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About a year ago, I noticed that author Karen Ullo was posting pictures from Normandy, France, to her social media. Not long after, she started messaging me asking about obscure Catholic matrimonial rituals from the late 18th century (I had no clue and was no help, sorry!). It turns out, she was researching a historical novel. The fruits of that labor are now available for our reading pleasure in her new novel To Crown with Liberty, available from Chrism Press. The book is one of many wonderful reads on the Aleteia 2024 Summer Book List.
To Crown with Liberty follows the life of a fictional character named Alix de Morainville Carpentier, a noblewoman born in northern France who, after her society debut at Versailles, becomes lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. Forced to flee as a result of the violence of the Terror, Alix ends up in Louisiana, no longer and aristocrat but now the wife of her former gardener and attempting to make a life among French settlers in the new world.
Alix struggles to make peace with her past, including the choices she had to make in order to escape France. Her personal story takes place in the wider context of humanity’s search for political freedom, human fraternity, and the role of spirituality in promoting human happiness. Alix must come to peace with her past in order to be free for a happy future. Cultures and nations must do the same. Revolutions that reject the entire history and traditions of a nation don’t end well.
An enjoyable blend of fact and fiction
What I love most about this novel is that it is meticulously researched and has a lot to offer to a history buff, but it manages to tell a very real, very human story. Alix de Marainville Carpentier seems to have been a real person about whom legends are told in Louisiana, but the reality of who she is and what kind of life she lived is buried in historical myth. Her words and actions in the novel aren’t historical, but they’re a plausible interpretation for how a story like hers might have unfolded in the 18th century.
Ullo seamlessly blends historical truth with fictional storytelling. The writing never bogs down, thus earning my highest praise as a reviewer, which is that I had no hesitation in reading it instead of turning on Netflix. Once I picked up the book and started reading, I quickly became invested in the characters and was eager to finish. I found myself happily reading for hours.
I had a few questions, particularly about the specifics of blending fact and fiction, and reached out to the author. She graciously sent me the following responses.
How important was it to go to France and see these places with your own eyes? To actually see what you want to describe?
There’s no substitute for standing in a place yourself if you want to write about it — not only to see it with your own eyes, but to hear it, smell it, gauge the scale of it, and get a feel for all the intangibles that make a place unique. There are so many little details in the book that I only discovered by going to France. For example, I can (and did) find pictures of Saint-Sulpice on the internet, but I had to experience Mass there in order to write a line like, ”The great organ of Saint-Sulpice resounded against the vault of its gray stone arches, where the echoes dictated the tempo.” It wasn’t until I sat in the church, listening to the organ, that I realized how muddy a quick-tempo piece would be if played in that space, because the echo of the earlier notes wouldn’t fade before the later ones arrived. You can’t read that in any book or notice it in a photograph. You have to go there and experience it.
I know you live in Louisiana. Can we assume Attakapas, Louisiana, is a place where you have some memories? Are you writing about a place, for instance, where you went as a child on a school field-trip?
The region once known as Attakapas is part of the area of Louisiana that we now call Acadiana, where a majority of the Acadian immigrants settled, including some of my ancestors. The route my heroine follows through Louisiana is actually the same route as in Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” I’m a city girl from Baton Rouge, but I have roots in Acadiana, and it’s only a little more than an hour’s drive, so I’ve been there plenty of times. It’s a really beautiful place, which even today is deeply steeped in Catholic heritage. But despite all the research I did for this book, I drew the line when my husband suggested I needed to take a boat trip through the Atchafalaya swamp in July. Some things are best left to the imagination.
You always do a good job at conveying serious serious themes without scandalizing sensitive consciences by describing violence or physical romance too graphically or indulgently. Is this something you’ve thought a lot about, is it an intentional choice to exercise the sort of control you do in your writing?
It is something I try very hard to balance. Jesus gave us the model for all fiction in His parables. In stories like The Prodigal Son or The Good Samaritan, He showed us that fiction can, in a sense, be truer than fact by revealing to us the inner workings of human souls. And He showed us that the best fiction is about some pretty awful sinners. It’s important that fiction doesn’t shy away from truth, including horrific truths like the violence of the Terror. But as a Catholic writer, I have an advantage over most other authors, because I know that violence can be redemptive, even beautiful, when it is joined to the Cross. I try to use that as my lens when I’m writing, so that no matter how objectively violent or sinful the events of a scene may be, I can still let beauty and grace shine through. That helps me find the balance, and hopefully avoid scandal in the way I present those scenes.
In writing a historical novel, what responsibility do you owe to the real people you describe? Do you ever hesitate to put words in their mouth?
It is a very delicate thing, to use real people as characters in a fictional story, and I do feel that I owe it to them to portray them as accurately as possible, given the information available to me. There are a great many historical figures in To Crown with Liberty, some of whom have libraries full of books written about them, and some for whom you’re lucky if you can find accurate birth and death dates. For the better-known ones, like Louis XVI and Thomas Jefferson, I did extensive research and tried to portray them in a manner consistent with what I learned, including both their virtues and their faults. For others, like Fr. Jean-Baptiste Pontus, I took what little information was available and built a plausible character on top of it. But ultimately, my portrayals are all products of my own imagination, and I hope readers will accept them as such.
And today we celebrate...