I will put my hand up now and say that Dreena Collins is a friend whom I met several years ago through authoring. Over that time, we’ve urged each other on when things are bleak and celebrated each other’s successes. Dreena has had many – her award winning flash fiction is exquisite and her Hummingbird House series, written under her alter ego Jane Harvey, makes for light, insightful reading about ordinary people.
Perotine, rich historical fiction, is a departure from her norm, and it’s a triumph.
In 1556, when Bloody Mary is on the throne and Protestants are being persecuted in the most vile manner, three ordinary women living in poverty on the island of Guernsey are tried for heresy.
They have become known – but not at all widely – as The Guernsey Martyrs – and Perotine, the youngest of the three, is the protagonist in this novel which bears her name.
The story begins when Perotine is newly married, to a French Protestant minister who has chosen to live on Guernsey. They live with her mother and sister, both widowed. Then David – the husband – leaves, afraid of persecution in a small community where he stands out like a sore thumb. They will be fine, he assures them, because this is their home, their people. No harm will come to them.
Perotine and her small family find themselves having to cope alone, with no means of support, and increasingly isolated from a community which has bent with the winds of change. Besides, they are three women with no man to look after them – an anomaly in itself.
There are several aspects I admire about this work.
One is how realistically the lives of the islanders, and especially of Perotine’s family, are portrayed. Dreena has done her research and conveys it to the reader in lilting, evocative prose so that you are there – from wading in the cold sea gathering vraic (seaweed) to heat your cottage and scrabbling in a muddy, sodden vegetable bed for the last of the roots, to the cramped, damp, and cold cell the women are held in while awaiting sentencing.
The attitudes of the islanders, too, are sharply defined by their behaviours towards the three. There is the farmer’s wife, who dares to persuade her husband to offer a few days work, discreetly. There is the priest, who gently tries to warn the mother that her devotion to her faith has set her and her daughters apart. And then there are the Important Men of the community, the ones who hold and love to use the power. And others in between, all vivid and real.
What I loved most, however, was the depiction of Perotine herself. She is very young, the baby of the family. She is devout, honest, and she trusts that Good will Triumph. The mother is portrayed as intelligent, committed to her beliefs, realistic; and the sister as open, friendly, but incisive. Perotine strives to match their maturity. But as events unfold and she meets the piled on miseries with a deeply held faith and a firm belief she is being tested and must endure, her helplessness and confused innocence is heart breaking.
Of course, the most heart breaking aspect is that the bare facts of the story are history – not fiction. Perotine brings that tragic history to vivid life, raw, gritty, emotional. A deeply compelling read.
Find Perotine here –
To pre-order the paperback, go to Blue Ormer Publishing here or to the Amazon links for the kindle version
To pre-order the kindle, go here (UK) and here (US)
And if you’re local to Gloucestershire, come and meet the author and listen to the story on April 18 at 3 pm at The Harvey Centre, Minsterworth. See all the details here.
More reviews here and my monthly round up of what I’ve read here.