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!