To A Strange Somewhere Fled – “Irrevocable in its magic & intrepid in its storytelling”

The reviews have been coming in for To A Strange Somewhere Fled, sequel to A House Near Luccoli! See many of them here.

Thank you to all who have read and are planning to read it. If you have not yet purchased it, I hope the very favorable reviews will be an enticement for you to do so.

Thank you to Casee Marie of Literary Inklings for this BEAUTIFULLY expressed, generous, in-depth, and insightful response to the novel. I feel like she has looked into and validated my soul. You can read the review below, but I strongly urge you to follow the link to Literary Inklings, a showcase for the grace and excellence Casee puts into everything she does, and her dedication and contribution to the promotion of authors and their work, even mostly unknown ones like me!

To a Strange Somewhere Fled by D.M. Denton

written by Casee Marie

Photograph by Casee Marie Clow

In her follow-up to A House Near Luccoli author D.M. Denton takes readers back to 17th century Europe, moving the story of impassioned young spinster Donatella from Stradella’s Genoa to the England of Henry Purcell.

One instantly remarkable element of D.M. Denton’s fiction is her unique blending of history and fiction; such was the backdrop for her 2012 novel, A House Near Luccoli, which introduced a memorable fictional protagonist – Donatella – to one of Italy’s most enigmatic composers, the roguish Alessandro Stradella. This strength of Denton’s is played upon in Luccoli’s sequel novel, To a Strange Somewhere Fled, which finds a heartbroken Donatella amid a cast of decidedly English characters plucked with utmost authenticity from the resonance of history. After tragedy struck in Genoa, Donatella joins her family in her father’s native England, trading the majesty of the Mediterranean for the unruly weather and unusual society of Oxfordshire. Despondent and bereft, Donatella suffers renewed sadness as she comes to terms with her new life as a foreigner in a strange land, struggling to replace her native Italian with the confusing language of the English and ultimately learning to adapt to their ways.

Even as Donatella is haunted by the memory of Stradella – whose charming and often mischievous presence seems to have followed her, along with several never-performed copies of his compositions, to England – the determined heroine, expecting to resign herself once more to spinsterhood, finds unexpected emotions and, gradually, a new adventure awaiting her. From neighbors charming and catastrophic to an invasion of Italian musical greats, and even an appearance by the celebrated Henry Purcell, Donatella is soon buoyed between her own grief and the alluring, irrepressible pull of creativity. Almost all of the immediate characters in the story, with the exception of Donatella’s family and one or two others, are rooted in history, and the author shares her insights with the reader in a well-organized collection of historical notes at the back of the book. With this novel, Denton takes her fusion of history and fiction into an even deeper territory, depicting not only composers of British and Italian nationality, but also female singers and even men of law, such as the story’s male protagonist, biographer and lawyer Roger North. With sublime grace and devotion, Denton marries the two worlds together to form a setting for her novel that’s nothing short of enchanting.

Keeping true to A House Near Luccoli, much of the foundation of this novel relies heavily on music as expression. The cadences and temperaments of compositions are reflected in Denton’s pacing as well as her confidently executed freedom of narrative: some scenes that would traditionally be laid out in show-stopping dramatics may happen quietly, maybe even outside of the narrative completely; revelations are made, characters introduced, and emotions uncovered with unexpected swells and surges of expression. As a result, Denton’s writing is as beautiful and complex as the music she effectively seeks to honor. And while Donatella and her story, full as it is of such a legion of colorful characters, are vastly entertaining in their own right, often Denton’s descriptions of musical performances manage to swoop in and lift the reader up to even greater heights. Her passionate research and personal love of the art both shine through in the remarkable imagery her prose evokes, enrapturing her audience and taking them just a bit deeper into the intricacies of the 17th century setting. Irrevocable in its magic and intrepid in its storytelling, To a Strange Somewhere Fled is a fascinating and delectably original work that readers won’t soon forget.

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Review © Casee Marie, originally published on LiteraryInklings.com.

Screenshot of Review on Literary Inklings

If you haven’t yet read A House Near Luccoli, here is the December 2012 review from Literary Inklings

Photograph by Casee Marie Clow

Forbidden

Your Love
was not for kisses
except for those near misses
that left it lost in time

Such hopes
were not for holding
in no way emboldening
my heart to make you mine

Your voice
was not for ever
despite its best endeavor
to echo in my dreams

The truth
cannot be spoken
forbidden not forgotten
if all is as it seems

I wish upon a star

And write of love unknown
much as ghosts are

 

 

I have been putting most of my poetic thoughts into my prose these days. So, just a simple one, nothing like the beautiful intricate poetry that my very talented friends are writing. This one just came and, for what it’s worth, I share.

 

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back tobardessdmdenton. Thank you.

Turning the Pages Back to Look Forward – Mother’s Day 2015

As I embark upon a new major writing project, and with Mother’s Day (in the US and Canada) this Sunday, I am re-posting the prose/poem below (from 2013); for it is my mother, June, who sparked my over fifty year passion for reading and writing with these evocative editions of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre by Ellis Bell and  Currer Bell (Emily and Charlotte Brontë) respectively, illustrated with woodcuts by Fritz Eichenberg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, there was another Brontë sister and author – Acton Bell. Which brings me to the subject of the fiction I’m working on now, the first novelette in a series of three featuring obscure/undervalued women writers (or, at least, that is the plan) …

“She, however, attentively watched my looks, and her artist’s pride was gratified, no doubt, to read my heartfelt admiration in my eyes.”
~ Anne Brontë, from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Bronte Parsonage, Haworth, West Yorkshire, England. Painted in the 1970’s. Copyright 2013 by DM Denton

 

Oh, those early years when all my shyness wanted was to go home to you. You trusted me on sick days and walked miles on your lunch hour to bring me paper dolls and make sure I was safe.

I was the child you wanted me to be.

Copyright 2012 by Diane’s mom, June

You gave me many gifts, like the gods and goddesses gave Pandora: a sense of beauty, charm, music, curiosity and persuasion. In particular there was a book, large and beautifully bound, its writing in columns and essence carved in wood.

You were as naïve as I was.

For it was also a box of unknowns, like Pandora’s, that unleashed more than either of us bargained for. I preferred the version of the myth that claimed good things were allowed to escape. All except for one.

We never lost hope.

You put the faraway in my hands, so how could I not want to go there? Of course, you meant for me to travel pages not miles.

You said you would never forgive me.

How many months we didn’t speak; how many years we paid dearly for conversations in such different time zones, trying to being ordinary when it was all so impossible.

We were both alone with our mistakes.

I never thought it would be that difficult to be away from you. My youth was lost, not to romantic discontent but missing what was true.  

How could you ever forgive me?

Perhaps you did a little. When you traveled as I did, because I did: over the sea, to another country, to places you had and hadn’t visited. You walked up the hill, heard your heels on the cobblestones and voices of the dead, inhaled the mist, saw the parsonage, the windswept trees and moors, and turned the pages back.

I didn’t see if your eyes sparkled, but I like to believe they did.

Drawing of Anne Brontë by Charlotte Brontë

“There is such a thing as looking through a person’s eyes into the heart, and learning more of the height, and breadth, and depth of another’s soul in one hour than it might take you a lifetime to discover, if he or she were not disposed to reveal it, or if you had not the sense to understand it.”
~ Anne Brontë, from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

It’s very early days, but here’s a little teaser from my WIP, tentatively titled Without the Veil Between:

Anne was once again in Scarborough, as comfortable as the Robinsons on St. Nicholas Cliff and the Spa side of town, easily settled in lodgings she valued, not because of their elegance and prestige, connection to the Assembly Rooms hosting concerts and balls, or proximity to an excellent library and pleasant walkways, but for the magnificent view of the shimmering shifting South Bay. She especially loved the outlook to her right: in the opposite direction from the harbor and arcades, down along a stretch of sand little disturbed except by the tides and beyond a beautifully barren headland where the sea met the sky and she might unleash her nature unselfconsciously like Emily looking out on the moors where the world waited for her to leave it.

©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.