A Girl Should Be

 "Write what you like to read" is a time-honoured principle for novelists. I've always liked historical novels, with an elementary school favourite being "Rebels Ride at Night", about the 1837 Rebellion in Upper Canada.  More recently, I've enjoyed historical fiction by Paula Maclean, Paulette Jiles, Isabelle Allende, Sofia Segovia - to name just a few authors. I'm particularly interested in the history of the Left, in Canada and elsewhere.

Having studied history, (Ruth "Olson", M.A., Queen's University, 1973) I've decided to blend his my interest in the past and in fiction into novels of my own. I've written seven so far. Six  are in print, and available through libraries or from me, and a seventh, called "A Girl Should Be" is now at Baico Publishing (info@baico.ca) and may be in print in the fall of 2021. All of these novels are published by Baico Publishing of Ottawa, Canada

Before telling you about "A Girl Should Be", I'll say a few words about my first six historicals.

"The Secret of White Birch Road", 2005, is a girls' mystery set in the 1950s.   

"The Songcatcher and Me", 2013, involves folk song collecting in Ontario in the 1950s and has a co-protagonist loosely based on the Canadian folk song collector, Edith Fowke.

The two Grace books are about Grace Woodsworth, (1905-1991), later Grace MacInnis,  a democratic socialist, Canadian Parliamentarian and women's advocate. "Grace and the Secret Vault", 2017, is a young adult novel about Grace and her family in 1919 at the time of the Winnipeg General Strike.  "Grace in Love", 2018, is about Grace's  life and emotions in Paris and then in Ottawa, between 1928 and 1933.

"Votes, Love and War", 2019, takes readers back to Manitoba women's suffrage movement in the teens of the 20th century, and to the First World War, from the perspective of  Charlotte, a young Winnipeg housemaid who became a teacher. Real people mix with fictional characters in this novel, as in the Grace novels. In "Votes, Love and War" we meet two sisters, Lillian Beynon Thomas and Francis Marion Beynon, who in real life played crucial roles in Western Canada's women's suffrage movement.

In "A Girl Should Be", the novel I recently mailed to Ray Coderre of Baico Publishing, I've taken a minor character from "Votes, Love and War" (Charlotte's little sister, Annie) and set the novel in the late 1920s and early 1930s. 

The title, "A Girl Should Be", is from a quote from Coco Chanel: "A girl should be who and what she wants." It fits my novel, since Annie, my central character, is affected by the fierce debate and ever-changing attitudes of the day about what a woman's role should be.

 Also, there's a saying, "I'd rather be a human be-ing than a human doing." What Annie wants is to find herself and be that self - a challenge in the late 1920s and early years of the Great Depression.

"A Girl Should Be", won't be out until later in 2021. If you would like a copy of any of my other books, email Ray at Baico Publishing (info@baico.ca) and ask him for my telephone number and/or email address, and we'll talk arrangements.