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- [00:00]
C.P. Leslie
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are back in Disney's Freakier Friday, now streaming on Disney.
- [00:07]
Linda Wilgus
We switched bodies. I am freaking out right now.
- [00:11]
C.P. Leslie
I think I just peed a little. It's an absolute riot. And the only movie that can be.
- [00:17]
Linda Wilgus
Described as so much weirder than the last time.
- [00:19]
C.P. Leslie
What last time? It's the Frequel. You ready? We've been waiting for that Absolutely Slays Disney's Freakier Friday, now streaming on Disney. Rated pg.
- [00:30]
Marshall Poe
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges, basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:37]
C.P. Leslie
Hello, everyone. I'm C.P. leslie, the host of New Books and Historical Fiction, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Linda Wilgas about her debut novel, the Sea Child. It's pretty well known, at least among readers of historical fiction, that Cornwall, England, was a major source of smuggling in the 18th and 19th centuries. Linda Wilgus places her heroine in the middle of that situation, but she combines it with mystical elements that set her story apart. Her arrival in the village is made of whispers. They start the moment she descends the two steps from the coach onto the dirt road. Two women stand in front of one of the thatched cottages built against the side of the cliff, their black knitted shawls drawn tightly about their shoulders. The women aren't pointing, but their looks are. Isabel cannot hear them with the wind blowing but she can tell that they're talking about her. Behind the window of the next cottage, a dirty strip of curtain moves against the breeze. Her velvet pelisse isn't made for the sort of wind they have out here, but this chill she feels consists of more than that. They know the thought comes into her head, or maybe it was there all along, muttering behind all the other thoughts she had had today about the landscape, which is rough and beautiful, and the dreadful springs in the coach, and the disapproval in the lean coachman's face when he stopped to change horses in Helston. And now please join me in welcoming Linda Wilgas. Hi Linda, I look forward to talking with you today.
- [03:07]
Linda Wilgus
Hi Carolyn, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to talk to you.
- [03:10]
C.P. Leslie
According to your website, you have quite a fascinating history of your own, including a childhood in the Netherlands and a career that includes selling books and designing knitting patterns. Please start by telling us about your own story and how you decided to add writing a novel to the mix.
- [03:25]
Linda Wilgus
Yes, I was born and raised in the Netherlands in the eastern part of the country, near Germany, and then I went to college in Amsterdam at the University of Amsterdam, where I studied English Language and Literature and American Studies, and during that time I worked as a bookseller, which to this day is still my favorite job I've ever had, besides being a writer. Absolutely loved it. And then after I finished college I briefly ventured into journalism and then I met my husband who was an officer in the U.S. navy and who was stationed in Italy at the time. So we moved in together fairly quickly, got married, and then followed a period of about 20 years where we just moved around a whole lot with the Navy. We lived in Italy together, in Belgium, in the UK in the US in Norfolk, Virginia, predictably with it being the Navy and eventually after a lot of back and forth, ended up settling in the UK near Cambridge and that's where we live with three children and the dog. And during that time because we moved so much it was hard to keep a career going so I ended up working from home as a knitting pattern designer, which was really a hobby that sort of turned into a part time job and I designed patterns for knitting books and magazines as well as doing my own line and I really enjoyed it. But throughout all of that I did really want to write. I absolutely devoured books as a kid and I love stories and I did write a few stories as a kid and in my teens, but then as an adult I just never really found the time or maybe made the time to start writing seriously until about 10 years ago when I decided I would try to write every day and have mostly stuck to that, with a few exceptions. And that eventually led to writing novels and writing the Sea Child.
- [05:21]
C.P. Leslie
So what drew you to the story that became the Sea Child? Where did that come from?
- [05:25]
Linda Wilgus
Well, the part of the Netherlands I grew up in, it's called Twente. It has a very strong folkloric tradition, sort of all its own. It's got stories about gnomes and the Dutch version of Will o' the wisps and the wise white ladies who live in the mist in the fields and things like that. And I always loved that as growing up, loved those stories. And so, living in the uk, we love visiting Cornwall. We try to go as much as we can. And when I started reading about the folklore of Cornwall, I fell in love with it and I got super interested. And that sort of, coupled with one particular visit where we stayed in Helford on the Halford river, where the book is set for a week, sort of, they really inspired the novel. I was absolutely blown away by the landscape there. It's breathtakingly beautiful and really quite magical. So sort of hiking the coastal path, I could picture Isabel, the main character, walking beside me and hearing the ocean call to her. And once I sort of latched onto that idea of hearing the call of the sea and then read about the spirit of the sea in Cornish folklore called the Sea Booker, I realized that I thought that was who had been calling her. So that sort of, yeah, kind of formed the basis of the story, really came from there.
- [06:48]
C.P. Leslie
I do want to hear more about the Sea Booker later, but introduce us first to Mrs. Isabel Henley, who is your heroine as we meet her in the beginning. Not to give away spoilers, what brings her to Cornwall?
- [07:01]
Linda Wilgus
Well, she arrives in Cornwall, and it's actually the village in which she was found about 19 years before, as a small child at the time, dripping wet and unable to speak. And when she comes back so many years later, she learns that the local population has come to believe she's the child of this sea spirit, the sea Boca. But what made her leave London, really, was that she's only 23, but she got married very young at 17, to a midshipman in the Royal Navy named George, and he died three years later at the Battle of Trafalgar. And unfortunately, George left a lot of his debts that at this point in time, she was unable to pay. And so she grew up a sort of a society woman, quite upper class, and is now forced to scale back her lifestyle a lot and basically lead quite a simple life without servants. And the reason she decides not to do this in London is because she has inadvertently given rise to a bit of scandal. And there's a lot of gossip and rumors about her, because after George died, one of the sailors of the ship he was on came to tell her of George's last moments. And it's obviously quite an emotional moment for Isabel. And that sort of led to eventually her forming quite a close friendship with the sailor. There was never anything romantic between them, but everyone around her in her sort of level of society seemed to think there was, and him being sort of quite a sort of different social status as her. This led to a lot of rumor and gossip that she was quite sick of. So in the end, she decided to start her new, simpler life back in Cornwall, where she came from.
- [08:44]
C.P. Leslie
And how would you describe her as a personality? What are her strengths and weaknesses?
- [08:49]
Linda Wilgus
Well, she's. She's quite passionate. She's a little headstrong. She has an adventure streak and sort of yearns for freedom. And it's also very much shaped by this connection she's always felt to the ocean. So even though after she arrives in the village, she's quite skeptical at first of the sea bucket legend being connected to her, she cannot deny that she has always felt this connection to the ocean, and she oftentimes hears it sort of whispering to her at night and has always felt very comfortable in the sea. She doesn't remember how she learned to swim. She's always been able to do it really well. And there are a lot of hints that make her feel like over time, she starts to believe maybe there is something to it. She's also very independently minded, because in the Regency, of course, a lot of women were very constrained by society's rules for women. And Isabel, sort of being a widow for the first time, has been able to get away from that a bit. Unmarried women, their decisions were often made by their fathers, brothers, and then for married women, it was their husbands who decided things. And so as a widow, she sort of, for the first time, is able to make her own decisions. And she comes to really treasure that, even as she very much grieves for her husband, who she did love very much. So, yeah. So she arrives in the village in a bit of a tight spot, but intend to make the best of it. She's also, at first, I believe, a little bit snobby. She's still very keenly aware of the difference in social rank between her and for example, the landlady, Mrs. Dowling, who rented the cottage, as well as the people in the village. But over time, she befriends some of them. Luckily, she comes to realize quite quickly that people should be judged on their character and not whatever social status they were born into. So that snobbiness goes away fairly quickly. I guess her other weakness might be that she's quite impulsive, and that does get her into trouble sometimes, especially later on in the book.
- [10:50]
C.P. Leslie
Tell us a little bit about that legend. We realized early on that Isabella is the sea child of the title. But what is the legend that is associated with her? And what is the Sea Booker?
- [11:02]
Linda Wilgus
Frankly, yes, the Sea Booker is a very interesting figure in Cornish folklore. He's a spirit of the sea, but he's almost like a pagan God, sort of pre Christian, and he's able to direct the winds and tides, and so he can ensure fair winds for sailors, keep them safe for fishermen. He could make sure that they have a good catch, but he could also drown them in a storm if he's displeased. And so back in the 1800s, when belief in folklore was very commonplace, and for many people, the stories of folklore were not just stories, they were sort of a part of everyday life, if you will. It was common practice for sailors and fishermen to leave an offering for the Sea Booker before they set sail, or alternatively, make an offering of the catch that they got at sea on the return in order to place a him, because there was this worry that things could go badly wrong if they didn't. The Sea Booker legend is sort of pervasive throughout Celtic folklore. Actually, there's related stories in Irish folklore as well as Welsh folklore and Breton folklore in France. And he takes many shapes and forms, sort of the sea spirit is the main one, but he's also in some ways associated with fertility because of the abundance of the sea. And he's also almost kind of like a boogeyman figure in Cornish history, because people used to born the children to better behave, or Bookaboo would come and get them, which was sort of Bookaboo was the boogeyman for them. So, yeah, many, many different shapes and forms. And I was excited to explore in the novel how this sort of connection to this young woman might kind of shape the story and where that would lead her.
- [12:57]
C.P. Leslie
And it's actually, you know, in the context of Even the early 19th century, a very reasonable belief. I mean, those are rough seats to sail in.
- [13:05]
Linda Wilgus
Absolutely, absolutely. There was a lot of danger in going to sea. Even now Sometimes it can be quite dangerous if you get caught in a really bad storm, but especially back then. And so, basically, sailors did sort of risk their lives quite a bit going to sea. And. And I think the idea that besides, you know, of course, prayer and things like that, the idea that there might be something else you could do to try to help your cause in going to sea and keep yourself safe, was quite reasonable, as you said. And it's one of the things I really like about folklore, actually, as opposed to maybe fantasy stories or fairy tales, is that folklore is not to do so much with magic that's set in different worlds or fantastical places. It's usually to do with very ordinary things. It's to do with routines of people's lives. And real belief in folklore only died out about 100 years ago. And as I say, that think there's still a few people that do still believe in things like fairies and piskies, for example. So, yeah, it was, you know, we look back on views like that and think, oh, you know, how strange people might think that. But it was a very common belief at the time and quite reasonable, as you said.
- [14:13]
C.P. Leslie
We find it early on that Isabel grew up in that area, as you just mentioned. Could you tell us a bit about the family that rescued her?
- [14:20]
Linda Wilgus
Yes, certainly. She arrives in the village dripping wet and unable to speak, as I said. And then she wanders into this sort of lush garden that is part of a big house that's being rented by an admiral and his wife, who are stationed there with the Royal Navy. And Mrs. Farnworth, the admiral's wife, sort of like, you know, welcomes her there. It's very surprised, of course, to see this child, but is immediately kind and friendly. And the admiral and his wife had always wanted children of their own, but couldn't have them, sadly. And so Isabel coming into their lives is almost like a gift to them. And after that, they run some advertisements in newspapers trying to locate Isabelle's biological family, but nobody turns up. So then The Admiral and Ms. Farnworth end up adopting her, and she grows up quite privileged. She becomes part of sort of the upper class through them. She grows up at their estate in the country in Norfolk as well as in London. And in a way, the admiral sort of like puts a stamp on her views of the sea as well. At some point in the book, Isabel sort of reflects on the fact that her yearning for the sea is her own, but her desire for shipboard life and to go on a ship and go to sea that way is Very much something she got from her father. So he does very much influence her in that way.
- [15:44]
C.P. Leslie
And how does she come to meet George at that very early age?
- [15:48]
Linda Wilgus
They are at a party, it's all quite high society. So this is a little bit Jane Austen, Regency style, sort of like setting. And they end up talking and dancing together, together. And there's quite a quick. The quick spark and also quite a good development of the relationship. Particularly because their relationship and also their marriage is characterized by George being at sea much more than he at home. This is the time of the Napoleonic wars and this was very common for most sailors to be away all the time. And so at a quite young age and against actually their family's counseling, they decided to get married very young. And throughout the story, one of Isabel's main regrets is actually how little time they spent together before his death. Because in the three years that they were married, they only had about six weeks that they actually spent together because he was always away. And so when she is still grieving him three years on, she mourns both just him, because she misses him, but she's also grieving for sort of the life that they maybe should have had at the time. They should have had that they didn't. And it's complicated by the fact that George loved her, but he also very much loved the navy. And he was very keen to advance through the ranks and was quite open about the fact that he wanted to be at sea all the time rather than be at home. And his and his fellow young officers used to make a toast that was also quite common in the navy at the time, which was they would toast a bloody war and a sickly season would be something that would pick off senior officers and allowing them to rise to the ranks more quickly. So all that kind of pains Isabelle as well. And at the same time, she also has some understanding for it because she also would like to go to sea. But of course, as a woman, no ship would take her. And that wrinkles her. So it's quite a complicated sort of like looking back for her on the merits that she had with him.
- [17:47]
C.P. Leslie
And she, you know, we had upper class background. She's not exactly set up to manage alone in a cottage on the riverbank. But to her credit, she does not immediately take one look and turn around and go back to London, which I think many of us would do under those circumstances. How does she cope?
- [18:05]
Linda Wilgus
Certainly, oh, my goodness, she is so out of her depth. At first it was actually fun for me to ride, but because I could so, well, imagine the stress of that, really. But yes, she's always had servants to attend on her and both growing up at her parents estate as well as in Greenwich in the house she shared with George when he was home, and where she lived mostly on her own. And so when she first arrives, Mrs. Dowling, the landlady who shows her the cottage she's renting, actually has to show her how to use kindling and how to light the fire, because she doesn't even know that. And then after Mrs. Dowling leaves, she's quite stubborn about it at first. I think Isabel feels very much like she needs to do this on her own and she doesn't really want to make strong connections with people because that has hurt her in the past and she's worried about more rumors and all these things. So she tries to kind of just learn how to do a lot of things herself, but it's a lot. She doesn't know how to bake bread, how to cook, how to clean things, how to do washing, all the basic sort of tasks that you do in the household. And so very quickly she realizes she's in over her head on her own and she goes for help and asks Mrs. Dowling if she could teach her how to cook and all the other important things. And she also sort of at that point thinks of the fact that with her sort of having wandered into Helford as a child and ended up the child of the Farnworth, that it could have gone very differently. She could have been anybody's child in the village. She could have been adopted by somebody living in a small cottage just like the one she's ended up in, in which case her mother would have taught her these things. And so this also eventually leads to her forming a friendship with Mrs. Dowling, who almost becomes a bit of a surgot mother figure to her in that sense. And she does end up coping quite well in the end. It's a lot of hard stuff to learn, but in the end, I think she does also relish being able to do things for herself for the first time. And it sort of adds to that sense of independence that she's gained.
- [20:07]
C.P. Leslie
Another person she meets early on is Lieutenant Sowerby. Tell us a bit about what brings him to Cornwall.
- [20:14]
Linda Wilgus
Well, Sowerby is in Cornwall because he's with the Revenue Service. He's a riding officer, which means he would patrol the coastal path and trying to catch smugglers on horseback, as well as sometimes go to sea to try to catch smugglers that way. And he absolutely Hates being in Cornwall. He is quite a social climber, and so he hates that there isn't much in the way of high society where he is. He considers Cornwall a poor backwater of a place, and it's all very, very negative about it. And so when Isabel comes into the area, he sees a beautiful young woman widowed in his mind, some sort of like, idea he has about her purity of character and such. But also he's well aware that she is the daughter of the late Admiral Falnworth. So it sort of feels the social climber in him as well. And he ends up knocking on her door and basically offers her protection from the smugglers he's warning her about and tells so many terrible tales about smugglers, but doesn't realize that Isabelle is not at all interested in him or his protection and is quite happy not to have the association. So, yeah, he's quite the figure. He's quite annoying to her at first, but in the end he also ends up being more dangerous than he looks. And, yeah, sort of, you know, causes some huge problems in the story later on, basically.
- [21:42]
C.P. Leslie
Yeah, he does. And he's pretty much oblivious to her dislike of him.
- [21:47]
Linda Wilgus
Yes, completely. And I think what didn't help is that at the time, because of sort of social pressures on women to adhere to a certain code of conduct and to, you know, behave in a certain way, it's hard for Isabel to sort of just say, hey, back off, the way we would. Maybe today she has to do it in a very polite way. So all this attention, she has to rebuff them but stay polite and, you know, seem amenable in a way, because she's new to the area, she's keen to make friends with other people in the same society she came from. And they all, unfortunately, think quite highly of Lt. Sarabi. So I think that didn't help. He's got the blinders on and he really thinks so highly of himself that he's quite full of himself, really, that he doesn't comprehend that she would not be interested. But it's also. Part of it is, yeah, if she could just be a bit more outspoken about it, as we would today, I think that would help. But that was not really an option for her back then.
- [22:40]
C.P. Leslie
No. And although she does have more freedom as a widow, she's also 23 years old. So society basically expects her to remarry and push herself back under the. The wing or the COVID they literally said in law of a man.
- [22:55]
Linda Wilgus
So.
- [22:59]
C.P. Leslie
I don't give Sowerby credit for. I mean, he really does trample on her feelings. But his expectation, as you've mentioned, is very much in line with what society as a whole would expect of her.
- [23:10]
Linda Wilgus
Absolutely, absolutely. And that's why he feels he's completely in the right to pursue her and wish for her hand in marriage, really.
- [23:17]
C.P. Leslie
Let's talk a little bit about the smuggling. Why did you decide to include that element in the story?
- [23:23]
Linda Wilgus
Well, I think smuggling in Cornish history is such an interesting thing, particularly because at the time there was smuggling in a lot of parts of the uk, but in Cornwall, unlike in other parts of the uk, it was very widely supported by the population. There are stories of almost anyone from any sort of, like, background being involved in helping smugglers. There are stories of schoolmasters and innkeepers and shopkeepers. And there is one story about a vicar who used to tell stories about his. The graveyard behind his church being haunted and how he might have to perform an exorcism, which was all done to scare people away from the church in the graveyard at night, because the road that went past the church was a well known route for smugglers to smuggle their contraband inland. And so it seems a lot of people were very involved in it, which might be due in part to a bit of a rebellious streak in the Cornish, but also is largely due to the huge amount of poverty people experienced at the time. And the taxes levied on some very basic goods were sky high. This was done in part to help fund the war against France. But things such as tea and soap and salt basically became unaffordable for a lot of common people because some of the taxes were as high as 100%. And so in this way, I think smuggling was quite understood by people as to be something that helped everyone. It was still very much against the law and it was definitely a dangerous occupation as well. But ultimately, I think it was somewhat excusable. And because of that also, I think there's a bit of a romantic aspect to smuggling in the 1800s, perhaps in the same way that we view pirates and piracy as slightly romantic back then. I think with smuggling, there's the danger, there's the adventure, it's something against the law. But at the same time, as I said, it's quite understandable why the smuggling went on and why it was supported by a lot of the population. So, yeah, I was keen to weave a story around that. And I really liked the idea of a woman being interested in sort of like, perhaps becoming a bit of a part of that or being sort of around that. And what her opinions would be, especially since in the book, Isabel comes at it from a very different point of view. At first she considers it a crime. She thinks that if taxes are avoided, that's indirectly helping the French because the taxes are meant to help in the war against the French. And so for her to sort of like experience that and come to maybe see it a little differently was something that I was quite keen to explore.
- [26:08]
C.P. Leslie
I want to ask you, before we get to Jack, which is a major shift point in the story, how would you describe Isabel's reaction to actually being in a boat, being on the sea? Because it's a very magical almost element of the story, her relationship with the sea.
- [26:29]
Linda Wilgus
Yes. Well, she always dreams of going to sea and the closest she got as a child was being on board her father's ship while it was in port. So she didn't actually go sailing on it. And even then she hid in the kitchen when it was time to leave because she didn't want to leave. And so, yeah, she's always felt this strong connection to the ocean. And as the book goes on, the call of the ocean to her, the ocean calling to her, that grows stronger every single day. So when she finally gets to. To go on a ship, and I won't reveal too much of how that comes about, but it's somewhat of a life altering experience. She's violently seasick at first, as were many on that ship at that time. But once she sort of like gets over that or snaps out of that, she sees it as the place where she was always meant to be. It's a sort of homecoming of sorts. And of course, as a woman. Yeah, the deck of the ship is completely closed off for her until the story basically leads her there anyway. I won't reveal too much about how that happens, but, yeah, coming home of sorts will be the best way to describe it, I suppose. And it does make her reflect on the fact that maybe there is some truth in the Sivuka story and the idea that the Sivuka could be her father, because it's quite unusual how she responds to being at sea. To her.
- [27:55]
C.P. Leslie
Yes. We don't want to give away any spoilers, and particularly in terms of Jack, whom I'm about to ask you about, because we find out a lot more about him over the course of the story. Please say a bit about how he enters Isabel's life and what we learn about him as a character from that initial encounter.
- [28:12]
Linda Wilgus
Yes. So he arrives in quite a dramatic fashion because he's been wounded in an engagement with the Revenue Service at sea. And so he's. He's got a bullet wound in his side and his men carry him into Isabelle's cottage at night, believing the cottage still empty because it was empty for about three years before Isabel rented it. And they used to store a contraband on the property. So it's a well known place to them. It was a good place for them to go quickly to try to fetch the doctor too. And it did not count on Isabelle being there. And so the first time Isabelle meets Jack, he's being carried up the stairs by his men and she's hiding behind the door clutching a fire poker, ready to defend herself, basically. But then when they bring him in and put him down on the bed, she's suddenly very strongly reminded of her husband, who also died of a bullet wound aboard a ship. And she reflects on the fact that, yeah, she wasn't able to be there for George, she wasn't able to help him, and she wasn't even able to be there in his last moments. And, yeah, his grave is basically the sea. And so at that moment she decides that even though she surmised pretty quickly that they're smugglers, that she won't turn them in, she won't go to the Revenue Service and tell on them, she's going to help them. And so in the next couple of days, as Jack recovers at her cottage, the two of them end up talking. And even though they have some quite different views about certain things and there's quite a bit of tension there, they're also very drawn to each other and they sort of start forming a connection. I think in terms of Jack's character, he does have sort of the passion and the adventurousness of Isabel, but he's also quite practical and pragmatic in a way. His approach to the sea is very practical. He doesn't view it in a romantic way, he doesn't have some mystical connection to it the way Isabel does, but he very much recognizes it can be dangerous also due to events in his past. But so he very much sees it as a place to earn a living, even if it's a bit risky, and approaches it in that sort of practical way that I believe many Cornish people at the time would have, because so many people's livelihoods depended on the ocean and on the whims of the sea and maybe the sea Buka as well. And so he's also quite pragmatic in his approach to smuggling. He's not idealistic about it. He is quite open about the fact that he's doing it for profit, but at the same time, without giving away too much, his heart's in the right place, I believe. And he. He's also trying to do certain things to help his crew and the people around him. And so there's a bit of a mix there, but definitely much more of a practical approach to things, especially to see, than Isabel.
- [31:01]
C.P. Leslie
Are there any other characters or incidents that you'd like listeners to hear about?
- [31:06]
Linda Wilgus
I've mentioned Mrs. Dowling, who's actually one of my favorite characters, and I loved writing her and I loved how she, over time, formed this really quite strong bond with Isabel. But aside from that, I think perhaps the Cornish landscape itself, which in a way is almost. It's so important in the book, and it drives some of the action that in a way it's almost like another character. And it's also the backdrop for some quite seriously romantic scenes, I think, particularly one scene which happens in quite a famous setting, namely Frenchman's Creek, which is well known to many people from the Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name. And I've been to Frenchman's Creek many times. It's one of my favourite places to go warping. And it is an absolutely magical place. It's beautiful and quite special. And it's the sort of place in which it's actually quite easy to imagine that perhaps there is a little girdle of truth in some of these old folkloric stories. And perhaps there is a little magic there and that forms the backdrop to some of the more romantic scenes in the book. So, yeah, I guess that would be. It was one of the highlights for me writing. It was sort of writing about the landscape.
- [32:20]
C.P. Leslie
And thank you for that reminder, because we often tend to overlook setting. And yet you're right. At times it just becomes. It's almost like a character itself in the way that the other characters relate to it. What would you like people to take away from the Sea Child?
- [32:36]
Linda Wilgus
I guess most of all, I would hope that they would feel that they got to escape in the world of the novel for a few hours. I think it's such a wonderful feeling to sort of be lost to this world for a bit and wandering around a different place in time. And I hope they would sort of feel that way about the book, and I hope they would really enjoy it, and that perhaps they would maybe relate a bit to Isabel's sort of searching for her place in the world and her sort of striving for independence and freedom. I think back at the time, so many constraints placed on women. And I think some of that still echoes a little bit in today's world. So, yeah, I would hope they would find some of that relatable, I guess. And yeah, most of all that they would have enjoyed the book.
- [33:22]
C.P. Leslie
This novel is off your desk. Are you already writing something else?
- [33:29]
Linda Wilgus
Yes, I'm currently editing Book two, which is as yet unnamed, and that's going to be out in spring 2027. And it shares some of the same elements with the Sea Child. It's set a little bit later in the early Victorian era, but it's also set in Cornwall and it has that sort of magical realism in it and it's big on the romance and adventure as well. So I've had lots of fun writing that and I'm enjoying the editing now.
- [33:58]
C.P. Leslie
Well, thank you so much for sharing your time with us, Linda. I've really enjoyed talking with you today.
- [34:03]
Linda Wilgus
Thank you so much, Carolyn. It's been great. I love talking with you. Thank you.
- [34:06]
C.P. Leslie
And thank you for listening to our podcast once again. I'm C.P. leslie, the host of New Books and Historical Fiction, a podcast channel on the New Books Network, and today I've been talking with Linda Wilgus about the Sea Child. Find out more about her@lindawilgus.com like us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok ewbooksnetwork. You can find out more about me and my books@cpdesd.com where I blog about the interviews and in general discuss history, historical fiction and the rapidly changing publishing industry. Goodbye until my next conversation about historical fiction on the New Books Network.