A
Different Kind of Fire
by
Suanne Schafer
Genre:
Historical Fiction, Romance
Ruby
Schmidt has the talent, the drive, even the guts to enroll in art
school, leaving behind her childhood home and the beau she always
expected to marry. Her life at the Academy seems heavenly at first,
but she soon learns that societal norms in the East are as
restrictive as those back home in West Texas. Rebelling against the
insipid imagery woman are expected to produce, Ruby embraces bohemian
life. Her burgeoning sexuality drives her into a life-long love
affair with another woman and into the arms of an Italian baron. With
the Panic of 1893, the nation spirals into a depression, and Ruby’s
career takes a similar downward trajectory. After thinking she could
have it all, Ruby now wonders how she can salvage the remnants of her
life. Pregnant and broke, she returns to Texas rather than join the
queues at the neighborhood soup kitchen.
Set
against the Gilded Age of America, a time when suffragettes fight for
reproductive rights and the right to vote, A Different Kind of Fire
depicts one woman’s battle to balance husband, family, career, and
ambition. Torn between her childhood sweetheart, her forbidden
passion for another woman, the nobleman she had to marry, and
becoming a renowned painter, Ruby's choices mold her in ways she
could never have foreseen.
Suanne
Schafer, born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War, finds it
ironic that grade school drills for tornadoes and nuclear war were
the same: hide beneath your desk and kiss your rear-end goodbye. Now
a retired family-practice physician whose only child has fledged the
nest, her pioneer ancestors and world travels fuel her imagination.
She originally
planned to write romances, but either as a consequence of a series of
failed relationships or a genetic distrust of happily-ever-after, her
heroines are strong women who battle tough environments and intersect
with men who might—or might not—love them.
Suanne completed
the Stanford University Creative Writing Certificate program.
Her short works have been featured in print and on-line magazines
(Bête Noire; Brain, Child; Empty Sink Publishing; and Three
Line Poetry) and anthologies: (Night Lights; Graveyard; 166 Palms;
and Licked). Her debut women’s fiction novel, A Different
Kind of Fire, explores the life of Ruby Schmidt, a nineteenth century
artist who escapes—and returns—to West Texas. Suanne’s next
book explores the heartbreak and healing of an American physician
caught up in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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