
From dinner last night. My caption ” can’t tell you how scared I am really right now about the world grown ups are making for you, Melanie. All I can do is enjoy being with and say how proud I am of people who are working to make a difference and that I’m trying to do my own bit to help make things better.”
I was in the midst of working on copy edits for Gilded Deceit this weekend when the news about the ban on refugees and travel from some predominantly Muslim countries hit. As readers of the series know, revelations about Suzanne’s past have sent Malcolm and Suzanne into exile. Exile in many ways is the theme of Gilded Deceit, with the Rannochs and their friends encountering other expatriates, including Lord Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley. I looked up from fine tuning their longing for home and conflicted thoughts about a home they’ve been forced to leave to read, appalled, about what is happening today. To worry about friends like a young Canadian, Iranian-born singer who now can’t visit her family in Canada for fear she can’t return to the U.S. Or another friend whose father-in-law now can’t come here to visit his toddler grandchildren. Other friends, artists, students, academics with young children, who now may not be able to travel to and from the country I call home. The plight of those one knows personally brings home the concrete reality, but far worse is the plight of refugees whose very lives are at stake. Many of those refugees have children my daughter’s age or younger. Yes, I tend to focus on the plight of children. Having a young child sends my thoughts in that direction.
Compared to these people, Malcolm and Suzanne and the other characters in Gilded Deceit are comparatively fortunate. They have a secure fortune, and Malcolm was careful in advance to move funds out of Britain. Malcolm even has a house (a very beautiful house) in Italy where they can seek refuge. They may have to look over their shoulder for Lord Carfax and the Elsinore League, but they have financial resources and their own skills as agents to fall back upon. That somehow drives home to me how bad the current situation is. We tend to think of progress. Of the world being a safer, saner, more just place now than it was two hundred years ago. As writers, we devise hair raising situations for our characters. Usually their plight is much worse than what one looks round and sees in the present day. Instead, I look at the news and at people I know personally and find myself thinking ‘“Malcolm and Suzanne are the lucky ones.”
Malcolm struggles a lot in Gilded Deceit with what it means to be British and what he’s done in Britain’s name. At one point he says, “Being loyal to a country doesn’t mean taking on the burdens of the men who run it.”
This weekend, I am having a similar struggle.
January 29, 2017 at 11:56 pm
It terrifies me what is happening. We need action, but I am not sure what I can do. I will figure something out so that we can get back our country.
January 30, 2017 at 1:25 am
I feel much the same, Diane. I thought I would start by at least writing something.
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January 30, 2017 at 3:40 am
I am encouraged by the instinctive outpouring of support for immigrants and refugees. Expressing your thoughts out loud, and on paper is an important step, so people know they are not alone.
January 31, 2017 at 1:49 am
Karin, I’m really encouraged by the outpouring of support too. And I do think speaking and writing is very important!
January 30, 2017 at 4:08 am
Tracy, I have a story that will make you feel a bit better. Yesterday our pastor got an email from our junior high group asking permission to make 2 large signs for our gym. He agreed because of their content. (We were having a fundraiser this morning so plenty of people would see them.) The kids put them up this am. They said “We love our Muslim neighbors” and after church the kids took them over to the Islamic temple and hung them on their fence. (Many of their congregation are effected directly just like people you know.) I know it wasn’t much but it certainly made me proud that my church doesn’t have a small mind like so many in our nation right now. I’m glad you did this post – it needs being said loud and often.
January 31, 2017 at 1:51 am
That’s a wonderful and heartening story, Lynne! Thank you for sharing it!