Artistic license
I merged “A man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town” （John Gardner） with Richard Skinner’s “boy meets girl; boy loses girl; man hunts whale.”
The Phoenician wine press in Tell el-Burak was discovered in 2020.
The Married Women’s Property Act （MWPA）
The MWPA amendment was not sponsored by the Duke of Montgomery—who is a work of fiction—but by the man who inspired his character, Lord Selborne. Selborne was a conservative peer who eventually changed his mind and supported women’s rights, and he successfully introduced the bill to the House of Lords on February 14, 1882. It passed into the House of Commons later that year and was passed with amendments on August 15. To better convey the tone of the debate surrounding the bill, I merged the statements made by Sir George Campbell, Mr. Warton, and Mr. Fowler during an MWPA committee meeting on August 11 with the August 15 sitting; see the minutes for August 11, 1882, Hansard 1604.
The Writ for Restitution of Conjugal Rights
In 1884, Parliament abolished the jail penalty for noncompliance thanks to Weldon v. Weldon, an 1883 divorce court decision. Mrs. Weldon had sued her husband for restitution, which was highly unusual. Previously, Captain Weldon had tried to commit Mrs. Weldon to an asylum on grounds of her spiritualism, because he wanted to live with his mistress. When the court granted Mrs. Weldon’s plea, the law was swiftly changed to spare other men Captain Weldon’s fate. For this story, I changed the timeline of this event to 1882.
Gifted women in the Victorian era
Today, Catriona would probably be classed as gifted, with giftedness being a form of neurodiversity. Giftedness is traditionally perceived as positive, but the inherent overexcitability may express as impaired executive function, intense emotions, sensory issues, and anxiety. Some traits, such as valuing content over presentation, continue to be coded as “typically male,” which makes it more challenging for gifted girls to feel they belong. I imagined such a woman in late Victorian Britain. As a working-class woman, she would have had little time or energy left to apply herself after work, childcare, and chores. In the middle and upper classes, the new cult of domesticity sidelined women who refused to fulfill an increasingly narrow role. “Good and Bad Mothers” is an actual article, reflective of attitudes at the time, and I imagine a thick skin was required to ignore the shaming. We will never know how many female contributions are missing from science, the arts, and politics, just because rigid gender norms forced women to choose between sharing their gift or being socially accepted. I’m forever grateful to the women who came before me who found the strength to be true to themselves under such circumstances. We stand on their shoulders when we choose who and where we want to be today.
Acknowledgments
To my readers—I want to thank you for your patience. While I began writing in 2020, various grievous events converged and it took me a year longer than planned to finish this novel.
Throughout, I received an incredible amount of support. Here I want to thank Matthias—being partnered with a writer can be rough at the best of times, and it’s your encouragement and understanding that allows me to have it all. To Montse: it’s you who makes me finish a chapter, and this book wouldn’t have gotten done without you. Mama and Micha, thank you for letting me boomerang and for giving me the nineteenth-century gentleman treatment so I could focus entirely on writing for a bit. I would like to thank my father for helping me access historical sources about Mount Lebanon, and my sister Josiane, who took the time to spar with me despite her looming bar exam. I’m grateful to Melanie and Jemima, for their fierce enthusiasm and input.
To the brilliant Roshani Chokshi and Christine Wells, I can hardly thank you enough for wading through the first ten chapters of draftiest draft and making them so much better with your suggestions. I also owe the Lyonesses, for bearing with me, always ready with advice; I’m lucky to be part of such a talented and supportive group of women. Much love to my fellow authors who add my work to their towering reading lists and let their light shine on it; in particular Kate Quinn, Jodi Picoult, Mimi Matthews, Chanel Cleeton, Julia Quinn, and Beth O’Leary. Dr. Mira Assaf Kafantaris, I’m hugely grateful that you took the time to share your thoughtful perspective on the historical aspects of this novel （though any errors or oversights are of course mine and Elias’s）。
Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to my editor, Sarah Blumenstock, and my agent, Kevan Lyon—your professional acclaim is out there for everyone to see, so here I wish to highlight the great kindness, tremendous patience, and unwavering positivity that you have shown me from start to finish.