Women Who Raise Their Voices in Song in The Choir by Carol M. Cram
Send us Fan Mail This week on The Art In Fiction Podcast, I'm doing something a little different: a solo episode about my new novel, The Choir, listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SHb4USfSeE0 The family mystery at the heart of the novel: a great-great-grandmother who left her husband with six children in Victorian England and went on to have seven more children with another man, all documented on Ancestry.com. How a chance discovery about Victorian choral competitions and their cash prizes gave Eliza, the novel's protagonist, her escape route and the plot its engine. The role of Carol's mother, a lifelong learner who helped with research before she passed, and her grandmother Granny, who died at 98 and whose reluctance to "get above herself" shaped the novel's themes of class. Research trips to Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, where Carol heard the deafening looms firsthand, and to the Birmingham Back-to-Backs, the National Trust's preserved court of working-class Victorian housing. How choir membership was transformative for working-class women in the 1890s; in a world where women had no political voice and no authority at home, a choir gave them a voice that was literally heard. Ruth Henton, Eliza's childhood friend who escaped to the London stage and ends up performing Yum-Yum in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, and how her glamorous but precarious world eventually collides with Eliza's. The real historical figure Mary Wakefield, who launched the competitive music festival movement in England and makes a cameo in the novel. Why The Choir is Carol's most personal novel: her great-great-grandmother and great-grandmother both have roles, and the novel is her way of giving back the stories of working-class women whose lives rarely make it into the historical record. Reading from The Choir: Read more about Carol M. Cram and The Choir at www.carolcram.com Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists. Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction . Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other. Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Find out more on her website . ...