A Different Kind of Fire by Suanne Schafer Book Tour and Giveaway :)
A
Different Kind of Fire
by
Suanne Schafer
Genre:
Historical Fiction, Romance
Ruby
Schmidt has the talent, the drive, even the guts to enroll in art
school, leaving behind her childhood home and the beau she always
expected to marry. Her life at the Academy seems heavenly at first,
but she soon learns that societal norms in the East are as
restrictive as those back home in West Texas. Rebelling against the
insipid imagery woman are expected to produce, Ruby embraces bohemian
life. Her burgeoning sexuality drives her into a life-long love
affair with another woman and into the arms of an Italian baron. With
the Panic of 1893, the nation spirals into a depression, and Ruby’s
career takes a similar downward trajectory. After thinking she could
have it all, Ruby now wonders how she can salvage the remnants of her
life. Pregnant and broke, she returns to Texas rather than join the
queues at the neighborhood soup kitchen.
Set
against the Gilded Age of America, a time when suffragettes fight for
reproductive rights and the right to vote, A Different Kind of Fire
depicts one woman’s battle to balance husband, family, career, and
ambition. Torn between her childhood sweetheart, her forbidden
passion for another woman, the nobleman she had to marry, and
becoming a renowned painter, Ruby's choices mold her in ways she
could never have foreseen.
Author
Note:
Ruby
Schmidt has just left her West Texas home and betrothed to go to
attend the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. This is her first
day in her new world.
Eager
to explore the Academy, Ruby skipped there the next morning. She
reined in her eagerness, not wanting to appear a foolish schoolgirl.
Red and black brickwork patterns graced the magnificent façade of
the Academy. Terra cotta statuary, floral designs, and stone tracery
surrounded a large Gothic window. Above, a bas-relief frieze depicted
famous artists. She’d never seen such elaborate ornamentation on a
building. She
entered through a two-story arch, gaping in awe at the decorative
tiled floors, a spectacular staircase with banisters of bronze and
mahogany, walls studded with golden rosettes, and a blue ceiling
spangled with silver stars. How easy to learn art here where beauty
dwelled. In
the student store, she received the list of supplies for her first
class,Drawing
from the Cast.
She purchased Venetian charcoal, paper, and fixative, and for a
modest additional cost, she chose a portfolio instead of a drawing
board. Carefully she counted $3.72 from her reticule before placing
the majority of the items in her new locker, rented for a dollar a
year, keeping only pencils, an eraser, and a sketchbook for immediate
use. She
climbed the grand stairs to the second floor galleries. The largest
painting Ruby had ever seen dominated the landing. Beneath it, a gold
plaque read Dead
Man restored to Life by touching the Bones of the Prophet Elisha,
Washington Allston (1779-1843). An
entire wall of her room at the boarding house could not hold the
image. Scarlet accents swirled through a pyramid of figures. At its
peak, Allston had placed a Roman centurion’s gleaming gold armor,
and at its base, the dead man’s white shroud. As
Ruby moved through the galleries, she understood why the Academy’s
art collections were considered the most valuable in America. Briefly
she worshipped before each picture, moving close enough to study the
translucent layers of colors and shifting her head to catch the play
of light across individual brush strokes. Her fingers itched to hold
a paintbrush, and she rubbed her fingers together to soothe their
prickling. On
the Cherry Street side of the Academy, Ruby wandered into galleries
containing paintings and casts of sculptures. Rooms lit by skylights
contained furnishings for drapery painting and life drawing classes.
She inhaled deeply. Pungent odors of turpentine and linseed oil mixed
with paint permeated the building. Black fingerprints from charcoal
dusted the doorjambs. A
stout, middle-aged woman watched over the door to the Antiquities
Room. She beckoned to Ruby. “Come on in, dearie. It’s Thursday,
Ladies’ Day. No men allowed.” Glad
she happened to come when the galleries were open to women artists,
Ruby entered, her heart thumping with anticipation. Inside a dozen
women, uniformed in dark smocks, stood before easels and sketched.
All her life, she had seemed singular in her desire to study art. She
was no longer alone. The urge to whisper hello to her fellow painters
rose within her, but the silence in the room was so profound she
found herself unable to speak. The
Nike of Samothrace caught
her eye, a sculpture she’d only seen in art books at the library of
the Texas Normal College. Carved by an ancient Greek sculptor, the
figure of the goddess Nike commemorated a victory at sea. Wings
unfurled behind her, she descended from the heavens to land on the
prow of a warship, struggling to maintain her balance against the
combined forces of ship, air, and water. The wind whipped her
garments behind her like sheets snapping in a Texas breeze. The
goddess’s missing head and arms did not diminish her grandeur—nor
did knowing she was a reproduction of the statue in the Louvre. Compelled
to touch the graceful wings and the undulating rhythm of the robes,
Ruby skimmed one hand sensuously over the plaster, finding it hard,
cool, smooth, yet delicately textured at the feathers.
The Nike celebrated
Ruby’s own triumph in being in Philadelphia. Next
Ruby stood before a copy of Michelangelo’s David.
From loving Bismarck, she knew what lay beneath the fig leaf and
longed to pry away the ludicrous covering and sketch the Biblical
hero in all his glory. She
wandered around the cast room, her lips clamped together to control
her desire to exclaim over every statue, bust, or bas-relief. She
hesitated before taking out her sketchbook, afraid the other artists
would intuit she was a mere amateur. Beginning her academic career by
sketching the Nike or Davidwould
surely be too audacious, so she chose a plaster cast of a woman’s
hand. As she drew and redrew the long chalky fingers from different
angles, the natural light from the skylights faded unobtrusively from
warm gold to mercury silver. Suddenly, the brilliance of midday
blazed again from overhead. Startled, she looked up. The
guardian of the galleries noted her dazed expression. “It’s just
our new electrical lights, dearie.” Once
the Academy closed, Ruby returned to the boarding house, spinning in
giddy circles, oblivious to peoples’ stares. She was intoxicated,
as drunk as old Joe Greer, the town ne’er-do-well, when he stumbled
from the Dark Horse saloon back home. Art everywhere! More than she
had seen in her entire life. The Academy exceeded her dreams. Too
delirious with joy to pay attention to where she was going, Ruby
wandered into the path of an omnibus. The driver clanged its bell in
frantic warning. She jumped to the sidewalk, narrowly escaping being
struck by the electrical conveyance. Back
at Mrs. Wheelwright’s, she wrote her family and Bismarck describing
her adventures. Enthusiastic words flew from her pen:
My
dearest Biz,
My
New Life began today! I walked into the Academy and immediately knew
I had answered my Calling. Before that moment, I had not truly lived.
Art will give my life meaning and purpose from here on…
Suanne
Schafer, born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War, finds it
ironic that grade school drills for tornadoes and nuclear war were
the same: hide beneath your desk and kiss your rear-end goodbye. Now
a retired family-practice physician whose only child has fledged the
nest, her pioneer ancestors and world travels fuel her imagination.
She originally
planned to write romances, but either as a consequence of a series of
failed relationships or a genetic distrust of happily-ever-after, her
heroines are strong women who battle tough environments and intersect
with men who might—or might not—love them.
Suanne completed
the Stanford University Creative Writing Certificate program.
Her short works have been featured in print and on-line magazines
(Bête Noire; Brain, Child; Empty Sink Publishing; and Three
Line Poetry) and anthologies: (Night Lights; Graveyard; 166 Palms;
and Licked). Her debut women’s fiction novel, A Different
Kind of Fire, explores the life of Ruby Schmidt, a nineteenth century
artist who escapes—and returns—to West Texas. Suanne’s next
book explores the heartbreak and healing of an American physician
caught up in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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