Authorpreneur Dashboard – Suzie Hopkins
The Binding
Literature & Fiction
A diary and a cache of letters from a hundred and twenty years ago introduce Caroline and James to the sad story of their forebears who gave up the people they loved out of Victorian ideas of honour and what was fitting. Are they doomed to do the same? In 1893, Captain Rodney McKenna chaperoned the young Melissa Blaze to India – he to rejoin his regiment and she to find a husband. Melissa falls in love with the Captain and the Captain with her, but his sense of honour forbids him acting on his feelings and the journey ends in disaster, with the Captain stripped of his rank and Melissa banned from returning to England. Now, in 2013, their great great grandchildren, Caroline and James, find themselves in the same dilemma. Caroline has led what can only be called a dissolute life. Can she overcome her past to accept the love that is offered her? WARNING: Contains explicit sexual activity. If that is not for you, don’t read this book.
Book Bubbles from The Binding
Freedom is hard won
Women today, at least in the West, have a better life than they have ever had. I know I risk condemnation from some forms of feminism in saying that, but it’s true. What I set out to do in The Binding was to show how far we have come since Victorian times—the control women have now over their own lives contrasted with their past subjection. I have also tried to show that men are not the enemy—they can meet us on our terms and we can meet them on theirs. Love is possible. Let no-one ever forget, though, that the freedom we have now was not given to us; it was won, and won hard. Celebrate the love that Caroline and James are able to have for each other, but never lose sight of how some would prefer our lives to be.
