By Shirley Raye Redmond
My Christian regency, PRUDENCE PURSUED, takes place in 1806 in Bath, England.
Jane Austen fans will be familiar with the location as it was a popular vacation spot in the author’s day and is frequently a setting in her novels and those of Georgette Heyer and other Regency authors. Today’s city of Bath in Somerset is built on top of and around the ancient ruins of the Roman town of Aquae Sulis.
For centuries after the Romans vacated, the British have gone to Bath to soak in the famous hot springs and, like Jane Austen and her contemporaries, to drink the medicinal waters in the Pump Room. I did that when I visited Bath some years ago and in a way, that experience inspired my story. One of my favorite scenes in the book takes place in the Pump Room where Prudence tries (unsuccessfully) to avoid an unwanted male suitor.
Bath is nothing at all like my hometown of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Ours is a snug little community nestled on a plateau in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico. If you know anything at all about Los Alamos, you will recall that it was once a “secret city,” where scientists during WWII were frantically working to develop the atom bomb before the Germans did so. Today, Los Alamos is the home of Los Alamos National Laboratory, where scientists from around the world pursue advances in everything from nuclear energy to biotechnology. You can get a tasty green chile cheeseburger here that’s out of this world.
However, Bath and Los Alamos are both great towns for history buffs. While UNESCO named the city of Bath a World Heritage Site in 1987, the U.S. Congress is establishing the Manhattan Project National Park here in Los Alamos. We already have a wonderful history museum and a science museum.
Shirley Raye Redmond is an award-winning nonfiction writer and former columnist forThe Santa Fe New Mexican.
Shirley Raye Redmond has sold 27 books and over 450 articles to a wide variety of publications, including The Pacific Stars and Stripes and Cosmopolitan as well asHighlights for Children and The Christian Standard. Two of her nonfiction children’s titles have sold more than 200,000 copies each.
Shirley Raye Redmond has sold 27 books and over 450 articles to a wide variety of publications, including The Pacific Stars and Stripes and Cosmopolitan as well asHighlights for Children and The Christian Standard. Two of her nonfiction children’s titles have sold more than 200,000 copies each.
You can find her here:
Prudence Pursued
At the advanced age of twenty-seven, Prudence Pentyre is on the shelf. Content to occupy her time by attending meetings of Mr. Wilberforce’s Abolition Society, Prudence is resolved to see that her younger cousin Margaret, shy and plain, does not share her own unmarried fate.
Despite her best efforts, all of Prudence’s matchmaking attempts fail. Margaret proves reluctant to accept Sir James Brownell’s marriage proposal, and fears being “bovinised” if she undergoes the controversial cowpox vaccination he recommends. And the dashing baronet—with his sunburned skin, eye patch, and unfashionable attire—seems more concerned about the plight of headhunters in Borneo than Margaret’s stubborn refusal of his offer.
Prudence, on the other hand, finds herself unexpectedly smitten with the man. Can she trust that God’s plan for her life is richer and more rewarding than the one she had planned for herself?
