A Chat with Kathryn Johnson

What does the end of summer mean to you? Returning to a school-year routine? Shutting off the AC and turning on the heat? Putting away shorts and halter tops, and breaking out the sweaters? For me and my husband, September is a reminder that we’re nearing the end of the sailing season. It’s truly romantic skimming across the Chesapeake Bay in our vintage sailboat Purr during the late spring, all summer, and early fall before it gets too cold to be enjoyable. But as cooler days arrive, and the water turns steel-gray, choppy and chill, our fascination with being out on the water wanes, and I often wonder what it must have been like for women and their families to sail on creaky wooden ships across vast and terrifyingly rough oceans capable of swallowing them whole with one huge wave.

My sympathy for these brave souls of just a few hundred years ago was one reason for writing The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, and for creating my heroine Elizabeth Persons. Because this isn’t really a story about a famous man or the play he wrote as much as it is about the courage of a young 17^th-century woman who—like so many women today—yearns for love and a better life for herself. Despite the hardships Elizabeth faces, she learns things about herself and the world around her that give her the strength to rise above a tragic past and reach out for happiness.

Is there a message here for all of us during our challenging and stressful modern times? History shows us, again and again, the awesome emotional and physical strength of women in moments of crisis. Their journals, memoirs, and letters remind us that we as a sex have incredible resilience, and the power within us to be just as strong as they have been when life tests us.  So, today, on the launch of my romantic historical novel, I’m thinking: Yes, here’s to love! But also, here’s to women everywhere, throughout time, who have grown stronger through adversity and found ways to bring joy and love into their own and others’ lives!