Tuesday's Child - The Muse by author Jeanette Baker

About Jeanette Baker

Jeanette Baker is the award-winning author of fifteen novels, published by Pocket, Kensington and Mira Books, many of them set in the lush countryside of historical and contemporary Ireland where she lives and writes during the summer months. Her ancestors, the O’Flahertys, hail from Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands located off the coast of Galway. She takes great pride in the prayer posted by the English over the ancient city gates, ‘From the wrath of the O’Flahertys, may the good Lord deliver us.’

Lauded as an author who has created a niche in the world of the time-travel paranormal, Jeanette’s previous stories have all taken place in Scotland and Ireland. Convinced that America has its own mystical elements, she set WITCH WOMAN in Salem, Massachusetts.

Jeanette graduated from the University of California at Irvine and holds a Masters Degree in Education. For the remainder of the year, she teaches in Southern California, reads constantly, attempts to navigate the confusing world of Facebook and, more recently e-publishing, concocts creations from interesting cook books and enjoys the company of friends and her grown children. She is the RITA award-winning author of the paranormal NELL.

You can visit Jeanette’s website at jeanettebaker.com

TUESDAY’s  CHILD – the Muse

I discovered Georgette Heyer when I was 18 years old and subsequently fell in love with England’s Regency and Georgian periods. It was during a visit to London in 1971 that I found THESE OLD SHADES, still one of my favorite novels. I spent the rest of my trip with my nose in one after another of Heyer’s wonderful books.

I’ve always been a reader, happy to spend long hours curled up in a chair mentally transplanted to other eras, other worlds. My mother’s aunt, a woman who disliked children on principle, made a practice of inviting me for a portion of every summer because I could be counted on to remain invisible as long as I had a book in hand. For the longest time I wasn’t loyal to a particular genre. I read Ray Bradbury and Theodore Taylor with the same enjoyment as C.S. Lewis and Judy Blume. In high school I graduated to the Bronte sisters, Alan Paton and Tolkien.  As an adult,  free to choose my own reading material, I gravitate toward Anna Quindlen, Joan Didion, But it was Georgette Heyer and her brilliant depictions of “the Ton” that drew me back again and again to that narrow world of rigid class mores, scintillating dialogue and those brave heroines who defied the social order even if ever so slightly. The inevitable happy ending gave me confidence that my read would be a satisfying one.

TUESDAY’S CHILD was inspired by Georgette Heyer, a woman who ordered pancakes and maple syrup for dessert and who scribbled plot points on napkins. Because of her, I was called to write about glittering galas, Almacks, first seasons, gaming, riding in Hyde Park and the brittle, stiletto-like ripostes of men and women  born to excessive wealth and privilege.

Even more, I wanted to expose the differences between England’s upper class, 200 families who dictated behavior and dominated the politics of their generation, and America, a land of colonists who believed that “earning ones fortune” was preferable to inheriting it. I wanted the conflict to be as strong as possible. What could be stronger than a staunch American Federalist, the newlywed daughter-in-law of a United States Senator, a war hawk whose son had been impressed by the British navy, and an English duke, Wellington’s confidante, recently returned from Waterloo due to a war injury, unwillingly enlisted to find the missing son and husband all taking place on the eve of the War of 1812.

            Unlike Heyer’s novels and the earlier Regencies, TUESDAY’S CHILD is extremely sensual. It is a love story that stretches the limits of marriage, of betrayal, of reconciliation and redefines the meaning of loyalty.  TUESDAY’S CHILD is my first American historical.  I’ve only written two. If you enjoy it, please consider THE RECKONING, a Last of the Mohicans-type novel.

Visit me at Jeanettebaker.com

About Tuesday’s Child

Possessed of a luminous beauty and a delicate grace that belied her spirit and fierce intelligence, Tess Bradford left Maryland for London on a mission of greatest importance. Her husband, a devout patriot, had been seized by the British navy, and only one man could help her secure his release. He was James Devereaux, Duke of Langley, and former aide to Wellington. But Tess wasn’t prepared for the passion that burned beneath Devereaux’s implacable demeanor.

Wealthy and powerful, Devereaux could choose any woman he wanted to provide him with an heir. But Tess sparked in him a raging duel of loyalties. She was an American—and someone else’s wife. Yet she aroused a desire that could destroy his reason…or ignite a love as strong as the winds of battle that raged around them—a love too powerful to resist.