Exclusive interview with author Jo Beverley and a review of her new novel An Unlikely Countess
Rating: 3 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“I can’t remember why I decided that Cate’s brother was a collector of rare trees,” says An Unlikely Countess author Jo Beverley. “When I was describing the park at Keynings as Cate returns home, I put in a weeping willow for a bit of mourning imagery. The weeping willow was only just being introduced to England. It was failing to thrive, even in the south.”
An Unlikely Countess draws the reader right in. Beverley builds the world so vividly. The story is a classic romance where the couple isn’t in bed every other page. The relationship between Catesby Burgoyne, the hero, and heroine Prudence Youlgrave works. However, the rest of the characters in the story could use more development.
Catesby Burgoyne left the army under a cloud and is itching for a fight. What better opportunity than when he comes upon a prostitute being accosted by ruffians? He saves her, then realizes Prudence Youlgrave is actually a proper young lady, not a prostitute at all. Catesby continues on to London. Prudence goes to live with her brother and his new wife, who will help her find a husband. However, it’s Catesby she thinks of.
“In An Unlikely Countess, Cate is obsessed by his home, which has lived in his mind as a kind of paradise,” says Beverley. “As a second son, it was a Paradise Lost. Now he has it, but also the guilt about inheriting it by his brother’s untimely death. Prudence wants any home, though underneath we see that she’s trying to return to her childhood home, from which her family was evicted by fate, changing her life dramatically. Another Paradise Lost. Together they work to making Keynings a new paradise for both of them.”
Beverly says her inspiration for the book was a book by Amanda Vickery called Behind Closed Doors, about the home life of the middle and upper classes in Georgian England. That book was made into a program on the BBC and included the story of a widow and her daughter who scrimped and saved so that the son of the house could be educated and become a lawyer, and then support them. “When he was prosperous, the mother was already dead and he ignored his sister,” says Beverley. “That true story didn’t end well, and I decided to give it a much better ending.”
Beverly says she spent a day in the research library at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham. They have a lot of old periodicals that added to her knowledge of the period. She viewed and photographed maps of the various towns, which she found in the local libraries. Beverly already knew the town of Darlington and visited there to see the church. “Darlington itself doesn’t have much of the old town left, so I could only get impressions,” says Beverley. “I also visited Aske Hall, near Richmond, which I’d used as a base for Keynings. I’ve been interested in Aske for a while because my father-in-law worked there before WWII. It’s not generally open to the public, but it does open once a year.”
Beverley has won five RITA award from the Romance Writers of America and is in their Hall of Fame. An Unlikely Countess won’t be considered for awards until next year. Beverly says her novel has done well on the bestseller lists, staying on the in print New York Times list for four weeks.
Beverley lives in Devon, United Kingdom. She was born in Morecambe, Lancashire. She’s already at work on her next book. “A Scandalous Countess, which will be published in February 2012,” says Beverley. Her website: http://www.jobev.com
An Unlikely Countess by Jo Beverley. Paperback, 432 pages, Publisher: Signet (March 1, 2011), Language: English ISBN: 9780451232717
