When my agent asked me to write a historical romance, my next task was to decide on a specific setting. Prairie stories dominate the inspirational romance world, but I’m not really a prairie kind of girl. I long for settings with elegance and mystique. My favorite place on earth has long been a stretch of country situated on route 17 near Paris, Virginia, featuring rolling hills, vineyards, horses, and gorgeous old plantation houses. You see, I’m a transplanted Southerner. I’ve now lived in Virginia for twenty years, and for a decade, I would pass that spot on route 17 while driving to visit my parents in Pittsburgh. I fell utterly in love with it.
But alas, once I pinned down my 1817 date and the plot for
my novel, I realized the best setting would actually be Charlottesville, Virginia.
A location slightly to the south and east of my personal paradise, but every
bit as picturesque and even more full of history and gorgeous plantations.
There I found the legendary Three Notch’d Road and the lovely Birdwood
Pavilion, which almost perfectly matched the plantation in my head.
Maybe you’re wondering why more inspirational romances
aren’t set in the ideally romantic American south. I mean mint juleps on the
verandah? Gone with the Wind? I think the answer lies in slavery. An issue far
from romantic or ideal. That idyllic Southern existence was an illusion based
on oppression, often even abuse. And inspirational romance fans aren’t the best
audience for ugly stories about oppression and social injustice. So my
challenge in choosing this Southern setting was to find a way to deal with this
issue and still create an enjoyable, romantic read.
The solution I found was to face it head on. Several of my
main characters are involved in the abolitionist movement. So the ugliness of
slavery is not overlooked. Meanwhile, my primary plantation owners are kind to
their slaves, treating them like family. And my main character, Constance
Cavendish, often finds herself drawn to befriend the slaves around her.
Meanwhile, my reader is able to focus on Constance’s
primary challenge, to teach the “scandalous” waltz to the twin sisters of her
former fiancé, the man who jilted her when she needed him most. That gives the
reader the perfect opportunity to visit those amazing plantation homes,
including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and
take a fun peek at the planter elite class of Virginia complete with its balls, fancy
parties, and Regency fashions. They get to glimpse the culture of that day including
music, dance, literature, and even science. They also get to experience the
nearby mountains, frontiersman, and American Indians.
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