Favorite Author and My Guest: Mary Jo Putney on a Very Exotic Locale!

I am very excited to welcome my guest today, New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney, who is bringing us a fascinating look into her research on Central Asia for one of her trilogies set in an exotic locale. When you read them you won't believe she has never been to those places, her descriptions are so vivid.

Mary Jo says she was born with a reading addiction, a condition with no known cure. [I seem to suffer from the same addiction if you haven’t guessed!] Mary Jo’s entire romance writing career is, according to her, an accidental byproduct of buying a computer for other purposes. Most of her books contain history and cats, and there is always a happy ending.

I have reviewed her Silk trilogy, the last two books of which are set in Central Asia… and I recommend them. You can see my reviews below this post.

Comment and one of you will win your choice one of her books in the Silk trilogy!

Yearning for Wild and Distant Lands

by Mary Jo Putney

When I was a kid, my school had racks of maps hanging at one end of the blackboard. My favorite was the map of the world, and during boring times I'd study the blank vastness of Central Asia and wonder what was there. That fascination has never left me, and I've since written two Asian oriented trilogies. This isn't the wisest business decision I've ever made, but the Muse wants what the Muse wants!

My Central Asian series is the Silk Trilogy in honor of the ancient Silk Road, which carried luxuries from China and India and Rome. In the 19th century, it was the battlefield of the Great Game, the name for the struggle between Britain and Russia to expand their empires through the region.

Russia gradually annexed the khanates (the political entities ruled by a Khan) while the British pushed north from India, "the jewel in the crown" of the empire. Russian and British agents worked behind the scenes to further their empire's goals. In other words, Central Asian is a great exotic setting for historical romance, and it was an age of daring explorers risking their lives in dangerous, unknown places.

The first in the series, Silk and Shadows, takes place entirely in England, but it was the springboard to Silk and Shadow (#2) and Veils of Silk (#3.)  Silk and Shadows is a revenge story ("He called himself Peregrine, and he came to London for revenge.") and I needed to find a exotic Asian background for my hero, who sweeps into London society as a prince who can move at the highest levels of society. (The young Queen Victoria admires him.)

Joseph Wolff

In searching for a background for Peregrine, I discovered the true story of the Reverend Joseph Wolff, an eccentric Church of England missionary to the Middle East. A German Jew by birth, he converted to Christianity and spent years traveling dangerous roads all the way to India as he preached to the Jewish communities of Asia. He was always warmly received, though I'm not sure how many converts he made.

When two British officers were taken prisoner by the mad Amir of Bokhara (now Bukhara in Uzbekistan), the British government thought them dead, but a group of British officers collected money to send an agent to Bokhara to try to obtain the release of their fellows. The Reverend Wolff was able and willing. After a long and dangerous journey, he reached Bokhara only to find that the officers had indeed been executed.

Wolff himself barely escaped with his life, but the journal he wrote and later published was one of two primary sources for Silk and Secrets. His Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the years 1843–1845, to ascertain the fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly was packed full of marvelous details. Camels: two humps, not one. Deep baskets slung hung across the camel's back with a man riding in each. Sounds uncomfortable. And details of the real people and city of Bukhara.

Bactrian camels

Bukara

The other invaluable source was Travels into Bokhara. Being an account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary and Persia. Also, narrative of a Voyage on the Indus from the Sea to Lahore by Alexander Burnes, a Scotsman (and cousin of Robert Burns) who joined the army of the East India Company and explored widely across Central Asia. His memoirs added greatly to knowledge of that part of the world when they were published in Britain, and he attained considerable renown before being assassinated in Afghanistan, which has always been a dangerous part of the world. 

Sir Alexander Burnes

My first research challenge was finding copies of these books in the days before the Internet! I learned about the books by reading bibliographies in other books. I was able to order a very expensive copy of Burnes’ memoirs from a tiny publisher in New Hampshire that specialized in reprinting primary source books about the Soviet Union. (I just looked the book up at Amazon and found many editions that I could buy with a click. Research is easier now!

Wolff's book I found through inter-library loan. I stood for many hours at mini-photocopier and copied the whole darn book. (Yes, historical writers can be quite insane about their research.) [Regan’s note: don’t I know it!]

These true stories became the inspiration for the hero of Silk and Secrets, Lord Ross Carlisle. Naturally he's far more handsome than Wolff or Burnes, but he is also an Oriental scholar and linguist, a traveler and writer of popular travelogues. He began to roam restlessly after his beloved young wife, Juliet Cameron, ran away from him for reasons unknown.

On the verge of returning to Britain, he meets his mother-in-law at the British embassy in Constantinople, and she begs him to go to Bokhara to see if he can obtain the release of her son, Major Ian Cameron, a friend of Ross's. So Ross undertakes one last journey into danger. On the way he discovers and allies with his long lost wife, and together they go to the most perilous city in Central Asia. 

The romance may be fictional, but the backgrounds are authentic, and Juliet's life as a warlord in Persia was inspired by Lady Hester Stanhope and Jane Digby. Both were aristocratic women who lived lives of great adventure.

Lady Hester Stanhope

Jane Digby

  

As a romance writer, I'm not about to send characters all the way to Bokhara just to find the man they're looking for dead. And that led to the third book of the trilogy, Veils of Silk. (Spoiler alert!) Ian Cameron is rescued, and as an Indian Army officer, he returns to India to find that his old life has shattered, and he must find new meaning in a new life.

He and his new and unexpected (Russian born) wife undertake a journey to the northwest of India before returning to his home in Scotland--and if I thought the Central Asian research was intense, India was far, far more complicated and fascinating!  I had to learn a great deal about the British Raj in the 1840s, beginning with the fact that it was then called the Sirkar. I studied up on Hinduism and Islam because it was a great sprawling book with many characters and more than one romance. And their epic journey is the kind that could have been part of the Great Game as enemies of Britain stir up trouble on the Northwest Frontier.

The Victorian age is often considered stuffy, but Victorians like the ones I've mentioned lived amazing lives!  I can't begin to do justice to the richness of this era and these people--but I'm very glad I wrote these books, which gave me such a terrific excuse to do the research.

Do you share my fascination with the vast mysteries of Central Asia?  Would you like to visit Bokhara or Samarkand or one of the other near-mythical cities of those lands? I would!