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| Donna Kaye is
a transplanted Californian. Twenty years ago she met and married
an Aussie bloke, and she is still happily living in Sydney,
Australia, with her husband and two sons. An enthusiastic member of Romance Writers of Australia, Donna has published romantic short stories and articles about writing. The Arrangement, her first book-length publication, reflects her interest in Restoration English history. "When I decided to write a romance, I wanted to do a historical, because I like imagining what it might have been like to be a woman in a different era. My first story was a pirate tale -- pretty dreadful -- but the research I did got me interested in English history in the seventeenth century. The Arrangement is set in 1665, the year the plague killed thousands in London and across England. Reading today's headlines about SARS brings home to me that in spite of our medical advances, humankind is still vulnerable to catastrophic disease. This is scary enough in our time, but in 1665 people had no idea what caused the Sickness or how it was transmitted. They locked up the sufferers to protect the healthy, closed public entertainments, and put their faith in useless remedies. People died in such numbers that the bodies could not be buried quickly enough and were left piled in the streets. I tried to imagine what it would have felt like to be alone and poor in this terrifying time, and my heroine Diana Cresswell was born. Diana is what I think of as an active heroine. Another reason I write historicals is that I got tired of reading stories with passive heroines who seemed to spend their time brushing up against the hero in various castles and country houses, or becoming faint at interesting moments. Diana is pragmatic, resourceful, and brave. When it becomes clear that she must trade her honor for a rich man's protection, she does it without losing her self-respect. Fate takes an odd twist when she falls in love with her protector, the powerful and enigmatic Sir Robert Barry, but she must escape Barry's enemies and draw on all her courage to win a place at his side at last." |
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Copyright © 2003 Donna Kaye
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