Today I am delighted to welcome author, Nancy Jardine, onto the blog. Nancy is the author of the Celtic Fervour series. Novice Threads is the first in the brand new Silver Sampler series, and I cannot wait to hear what Nancy is going to tell us about this book.
However, first is the blurb, to give you a flavour of what this book is about.
The Blurb
1840s Scotland
Being sent to school is the most exhilarating thing that’s ever happened to young Margaret Law. She sharpens her newly-acquired education on her best friend, Jessie Morison, till Jessie is spirited away to become a scullery maid. But how can Margaret fulfil her visions of becoming a schoolteacher when her parents’ tailoring and drapery business suddenly collapses and she must find a job?
Salvation from domestic drudgery – or never-ending seamstress work – comes via Jessie whose employer seeks a tutor for his daughter. Free time exploring Edinburgh with Jessie is great fun, but increasing tension in the household claws at Margaret’s nerves.
Margaret also worries about her parents' estrangement, and the mystery of Jessie's unknown father.
When tragedy befalls the household in Edinburgh, Margaret must forge a new pathway for the future – though where will that be?
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Welcome to the blog Nancy. Your new book looks so interesting.
The Big City.
Novice Threads doesn’t begin in a big city but it does end in one.
In the beginning chapters, we find my main character Margaret Law growing up in a small rural town called Milnathort, in Kinross Shire in central Scotland. At the grand age of five years old in 1844, Margaret has no real concept of what the difference is between a wee town of five main streets and a big city. Few rural people travelled outside the environment where they were born. Some exceptions might be farmworker families who moved to where the harvests were, or to a new farm location after a ‘feeing’market where they picked up employment for a fixed duration like six months, or more likely one year. Millworkers stayed locally, as did people who ran the local businesses, the leases for premises often passed down through the generations. Those who did move away might have gained work in the city factories or be women who moved away when they married. A sense of distance, and what lies beyond, just wasn’t the same as it is today.
Margaret, being an inquisitive child, and her best buddy Jessie venture forth deep into the countryside
beyond Milnathort, or they go along a different route to the shores of Loch Leven. For them it’s ahuge adventure but the little saunter to the ancient well and standing stones is actually less than two miles, and reaching the pebbly shores of Loch Leven is achievable in less than one mile, if they skirt the borders of the reclaimed fields at the edge of the lochside. Of course if they want to venture far enough to see the small island castle on Loch Leven where Mary Queen of Scots was incarcerated for years, they would have to head south for around two miles. But on a sunny summer day what’s four miles when you only realise your short legs are tired on the trek home!
Not all children in Milnathort would bother about leaving the five main streets of the town but Margaret and Jessie are different. Neither have any siblings to cling to their coat-tails, and they find plenty of time to wander about. Margaret’s mother doesn’t like her around her feet when working in the family draper’s shop and just expects her to return home when hunger says it’s close to tea-time. Jessie, a little older at nearly six, does chores for her grandmother and her mother but she still has freedom to explore.
It’s only after she’s sent to school at the age of five that Margaret begins to learn about life beyond the handful of miles around Milnathort. The capital city of Edinburgh seems very far away. It’s actually only about forty miles, but that’s where Jessie is sent to when she’s orphaned just after her eleventh birthday.
Thankfully, there’s a good ‘Penny’ postal service operating so Margaret and Jessie keep in touch by letters. Jessie, as a scullery maid, h as little free time but when she does have her every fourth-Sunday half-day off, she wanders around the city centre of Edinburgh. Jessie’s place of employment in Albany Street is only a few streets away from the main thoroughfare of Princes Street which sits below Edinburgh Castle. Reading about Jessie’s little meanders makes Margaret envious of working in the big city!
When disaster strikes, and Margaret’s parents’ business collapses, she must find a job. Her lovely‘almost-sister’ Jessie recommends Margaret to her employer who is looking for someone to teach his disabled daughter to read. For Margaret, tutoring the Duncan daughter is a great alternative to training to be a schoolteacher, which is now out of the question.
Thank you so much for being my guest today. Your new book looks great.
(all media and guest post content courtesy of The Coffee Pot Book Club)
(all opinions are my own)
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