Authors: Jennifer Donnelly
Tags: #Romance, #Historical, #Historical Romance
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My East End: Memories of a Life in Cockney London
. London: Penguin, 2000.
Pratt, James Norwood.
The Tea Lover’s Treasury
. San Ramon, Calif.: 101 Productions, 1982.
Peterson, Jeanne M.
The Medical Profession in Mid-Victorian London
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
Pullen, Bob.
London Street People: Past and Present
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Reeves, Maud Pember.
Round About a Pound a Week
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Rey, H. A.
The Stars: A New Way to See Them
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980.
Roberts, Bob.
Last of the Sailormen
. London: Seafarer Books, 1986.
Roberts, Robert.
A Ragged Schooling: Growing up in the Classic Slum
. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987.
———.
The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century
. London: Penguin Books, 1971.
Ruffer, Jonathan Garnier.
The Big Shots: Edwardian Shooting Parties
. Debrett-Viking Press, 1978.
Rumbelow, Donald.
Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook
. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1988.
Scannell, Dorothy.
Mother Knew Best: Memoir of a London Girlhood
. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974.
Shonfield, Zuzanna.
The Precariously Privileged: A Professional Family in Victorian London
. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Speert, Harold, M.D.
Obstetrics and Gynecology: A History and Iconography.
Revised third edition of
Iconographia Gyniatrica
. New York: Parthenon Publishing, 2004.
———.
Obstetrics and Gynecology in America: A History
. Chicago: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1980.
Traxel, David.
1989: The Birth of the American Century
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
Trzebinski, Errol.
The Kenya Pioneers
. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986.
Tuchman, Barbara W.
The Guns of August
. New York: Ballantine Books, 1962.
———.
The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914
. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.
Unsworth, Walt.
Everest:
The Mountaineering History
. Third Edition. Macclesfield: Bâton Wicks, 2000.
———.
Hold the Heights: The Foundations of Moutaineering
. Seattle: The Moutaineers, 1994.
Wallach, Janet.
Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia.
New York: Anchor Books, 1999.
Weightman, Gavin.
London Past
. Collins & Brown Limited, 1991.
White, Jerry.
Rothschild Buildings: Life in an East End Tenement Block 1887-1920
. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
Wohl, Anthony S.
Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Wolveridge, Jim.
‘Ain’t it Grand?’ or ‘This was Stepney.’
London: The Journeyman Press, 1976.
Woodward, Kathleen.
Jipping Street
. London: Virago Press, 1983.
Youngson, A. J.
The Scientific Revolution in Victorian Medicine
. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1979.
I am indebted to the following works:
Everest: The Moutaineering History
by Walt Unsworth,
Lawrence of Arabia
by B. H. Liddell Hart
, Setting the Desert on Fire
by James Barr, and
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
by T. E. Lawrence—and to the following websites: www.firstworldwar.com; Wikipedia; www.parliament.net; www.bbc.co.uk/history; virus.stanford.edu/uda; www.cliffordawright.com; www.jordanjubilee.com; and the digital library at Cornell University, where I viewed online volumes of
Littel’s Living Age
, a general interest magazine published from 1844 to 1900.
I would like to thank the late Sheri Nystrom for graciously sharing her knowledge and experience of limb amputation and its aftereffects with me. And I would like to thank Clay Nystrom, her husband, for sharing Sheri.
Thank you, as always, to my wonderful family for seeing me through.
Thank you, too, to my agents, Simon Lipksar and Maja Nikolic, and to my editors, Leslie Wells and Thomas Tebbe.
And last, but very far from least, thank you to the wonderful readers, booksellers, bloggers, and reviewers who’ve embraced the Rose books so warmly. I appreciate your enthusiasm, emails, and kind words more than I could ever say.
Jennifer Donnelly
’s first novel,
The Tea Rose
, was a Book Sense pick and a Romantic Times Book Club top pick. Donnelly is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel
The Winter Rose
, and of the award-winning young adult novels
A Northern Light
and
Revolution
. She lives with her family in upstate New York.
Introduction
The Wild Rose
, Jennifer Donnelly’s third and final installment of the
Rose
series, is a sweeping saga of love, passion, and betrayal that unfolds over four continents during the course of World War I. Incorporating historical figures with fictional characters,
The Wild Rose
examines the themes of exploration, espionage, global conflict, and women’s rights in vivid, impeccably researched historical detail.
The dashing, elusive Max von Brandt weaves his way from the Himalayas to the grimy East End of London to Berlin, where he works as a German spy. Willa Alden, a wild, passionate mountaineer, is so devastated by the loss of her leg in a horrific climbing accident with her lover Seamus Finnegan that she travels to the farthest corners of the world trying to forget him. Seamus, meanwhile, is back in London after completing the first successful expedition to the South Pole—and he marries a young English woman in a desperate attempt to forget Willa.
In
The Wild Rose
, Max, Willa, Seamus, and an entire network of compelling characters twist and turn their way through England, Asia, Africa, and America, colliding with one another in a multilayered web of passion, hope, tragedy, and, ultimately, love.
Discussion Questions
1. Donnelly portrays historical figures—Winston Churchill, Ernest Shackleton, T. E. Lawrence—alongside her fictional characters. How did this blur the line between truth and fiction in your mind as you read?
2. How did societal gender roles and expectations shape the lives of the many female characters in
The Wild Rose
? In what ways did these women rebel against their expected roles?
3. Discuss the connections between love, exploration, and masculinity in
The Wild Rose
. Donnelly writes, “It was no accident that they were both unmarried, Seamie and Lawrence. They belonged to their passion, their yearning to see, to discover, to know. They belonged to their quest, and to nothing else.” What do you make of this mutual exclusivity between romantic love and exploration? Why was exploration considered an inherently masculine pursuit in the early twentieth century—and do you think the same sentiment exists today?
4. Why is Willa such an arresting, unusual character? Consider both the historical setting and the timeless aspects of her personality.
5. When Seamie tells Jennie about exploring in Africa, the “dark continent,” Jennie responds, “
England
is the dark continent. Take a walk in Whitechapel, down Flower and Dean Street, or Hanbury, or Brick Lane Street, if you need convincing. I’ve always felt that British politicians and missionaries should make certain their own house is in order before marching off to set the Africans to rights.” How do you see this dichotomy played out in politics and society today? What regions or issues would you describe as the “dark continents” of the twenty-first century?
6. The generation of men and women who came of age during World War I is often called “the Lost Generation.” How did you see this idea manifest itself throughout the book? What exactly did the wartime generation lose?
7. Which character in the book did you find yourself rooting for the most? Which character did you most despise? Whose fate did you predict and whose storylines surprised you the most?
8. What do you think would have happened if Willa hadn’t run into Seamie at Admiral Alden’s funeral? Do you think Seamie would have stayed in London with Jennie, working at the RGS, or do you believe Seamie and Willa’s love was too strong to have been denied?
9. Were you surprised to learn about the pivotal role of the Arabian front in World War I? Why do you think this part of the war is less well-known than the European theater?
10. After Max reveals to Seamie that he is a British double agent, Seamie angrily confronts him about his actions as a fake German spy that caused real harm to British citizens, including his wife, Jennie. Do you see any ethical difference between Max’s actions as a double agent and Seamie’s as a British soldier?
11. At the end of the book, Willa tells Max she can’t be with Seamie because of everything she’s done to him. Looking back, how strongly do you think Willa was motivated by an inability to forgive herself? Do you think that everything can be forgiven, as Max says, or are there some things you can’t come back from?
12. The last sentence in the book describes love as both a terrible and a wonderful thing. Do you think this is an appropriate theme for
The Wild Rose
? If not, what idea or sentiment would you pick as a unifying theme?
13. Have you read
The Winter Rose
or
The Tea Rose
? If yes, how did this book wrap up the story started in the earlier two books? If no, do you feel that you missed anything, or did this book stand on its own?
A Conversation with Jennifer Donnelly
1. You did a lot of research for the Rose series, as your extensive bibliography indicates. What kinds of facts did you seek out in your research, and what kinds of details did you leave to your creative imagination? Did you find that the research was a creative inspiration or a factually necessary limitation?
I’m looking for
everything
when I research—from the immutable time lines of major historical events like the Great War, to the structure and composition of an artificial limb in 1914, to songs sung at posh Edwardian parties. Research both informs and inspires me. I use it to portray the world that my characters live in accurately, and also to determine the possibilities, options, and limitations they face. I don’t deviate from the known realities of history—World War One starts in 1914, no matter how inconvenient that may be to a plot line—but I do push the more fluid boundaries as much as I can. My characters are often on the frontlines of social change. Fiona, for example, builds a worldwide tea concern at a time when few women owned businesses. India is one of Britain’s first female doctors. Joe is one of the first Labor members of Parliament.
2. Which character do you like best? Which character did you have the most fun writing? What differences did you feel as a writer in portraying historical figures versus creating fictional characters?
That is an impossible question! It’s like asking someone which of their children they like best. I love them all. Though I will admit that I really enjoyed writing Max von Brandt. He really surprised me; he totally refused to go along with my program and came up with his own path, and his own reasons for taking it. As for historical vs. fictional characters, I’m always conscious, when portraying historical figures, that they belong to all of us, not exclusively to me as my fictional characters do, and so I try to be careful to work within what is known about them, and to not give them motivations or beliefs that are wildly divergent from who they were and what they stood for.
3. The book has incredibly intricate plot points, familial connections, and seeming coincidences that you later reveal to be strategically planned. How did you keep track of everything? How much plotting did you do before you started writing, and how much plotting happened as you found inspiration in your drafts?
Thank you! I want to keep my readers entertained and guessing, and doing that takes a lot of thinking and planning and outlining. I map the different strands of the plot out in advance of the actual writing, and often color code characters so that I can see at a glance on my outline where they are popping up, if they’re on stage too much or not enough. I would say most of the plotting happens before I write. With a book of this length, one that contains so many characters, I have to know where they are going to end up—and how—before I start, or else I waste too much time going down wrong roads. That said, I sometimes find out that an idea isn’t working, or characters start doing what they want to do, rather than what I think they should do, and then changes need to be made to accommodate that. That’s what happens when you write strong-willed characters!
4.
The Wild Rose
is the third book in your Rose series. How much of this book did you have planned out when you first started writing the Rose series? Are there still parts of the story that you want to explore, or do you feel you’ve gotten the whole story out on paper?
I had nothing planned out.
The Tea Rose
, the first book in the trilogy, was the first novel I’d ever written. It took ten years to write and rewrite (and rewrite!) and sell it, and I could never really think beyond it until I actually
was
beyond it. After the dust settled a bit, I started to wonder about Fiona’s brothers, and what their lives might be like. And so the next two installments of the trilogy were born. One thing I’ve learned along the way is not to make pronouncements or predictions. There may be more parts of this saga to explore, there may not . . . who knows? It all comes down to the characters. If they start talking to me again, I’ll be there to listen.
5. Now that the Rose series is done, what are you working on next? Do you want to write another sweeping, epic novel, or are you hoping to focus on smaller projects?
You’re giving me way too much credit by assuming I have such detailed plans in place! It’s not so much about what I want to do, or intend to do, as it is about being grabbed and beguiled and compelled by some event, or place, or person, and being overwhelmed by the emotion of it, and then finding a way to put that emotion on paper. I don’t really find my ideas. They find me.