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2000s: A woman is on the run. But from what and from whom?
The Woman Who Ran
What you need to know before your trail
Like the tenant of Wildfell Hall in the classic novel by Anne Bronte, a mysterious woman comes to the small village and rents the dilapidated house where she stays and keeps herself to herself. But the village has other ideas and they are curious about the stranger in their midst. Why is she so reluctant to share in village life and come into the pub or shop? This stranger, Helen Graham is on the run and she is jumpy and nervous.
She doesn’t know who or what to believe and who to trust. She’s escaping from her past but is not sure what that exactly is.
Travel Guide
Sam Baker takes inspiration from the Bronte’s classic novel to represent the isolation and fear that someone can have and to examine as she says in the author note at the back, to see what had changed for women and what had not. The setting is the same desolate Yorkshire village and the surrounding moorland, the issues facing women largely the same but in contrast to the world which Bronte created, this is in the modern day.
Wildfell Hall is an old dilapidated house miles from anywhere apart from the village where there are a few houses, a pub and a shop, both of which are the centre of the village life – especially for the gossips. The village is populated by plenty of those yet feels isolated and claustrophobic, sombre and suspicious. Ideal setting for the issues within the novel. Those wild Yorkshire Dales are remote, strong, desolate and unforgiving.
Gill Markham is one such person in the village who attempts to befriend Helen. He is a journalist and is curious to find out why Helen has come here. As she pulls away and hides, his curiosity gets stronger. Good nature as well as journalist’s ear keeps him going. He is the calm, the friendly calm in Helen’s life and the one person she can maybe trust.
Helen’s previous life is revealed bit by bit, like a bruise ripening, from one colour to the next, each stage painful for a different reason. And that is the painful setting of Helen’s character, and the isolated village where she hopes she can mend.
Booktrailer Review
Susan @thebooktrailer
I thought this was very clever – writing a modern day thriller with the Bronte inspired background. A microscope on society and women and the habits of the day, the views and beliefs of people from one era to the next and how they have changed (or not) The issues and the setting blended well for the sense of helplessness , isolation and fear were transposed from one era to the next and I could see how a problem in any walk of life, in any form can fester and worsen. How we deal with things, and the chances we have are what’s important. The need to heal is a great one. At first reading, I was unsure if the Bronte influences were going to be overused but no fear, they were barely a thread to hang on similar problems in society then and now. A clever way of keeping the settings remote but fictional and the main focus on the character’s past.
Sam says that she did a lot of research into the present day issues (no spoilers here) and the Bronte heritage and it shows. The world is digital now and supposedly everyone can be found..but the way journalists work now and then was also an eye opener. It gets in your head and makes you think that’s for sure.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Twitter: @SamBaker
Web: sambaker.co.uk
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