Natalie Jenner--Austen at Sea

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Quite by felicitous chance I discovered Natalie Jenner's second novel, BLOOMSBURY GIRLS, which I so adored that I tracked down Natalie through a mutual connection and asked her to write a guest post, which she kindly consented to do. (You can read it here.) I then went back and read her debut novel, THE JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY, and I have been a huge fan of Natalie's books ever since. Now, picture me jumping for joy when I saw there was a new novel, and one with a tie-in to Jane Austen! And of course I immediately invited Natalie to tell us what inspired this book, and I was unexpectedly moved by her story.

NATALIE JENNER: 

I delivered the final manuscript of my third novel, Every Time We Say Goodbye, to my editor at 12.30 pm on Monday, May 8, 2023. At 1.00 pm, my doctor called to tell me I had cancer and would need a second operation within weeks of the first. After getting through an afternoon of appointments and a very difficult phone call with my daughter, I had only one solution for getting through the weeks ahead: write a new book.

            It is only with the benefit of time that I can see how critical time itself was to this decision. For one thing, I had sat down just the day before, on a whim, and punched out the first chapter of a new story. It was based on an idea that had been brewing in my head for six years, ever since I learned about two Boston women who had written in 1852 to Admiral Sir Francis Austen, the last surviving sibling of Jane Austen, seeking her signature. I remember thinking to myself at the time, “They’re the original groupies!” and knowing right away that I would one day turn it into a book.

But why did I end up choosing the day that I did? Was it simply because I was officially finished writing the last book and wanted a new “toy” to play with? Or had I somehow intuited, despite my many doctors’ assurances otherwise, the need to have a stoke in the creative fire when the medical news came in?

That first chapter now sat on my laptop screen like kryptonite. It had all the power of an unknown future and all the hope for better times ahead. I wrote every day up until my second surgery a few weeks later. Two days after that, I returned to my characters in 1865 Boston, who were now about to board a ship to England, several of them with the secret intent of meeting Jane Austen’s brother. I finished the book—now titled Austen at Sea—in the fall of 2023, the very week I was declared cancer-free.

Painting of Austen at Sea's fictional characters, commissioned by Natalie from artist Sally Dunne

Even more strange than all this timing was the almost umbilical connection between Austen at Sea and Every Time We Say Goodbye, the book that had been delivered within minutes of my diagnosis. The research for that very different story had been harrowing, and the subject matter—occupied Rome during the Second World War—completely foreign to me. During its writing, I learned about a “lost” movie that had only recently been discovered and its enigmatic British-Italian director Jack Salvatori. In wanting to quote from Salvatori’s journals in my own book, I sought out Professor Laura Ruberto of Berkeley City College, who had featured Jack Salvatori on the website iItaly.org and was able to connect me to his one child, Ray Holland.

Jack Salvatori

In the summer of 2022, while writing the first draft of Every Time We Say Goodbye, I emailed Ray to obtain his permission to excerpt his father’s journal from occupied France in my manuscript. A few months later, that very journal, Ray’s only possession of his father’s, showed up in my mailbox as casually as a flyer. Stunned, I held the journal in my hands and read its unforgettable words, just like a group of my characters in Every Time We Say Goodbye do in one of its final chapters. Now I am them, I remember thinking to myself.

Jack's Journal

As I continued to work on the manuscript, I also continued my correspondence with Ray, who at eighty-five years of age had expressed fear to me that time was running out to share his father’s remarkable story. Ray happened—coincidentally, if there is such a thing—to live in Hampshire, the county of Jane Austen and Chawton, and southernly, near the sea. We exchanged mostly emails, but occasionally cards and letters. He sent me photos of his mother and father, a disk of the once-lost movie Umanita, copies of beautiful artwork that he had done over the years.

Sadly, Ray Holland died of cancer in February 2024, only three months before Every Time We Say Goodbye released. Of course, the stealth-like power of art means that only now do I realize again that strange, wonderful, karmic tie between real life and fiction. For, as I wrote Admiral Austen during my recovery from cancer surgery, it turns out I was also writing Ray. Another old man near the end of life, living in Hampshire near the sea, corresponding with a North American about his lost ancestor and their legacy.

Admiral Austen felt so real to me as I wrote him—it is only now, long after I had written him, that I realize why. Sadly, this is something I can no longer share with Ray himself—my power as a writer ends there. All I can do is to write it here instead: to make it real, to make it last, but—above all—to make the wonder of life happen, again, and again.

 

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Natalie Jenner is the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society, Bloomsbury Girls and Every Time We Say Goodbye, which have been translated into more than twenty languages worldwide. Her new book Austen at Sea releases on May 6, 2025, from St. Martin’s Press. Formerly a lawyer, career coach, and independent bookshop owner, she lives in Oakville, Ontario, with her family and two rescue dogs.

From the bestselling author of  The Jane Austen Society comes a new novel about Austen's fans set in 1865 Boston and Hampshire.

In Austen at Sea, Henrietta and Charlotte Stevenson, the only children of a widowed Massachusetts supreme court judge, are desperate to experience freedom of any kind, at a time when young unmarried women are kept largely at home. Striking up a correspondence with Jane Austen's last surviving sibling, ninety-one-year-old retired admiral Sir Francis Austen, the two sisters invite themselves to visit and end up sneaking on board the SS China, a transatlantic mail packet steamship heading to Portsmouth. They are joined on the China by a motley crew of fellow Americans including a reluctant chaperone, two Philadelphia rare book dealer brothers secretly also sailing at Admiral Austen's request, a young senator's daughter and socialite in hot pursuit of the brothers, and Louisa May Alcott, traveling to Europe for the first time as an invalid's companion. Alcott will end up leading the other women on board ship in a charity performance of vignettes from Charles Dickens's latest novel A Tale of Two Cities, and hilarity ensues when the men petition to join.

Landing in Portsmouth, the American visitors soon learn Sir Francis's real purpose in receiving them, and the battle begins over a piece of Austen's legacy so controversial, it will result in historic and climactic court cases on both sides of the Atlantic. Jenner's trademark large cast of characters this time includes a theatre impresario, a newspaperman, a street waif, suffragists and Boston bluestockings, a fortune teller, a disgruntled divorce court judge, and the entire bench of the Massachusetts state supreme court. Releasing in the 250th year since Jane Austen's birth, Austen at Sea is a celebration of literature and the lengths we will go to, to protect who and what we love.

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Natalie Jenner is the internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society, Bloomsbury Girls and Every Time We Say Goodbye, which have been translated into more than twenty languages worldwide. Her new book Austen at Sea releases on May 6, 2025, from St. Martin’s Press. Formerly a lawyer, career coach, and independent bookshop owner, she lives in Oakville, Ontario, with her family and two rescue dogs. 

DEBS: Thank you, Natalie, for sharing your journey with us. I am a firm believer in those karmic connections, too.

Readers, doesn't this book sound absolutely delicious? And the painting! I keep going back to look at all the lovely details, and the expressions on the characters' faces!

PS! REDS ALERT!! Evelyn is the winner of Catriona McPherson's THE EDINBURGH MURDERS!  Email me your address at deb@deborahcrombie.com and I will pass on your info to Catriona. Congratulations!

What Talent Do You Wish You Had?

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  As a profoundly unmusical person–I can't sing or play an instrument–I am fascinated by music and musicians. I'm currently listening to Brandi Carlile's memoir, BROKEN HORSES, and am reading Paul McCartney's THE LYRICS, a massive tome that is both a memoir and an analysis of the lyrics of over 150 of his songs. The book is a collaboration between McCartney and the poet Paul Muldoon, who interviewed him over the course of five years. There is also a podcast version of the book, McCARTNEY: A LIFE IN LYRICS, free to Audible subscribers, although with annoying ads. I've loved listening to McCartney tell these stories–he is, as you might imagine, very funny and witty, and also a brilliant mimic.

I am gobsmacked by the idea that music just pours out of people like McCartney and Carlile, and even by the fact that my husband plays the guitar by ear. I'm not tone deaf, by the way, and can recognise almost anything I've heard before within a bar or two–I just can't "play it back," which totally baffles my husband.

I suppose in a way this is like people who don't write being fascinated by the fact that people can. How is it that this thing happens when writers have a notebook or a keyboard, and a story and language come together in something new? (Actually, the idea that we put ourselves inside the lives of completely imaginary characters is pretty weird, I have to admit…)

I'm also interested in drawing and painting, but because I have at least some rudimentary talent there, it doesn't seem as much like magic to me as does music.

Fellow REDs, is there another creative endeavor that fascinates you? And is there something else you can imagine yourself doing?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: My father was such a wonderful musician–a classically trained pianist, with a perfect ear, and perfect musical sense (he taught classes on Beethoven’s 9th and one of the two Mozart flute concertos (very specific!) , and he wrote two non-fiction books on the evolution of  American music published by the prestigious University of Chicago Press. .

 I tell you this because I have NONE of that ability.   None none none. I can look at sheet music and tell where they are in the music, if someone else is playing it. But the idea of transposing those notations into a note on a piano would take me SO long, one note at a time. And as for writing music, I cannot even conceive of how it’s done. AT ALL.

I always remember the movie Amadeus, and how they illustrated the notes coming out of his brain. I cannot fathom how that must feel.

I can sing (enthusiastically but badly), and I can remember all the lyrics. Someone else's lyrics. And I bet I could write lyrics to someone else' s music. 

I will stick with writing. That is baffling enough, and I am grateful to be able to make up new worlds and new people. On a good day. :-)  

DEBS: Hank, now I have to watch Amadeus again. I don't remember that about the music.

LUCY BURDETTE: I can read music and sing on key, but I sure don’t have the voice I wish I had. I learned from taking up ukulele that I can get better if I practice, but I am not gifted. When I hear people singing opera, it’s like another world. I always wonder when they knew they had such an amazing voice?

Having just finished ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, I can really see a level of astonishing writing that I am unlikely to ever achieve.

HALLIE EPHRON: Oh gosh, I wish I could draw. Or do any kind of visual art for that matter. My mother's brother, who died young, was an artist. He worked for Disney in the early days when they were creating the first animated films. I have one of his paintings in pride of place in my living room. And of course my Jerry could turn any idea into a poignant cartoon. 

One of my daughters is an architect and she can draw just about anything. Both of her kids — my grandchildren — have that talent, but I can barely draw a straight line, never mind read my own handwriting.

RHYS BOWEN: I am from a musical family ( mother is Welsh) my grandfather conducted a small orchestra. My mother studied piano up to concert level. Alas I did not inherit the piano talent even though I took lessons. Her fingers would fly effortlessly over the keys while I struggled. But I have sung all my life in choirs, in an opera chorus and as a folk singer. I still sing in choirs and it gives me great joy. I also play my folk harp which is a great distraction in my office 

Two of my children, Clare and Dominic are musically talented. So are Clare’s kids 

I also love sketching and painting. As I  have shared here. 

DEBS: Yes, and we adore your watercolors, Rhys! I am always both envious and inspired by them.

JENN McKINLAY: I am the outlier in a family of artists and musicians. I can sing well and like Rhys was in choir all my school life, but I don’t play any instruments. The Hub is a phenomenal guitar player and has been playing out in bands since he was 19. The Hooligans can play multiple instruments and one of them is going into film making. My father, mother, brother, and maternal grandmother–all artists–and my paternal grandmother was a brilliant pianist. Honestly, I’m glad I went with writing as my chosen creative path. I feel like the other artistic slots were already full so this one got to be all mine.

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Jenn, I'm like you, in that I can sing quite well, and love music, but I've never succeeded at any instrument I turned my hand to, much to the dismay of my school's music director, who thought anyone who could sight read sheet music and sing it on tune must be able to play something!

 

You all may remember I went to college for a BFA in acting, and was an Equity apprentice. I gave it up because I was competent, but not really good, and in the arts, you need to be really, really good if you want to make money at something. But the talent I wish I had isn't acting, it's writing plays. I know, the exact crossroads between my first and last artistic loves! So far, my attempts have fizzled after a few pages. At some point, when I have the time, I'd like to see if taking a class might help, but, you know. It's frustrating, because I feel I ought to be able to! 

DEBS: How talent skips around is so interesting, too. Both Paul McCartney and Brandi Carlile came from musical families, but that's not always the case--sometimes musicians do pop up in families like mine. And where did the writing come from, I sometimes wonder? The only writer in my family was my uncle by marriage, so it certainly wasn't genetic!

In any case, I wouldn't trade the writing for another talent, given the choice.

Dear Readers, what creative endeavor fascinates you? And what talent do you wish you had?

P.S. Speaking of talent, that photo of Paul was taken, of course, by Linda, who was a genius with the camera.