What is Clarissa Harwood reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Clarissa Harwood, author of Impossible Saints.

Her entry begins:

Lately I’ve read two works of fiction that are very different in genre and plot, yet similar in their masterful use of sensory details and setting. I’m always impressed by other writers’ abilities to transport me to a place so different from my own.

Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers, by Sara Ackerman, is a historical novel set in Hawaii during WWII. Violet’s husband has disappeared, and she senses that her troubled daughter Ella knows something about his disappearance. The uncertainty of not knowing whether her husband is alive or dead is amplified by the uncertainty of wartime. When the American soldiers they make friends with leave to fight abroad, Violet and Ella are again left in a suspended state.

Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers is much more than a war story. It is a story about many different kinds of love: maternal love, friendship, romance, love for animals, love for one’s neighbors: “in the islands, the Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Hawaiian, haole, all managed to coexist.” One of the ways Violet and her friends show their love is...[read on]

About Impossible Saints, from the publisher:

Set in England in 1907, Impossible Saints is a novel that burns as brightly as the suffrage movement it depicts, with the emotional resonance of Tracy Chevalier and Jennifer Robson.

Escaping the constraints of life as a village schoolmistress, Lilia Brooke bursts into London and into Paul Harris’s orderly life, shattering his belief that women are gentle creatures who need protection. Lilia wants to change women’s lives by advocating for the vote, free unions, and contraception. Paul, an Anglican priest, has a big ambition of his own: to become the youngest dean of St. John’s Cathedral. Lilia doesn’t believe in God, but she’s attracted to Paul’s intellect, ethics, and dazzling smile.

As Lilia finds her calling in the militant Women’s Social and Political Union, Paul is increasingly driven to rise in the church. They can’t deny their attraction, but they know they don’t belong in each other’s worlds. Lilia would rather destroy property and serve time in prison than see her spirit destroyed and imprisoned by marriage to a clergyman, while Paul wants nothing more than to settle down and keep Lilia out of harm’s way. Paul and Lilia must reach their breaking points before they can decide whether their love is worth fighting for.

Visit Clarissa Harwood's website.

The Page 69 Test: Impossible Saints.

Writers Read: Clarissa Harwood.

--Marshal Zeringue