Kathleen Williams Renk taught British and Women’s literature for nearly three decades in the U.S. and abroad. Her scholarly books include Magic, Science, and Empire in Postcolonial Literature: The Alchemical Literary Imagination (2012), and Women Writing the Neo-Victorian Novel: Erotic "Victorians" (forthcoming 2020). Renk studied fiction writing at the University of Iowa with the Pulitzer-Prize winning author James Alan MacPherson. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Iowa City Magazine, Literary Yard, Page and Spine, and CC & D Magazine. Vindicated is her first novel.
“masterfully sustains a believable voice … rich in historical details that don't overload …” – Shawn LaTorre, Story Circle Book Reviews
"... crisp, utterly compelling prose brings to life a woman whose creation, as in the novel Frankenstein itself, has taken on a life of its own, eclipsing its creator." – C. P. Lesley, New Books Network (listen to the interview at NBN)
"The language ... dances between poetic, philosophical, and occasionally frightening. ... a beautifully written, engaging novel that will stay with the reader for a long time." – Historical Novels Review
"... a captivating fictionalized history of the 'Mother' of Science Fiction ... well-crafted ... keeps readers from page to page" - Chautauqua Prize Committee
"... an admiring and graceful tribute to Mary Shelley." – Karen Rigby, Foreword Reviews
“Mary Shelley’s waking and dreaming worlds conspire to create the most famously human ‘monster’ in literature, giving the world a taste of what a woman could write and inventing a whole new genre in the process. You’ll read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with new eyes after you have devoured this book.” – Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia and The Turk and My Mother
“Grips you from the very first page and immerses you deep in the world of Mary Shelley as she attempts to live up to the legacy of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and be true to herself.” – Lucy Pick, author of Pilgrimage
“Kathleen Renk has written an engrossing narrative studded with historic detail and the passionate experiences of a woman’s extraordinary life.” – Amy Newman, author of On This Day in Poetry History
“The remarkably sustained voice captures Mary Shelley, the precocious girl, learned yet naive, the wife and mother, suffering through tragic losses, and the awakening writer and thinker. A book lover’s delight.” – Mary Martin Devlin, author of Precious Pawn and Death in the Rainy Season
Mary Godwin is Percy Shelley's "child of light" but has this child killed her famous mother?
Mary Godwin is a teenager with a formidable pedigree. Both of her parents are philosophers but it is Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother who died giving her life, who haunts her waking and dreaming worlds. Reading about her mother’s unconventional life and death inspires Mary to keep a journal. Just as the tumult of her parents’ relationship comes alive in her imagination, she meets emerging poet Percy Shelley. Even though he is married and his wife is pregnant, Shelley threatens to kill himself if Mary will not elope with him. It’s possible that Shelley is mad, but their intellectual and creative affinities convince her that she is his Child of Light.
Passionate and intellectual, Mary struggles with the demands of her volatile husband and their circle of friends, including her stepsister Claire and George Gordon, Lord Byron. But as she writes Frankenstein, she also muses about her encounters with her creature and the philosophical questions of life, death, and creation that undergird her novel. Justifying their unconventional life and enduring personal tragedies, Mary follows in her mother’s footsteps, as she contemplates a woman's place in literature and the world.
November 2020
ISBN 9781944453107
$16 paperback
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eISBN 9781944453114
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