out but the Harriet story, the suffragette story, could stand on its own. It would require a lot of work because what I had was isolated windows into the past.
So that was another year’s work, putting back what I’d taken out and writing whole new chapters. It went back to the editor. When they came back I incorporated, or made a considered decision to ignore, his suggestions. Yet more new chapters.
Finally, in 2024, I had a book.
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Harriet Loxley, the daughter of a vicar, and a member of a prominent Nottingham lace-making family, wants to vote. When her uncle provides the money to study biology at Bedford College, London, Harriet splits her time between her studies, her romance with young Doctor Tom Bardhill, and activism with the Women’s Social and Political Union, the party founded by the notorious Pankhurst women. From chalking pavements to marching in the street, and from throwing stones through windows to addressing huge crowds, some throwing rotten fruit, you will wonder just how far Harriet will go for the cause. Meanwhile the lace-making business is having troubles of its own…
I had a book but I didn’t have a title. The title of the original book had been Crocus Fields and I wanted to keep that for the modern-day story. I wrote down title after title. I checked if other books had those titles. I tried out the titles on my writing group. Propriety was one title. Propriety is an element in the story. Strait laced means proper. Nottingham is a lace making town. Harriet’s family money comes from the manufacture of lace. Not Strait Laced though – that’s a title for a romance. So, Strait Lace. It refers to industry as well as clothes. It’s a bit clever. A bit archaic. It’s a title for a historical novel.
At least genre was easy. I had a straightforward historical novel.
And Crocus Fields is waiting in the wings, in need of another round of editing.
Rosemary Hayward
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