Like Fire-Hearted Suns by Melanie Joosten, Ultimo Press
Most of us recall stories of the suffragettes from school – the horrors endured, the courage summoned in the battle for women to win the vote. We take that right for granted now, but like author Melanie Joosten I was captivated by these fearless warriors.
Her new novel, Like Fire-Hearted Suns, is essential reading, an extraordinary tale that takes us right into the heart of that vital period in history. Melanie says her inspiration was “a picture I saw in a high-school history class of women prison warders forcibly feeding a suffragette – I wondered how something so brutal could come of demanding the vote and knew there was more of a story there.”
The novel opens in 1908 in London. Catherine and Beatrice are college room mates –Catherine determined to pursue a career in science and Beatrice studying ancient history. Her family has sent her over from Calcutta. “They needed somewhere to put her” while they sorted out “some ruckus” in the British Raj. “The Indians wanted to self-govern.” In a cafe, Beatrice comes across a gaggle of women. “They are so aggressively unadorned,” she muses. But later she becomes one of them, a suffragette, Christabel Pankhurst her icon –
