I’m delighted to welcome Susan Lanigan and her new book, White Feathers, to the blog #HistoricalFiction #IrishHistoricalFiction #saga #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

I’m delighted to welcome Susan Lanigan and her new book, White Feathers, to the blog with guest post.

Guest Post

My Research Process

By Susan Lanigan

When I was constructing the narrative of White Feathers, I needed an outline, but I was not sure in advance of everything that would occur. The advantage of writing historical fiction is that you can use real events as the vines on the trees which my Tarzan plot could grasp onto and swing to the next tree. So, I looked up various battles of World War I – Loos, the Somme, Neuve-la-Chapelle – and threaded a narrative from them. Like many, I had been captivated by Vera Brittain’s memoir Testament of Youth, and while I think Brittain would probably have been a lot personally, my heart broke for what she endured, how her hope was destroyed and how she carried on regardless after hope was gone.

I owe Brittain a lot for the construction of Eva’s narrative, particularly when she was in Étaples working as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. Brittain’s narrative of that time is captivating and contains so many details. I first learned of the stark tale of the sinking of HMHS Britannic in that book, and then did my own research on the subject. I also read the account of Mary Borden, who writes in a very modernist style. The section in White Feathers where the dying Canadian lieutenant begs for a drink is based on an account in her book The Forbidden Zone.

While my research on the battles was comprehensive, my true experience of researching was coming across random fascinating minutiae and feeling compelled to shoehorn them into the story. The pigeon van was one of these phenomena, discovered while wandering around the Musée de la Grande Guerre, built near Mons, with a monument to mark the battle there. It was the closest the Germans got to Paris. The white feather propaganda was fascinatingly horrifying, and I can only imagine what it was like to see those notices on every corner, how hard it must have been to maintain an ethical stance in the face of overwhelming institutional opposition to it. The priest who oversees the trial and confession of a particular character was a real person, as was the order to which he belonged.

The inevitable problem with research is that you must omit more than you include if you are to have a novel that approaches a publishable wordcount. I could have spent all day talking about the “Little Mother” letter quoted by Robert Graves in Goodbye to All That, or the internecine rivalry of the Pankhurst sisters. But in the end, it’s story that matters; it is the flowing dress with the pleasing detail and the research is the firm undergarment that keeps everything in shape beneath!

Here’s the Blurb

“Anti-war and anti-patriarchy without ever saying so – a bravura performance of effortless elegance” – Irish Echo in Australia

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROMANTIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD 2015

In 1913, Irish emigrée Eva Downey receives a bequest from an elderly suffragette to attend a finishing school. There she finds friendship and, eventually, love. But when war looms and he refuses to enlist, Eva is under family and social pressure to give the man she loves a white feather of cowardice. The decision she eventually makes will have lasting consequences for her and everyone around her.

Journey with Eva as she battles through a hostile social order and endeavours to resist it at every turn.

Buy Link

Universal Link:

Meet the Author

Susan Lanigan’s first novel White Feathers, a tale of passion, betrayal and war, was selected as one of the final ten in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2013, and published in 2014 by Brandon Books. The book won critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the UK Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2015. This edition is a reissue with a new cover and foreword.

Her second novel, Lucia’s War, also concerning WWI as well as race, music and motherhood, was published in June 2020 and has been named as the Coffee Pot Book Club Honourable Mention in the Modern Historical Book of the Year Award.

Susan lives by the sea near Cork, Ireland, with her family.

Connect with the Author

• Link
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Threads
• Bluesky
• Link
• Amazon
• Goodreads