The Heretic’s Daughter
Kathleen Kent
I was riveted by this novel, which is based on a true family history. Shocking and haunting, stories such as this are a sobering example of what happens when mass hysteria takes over a community. Although there have been other examples of “witch hunt” plots, this was very finely drawn and all the more gripping because of its basis in reality.
As Meat Loves Salt
Maria McCann
This book tells the reader about the English Civil War in close-up as we follow the brutal Jacob Cullen into battle, and later into the idealistic Diggers community. With the mud and gore of the battlefield, but also a love story between two unlikely men, this book defies conventions and easy description. Its presence gave me the confidence not to explain too closely the unpredictable and conflicted elements of Geoffrey’s character.
Tulip Fever
Deborah Moggach
A novel of seventeenth-century Amsterdam as seen through the eyes of Dutch artists, this was going to be a massively visual read, but I loved it not just because of the pictures, but because Deborah Moggach conveys the sensuality and allure of the tulip in such a tangible way, something I was aiming for in The Lady’s Slipper.
Dark Fire
C. J. Sansom
This was the first historical novel I had read by Sansom, but not the last. Although set in Tudor England, its style is something I wanted to emulate for The Lady’s Slipper. The racing plots and larger-than-life characters in the Shardlake series give Dark Fire a sense of drama and momentum without departing too far from the constraints of history.
Virgin Earth
Philippa Gregory
The first of two novels about the famous plant collector, John Tradescant, who leaves England because of the English Civil War and travels to Virginia, where he falls in love with a Powhatan woman. I admire all of Philippa Gregory’s novels for their readability and research, and this makes a good companion volume to The Lady’s Slipper as it shows one possible view of what Richard and Alice might confront as they set foot in the New World.
An Instance of the Fingerpost
Iain Pears
A mystery that examines the nature of truth itself. Set in Oxford in 1663 at the height of the scientific resurgence of the Restoration, the novel uses several different points of view to illuminate an idea—that each person can only see the partial truth of a situation. I loved the idea of writing a multiple viewpoint novel, so that the reader is privy to the deceptions of the characters while they themselves are not.
Reading Group Questions
1. In the novel, Richard says that it is not possible for him to pledge peace unless he were to live in a “golden age.” What sort of a golden age do you think he is imagining? And do you live in one now?
2. What does the lady’s slipper orchid represent to the various characters in the book? Why do you think that Alice’s slipper is such a potent symbol for Ella?
3. One of the reasons that Alice takes the lady’s slipper is because she wants to preserve it for future generations. Later she replaces it with an American orchid. In your view, was she preserving or violating the English countryside?
4. Both Richard and Hannah have a “religious experience” in the book. Which do you find the most convincing, and why? What makes an experience religious?
5. Stephen says of Ella Appleby: “She has given us lives we would never have anticipated.” Discuss Ella’s role and influence throughout the novel. To what extent do you think our lives are determined by the actions of other people?
6. Alice says that flowers have “a lost innocence, outside man-made time, the flower of a thousand years ago repeating itself over and over, reminding the world of nature’s order.” What do you think of this statement? How would you define “nature’s order”?
7. Geoffrey is in some respects the villain of the book. To what extent are his character traits a product of his upbringing and station in life? Some views that were acceptable in 1660 would be totally unacceptable today. Is our morality changing with the times? Or do you think there are aspects of our morality that are fixed?
8. Discuss Stephen’s use of disguise in the novel. What does he learn about his true nature by being someone else? Have you ever pretended to be something you are not for a particular purpose? How do you recognize the real you?
9. Richard Wheeler embarks on a journey from being a Quaker pacifist to becoming a soldier ready to defend his homeland. What is the meaning of “home” to Richard? What does it mean to you—and would you be willing to defend it with your life?
10. Ella says that she was “beginning to believe she really had seen the body of an old woman in that ditch. After she had claimed to see it, six more of the villagers, including Audrey and Tom, had unaccountably confirmed that they too had seen the Mistress bending over the body.” How does the “Rashomon effect,” in which observers of one event are able to produce different but equally plausible accounts of it, play out both in the novel and in real life?
Afterword
The lady’s slipper orchid is Britain’s rarest wild flower. Thought at one time to be extinct, its decline is due to over-collection by botanists and it is found now on a single, fragile, natural site. Recently a propagation programme has been undertaken at Kew, supported by the Threatened Plants Appeal.
More information about this can be found at www.kew.org.
Acknowledgements
First, thanks must go to the members of the Cypripedium Committee who have care of the species recovery programme for the lady’s slipper, and in particular Ian Taylor of English Nature who took the time to answer my questions.
I would also like to thank my friends from the MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University (2007) for getting me started on writing this novel, and especially Vicky Delderfield who volunteered to read the book when it was finished and offer her comments.
Special thanks go to my husband John, the Windermere Book Group, the Thursday Writing Group, and all my tai chi friends for their interest and support.
Lastly, thanks to my agent Annette Green, my editor Will Atkins, and all at Macmillan New Writing for their enthusiasm for this book.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE LADY’S SLIPPER. Copyright © 2010 by Deborah Swift. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swift, Deborah, 1955–
The lady’s slipper / Deborah Swift.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-2576-1
1. Women artists—Fiction. 2. Quakers—Fiction. 3. Orchids—Fiction. 4. Cumbria (England)—Fiction. 5. Great Britain—History—Charles II, 1660–1685—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6119.W54L238 2010
823.92—dc22
2010034240
First published in Great Britain by Macmillan New Writing, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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