New Book Alert: Emma's Tapestry by Isobel Blackthorn; Suspense and Mystery Writer Shows Gifts in Writing Historical Fiction Based On Her Own Family

 

New Book Alert: Emma's Tapestry by Isobel Blackthorn; Suspense and Mystery Writer Shows Gifts in Writing Historical Fiction Based On Her Own Family

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: We have seen Isobel Blackthorn write excellent mystery and suspense novels. With A Prison in the Sun and The Ghost of Villa Winter, she was able to capture unsolved murders and hate crimes in the beautiful vacation setting of the Canary Islands.

With The Cabin Sessions, Blackthorn captured the dark secrets and inner turmoil of a small group of people huddled inside a dismal bar/nightclub on Christmas Eve.

So how well does this Mistress of Dark Fiction write a book that is not dark or mysterious? How does she write something like, say, Historical Fiction? Well judging by her book, Emma's Tapestry, pretty well actually.

The book is about Emma Harms, who in the late 19-teens leaves her Mennonite German-American family behind to marry Ernest Taylor, a social climbing Englishman. The two move to Singapore and then Japan so Ernest can ascend in the Export business. Emma meanwhile tries to maintain a career as a nurse, give birth and raise two daughters, and try to salvage her faltering marriage.

This story of Emma's troubled marriage is also combined with her subsequent life as a single mother to her now adult daughters in 1940. She also works as a nurse for seniors, like Adela Schuster who when she was younger ran in literary circles and befriended Oscar Wilde during his arrest and disgrace for homosexuality.

Blackthorn writes a strong sense of character in this book. There is a darn good reason for that besides that she is an incredibly gifted author. Emma's Tapestry is based on a true story. It covers Blackthorn's own family history.

According to her Epilogue, Emma and Ernest were based on her great-grandparents. They had a very fractured marriage that ended with Ernest abandoning his family and the severe repercussions were felt by Blackthorn's grandmother even years later. This book is Blackthorn's way of coming to terms with her family's loss and how the end of Emma and Ernest's marriage affected them and their children.

Even though, it's a nonfiction family history, Blackthorn writes Emma's Tapestry like a novel. This approach is similar to how Alex Haley wrote Roots or John Berendt wrote Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. She uses narrative techniques like interior thoughts, point of view, and dialogue to fill in the blanks of a painful family history with her imagination and speculation over what may have happened.

Blackthorn's narrative approach makes Emma memorable as a fully formed character as well as a real person. The Reader feels sympathy when she feels out of place in Japan and Ernest is more interested in climbing the corporate ladder than he is in helping his wife through her loneliness. Things become incredibly tense when war and revolution puts Emma's family in danger. She has to deal with giving birth and raising her young girls and surviving a stressful time with an increasingly insensitive and philandering husband.

Things get worse when Emma and her daughters emigrate to the United States. Despite being American, Emma is vilified because of her German heritage. In her new home town of Brush, Colorado, she receives suspicious looks and barely hidden remarks about her family and accusations of being an enemy spy. A woman who befriends her just as quickly throws her under the bus when the KKK stop by.

This section shows how during war time, propaganda and fear of an enemy can turn people against each other. They instantly hate someone because of their appearance or their last name.

This painful reality has echoed even modern times when 9/11 caused Islamophobia. Many Americans have attacked Latin Americans during days of increased immigration at the Southern borders.

The after effects of Covid saw an increase in hate crimes towards Chinese people. Most recently Russians have been held under suspicion and attacked because of the cruelty of their Premiere Vladimir Putin.

Emma's Tapestry reveals an early example of hate crimes that develop when people are taught to hate and fear an enemy and by extension see anyone from that space as a potential enemy simply because they are from somewhere else.

In contrast to Emma's painful past, her time in 1940 is a much lighter time. While there is some suspense because of living in Britain during the Blitz, Emma seems to be in a much better position. She is still overcoming her abandonment from Ernest but is still trying to form a family with her girls. She is closer to her daughters and is looking forward to becoming a grandmother.

She also continues to pursue her faith. In the past, she had been a member of Mennonite and Lutheran churches. Later she discovers a new interest in Spiritualism. This belief allows her to communicate with the dead and gives her hope that there is an afterlife after losing members of her immediate family, while also making her more active and involved in the present material world.

Emma has a good career as a nurse and through that is able to become close to Adela. While Adela at first seems to be a bit of a daffy name dropper, she shows a lot of wisdom in her stories of the past leading Emma by example. Also Adela's loyalty to the derided and disgraced Oscar Wilde is touching especially when he is alone in Paris with few friends, family, and lovers by his side. With this loyalty and wisdom, Emma takes stock in her own life and reevaluates some of her choices.

Blackthorn's family clearly had a painful past but she was able to capture it with detail, understanding, empathy and above all love.