Being an Expat Inspired The Admiral’s Wife

I'm delighted to hand the blog over today to guest MK Tod, whose new novel, The Admiral's Wife, was inspired by her years living abroad:

The Admiral's Wife was conceived as a novel based on the experience of living in Hong Kong for three years. Initially, I created four women who bonded over qi gong and the expat life. Each woman had difficulties and collectively they supported one another through various traumas. Although that version is long gone, when I reread sections of it now, the emotions of that time come roaring back. 

So, what was it like to uproot yourself and live in a foreign country? When my husband and I returned from Hong Kong, friends and family would ask, "Did you love it there?" I always replied that we had an amazing time - which was true. 

After returning to Toronto, I contemplated a non-fiction account about the expat life (never published) titled Thriving in the Expat Cycle. It began like this:

"In July 2004 my husband’s company asked him to consider a three-year assignment to Hong Kong. We hesitated only long enough to consult with our children and our mothers, then plunged into planning for the adventure. We rode the waves of fantasy and euphoria for the next few months. Everything was possible – travel, employment for me, new friends, new culture, learning Mandarin, new foods. We allowed no hint of difficulty to penetrate the excitement.

However, the bite of reality set in after a few months as I struggled to find occupation and purpose that would satisfy my intellectual, social and emotional needs. After thirty years in a full time career, I had no way to define myself in this new environment, nor did I know how to go about being unoccupied. Time for myself had always been a luxury seldom indulged. Suddenly I had nothing but time by myself.

View from the Hong Kong Apartment

Gradually I found my way. And at the same time my husband and I discovered a new definition for the word ‘home’ and renewed strength in our marriage. We made friends and worked hard to keep in touch with old friends. We kept in close contact with family and had the pleasure of sharing the intrigue of Asia with our children, mothers, and others. We developed a personal appreciation for the concept of culture, understood what it means to be the minority, travelled to exotic locales, learned that business is done differently and dealt with our share of crises.

Lamma Island, Hong Kong

Our three years were both wonderful and, at times, difficult. Would we make the same decision knowing what we know now? Absolutely. Would we approach it differently? Definitely.”

Memory is selective. Looking back from the vantage point of 2022, what stands out for me is the gift of experiencing another culture, the challenges and rewards of adapting to a new way of life, the confidence that comes from building a different world for ourselves, the wonder of travel, the welcoming people we met, and finally, the joy of learning to write.

MK Todd Hiking in Hong Kong

That story of four expat women gradually morphed into The Admiral's Wife, a dual-timeline novel that released on April 26. It bears almost no resemblance to the novel I once called East Rising Sun after the name of a qi gong exercise I learned with my friend Tita. Both Patricia Findlay (the main present-day character) and Isabel Taylor (the main 1912 character) experience the displacement of leaving home and moving to Hong Kong. 

Here's Patricia: "It was at about the five-month mark when Patricia’s enthusiasm had screeched to a halt, replaced by loneliness and depression and the realization that her life had spun out of its orbit. The gravitational pull of her personal sun and planets—Andrew’s children, her friends, her work, and the city she’d lived in for fifteen years—had disappeared."

And here's Isabel on the day their ship arrives in Hong Kong:

"I won’t be able to count on Henry, Isabel thought, as she supervised the loading of their trunks and other cases into a delivery van. I’ll have to make my way here on my own.

The prospect was daunting. She should have known her husband would throw himself into his new responsibilities without worrying about her or their daughter. He would assume that Isabel could manage and be puzzled if she found their new circumstances difficult. If she complained, he would say, “You’ve just got to get on with it.” 

Isabel resolved to do just that.

'Getting on with it' was the task I also took on. I found friends and eventually the occasional consulting project. I took Mandarin lessons and volunteered. Ian and I explored the delights of Hong Kong, hiked its hills, golfed regularly, and had some wonderful (in the true sense of 'full of wonder') travel experiences. 

Living in a different part of the world changed us. Ian often says that it was the most profound experience of our lives. When you live in a place where almost everyone is Chinese, you experience being a visible minority. When you make friends with people from different parts of the world, you appreciate our common humanity. When you live in Asia rather than North America, you appreciate our global community in a very different way. When you can't understand the language, you can more readily relate to the immigrant experience. When the news you read is focused on China, you become acutely aware of another world view. When you see the density and cramped spaces of Hong Kong, you understand how fortunate most of us are in North America. When you visit places like India, Vietnam, and New Zealand, you are overwhelmed by the beauty of our world and its peoples.

The Admiral’s Wife by M.K. Tod ~~ The lives of two women living in Hong Kong more than a century apart are unexpectedly linked by forbidden love and financial scandal.

“Family secrets and personal ambitions, east and west, collide in this compelling, deeply moving novel." -- Weina Dai Randel, award-winning author of The Last Rose of Shanghai 

“Irresistible and absorbing.” Janie Chang, bestselling author of THE LIBRARY OF LEGENDS 

“A riveting tale of clashing cultures, ruthless corruption, and the consequences of corrosive lies.” James R Benn, author of ROAD OF BONES and other Billy Boyle mysteries.

In 2014, Patricia Findlay leaves a high-powered career to move to Hong Kong, where she hopes to rekindle the bonds of family and embrace the city of her ancestors. Instead, she is overwhelmed by feelings of displacement and depression. To make matters worse, her father, CEO of the family bank, insists that Patricia’s duty is to produce an heir, even though she has suffered three miscarriages.

In 1912, when Isabel Taylor moves to Hong Kong with her husband, Henry, and their young daughter, she struggles to find her place in such a different world and to meet the demands of being the admiral’s wife. At a reception hosted by the governor of Hong Kong, she meets Li Tao-Kai, an influential member of the Chinese community and a man she met a decade earlier when he was a student at Cambridge.

As the story unfolds, each woman must consider where her loyalties lie and what she is prepared to risk for love.

The Admiral’s Wife is available at Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. 

M.K. (Mary) Tod has been writing historical fiction since 2009. The Admiral’s Wife is her fifth novel. She is also the author behind the award-winning blog, www.awriterofhistory.com, where Mary and guest writers explore the reading and writing of historical fiction. Mary can be reached on her author website www.mktod.com, or on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at MKTodAuthor. 

[all photos copyright of MK Tod]

Paris in Ruins by MK Tod: Review and Interview

 I recently had the pleasure of reading a pre-publication copy of Paris in Ruins by MK Tod, which was published yesterday (March 30th, 2021) and can we take a moment to admire this fabulous cover?! 

Set in 1870, it records the experiences of two young women during the siege of Paris, when French forces were pinned down by the Prussion enemy. "Raised for a life of privilege, Camille and Mariele have much in common, but it takes the horrors of war to bring them together to fight for the people and city they love. War has a way of teaching lessons – if they can only survive to learn."

I found it an immensely gripping read. The story focuses on the two young women but both come from large families and their mothers, fathers and brothers are all also caught up in the fighting in various ways and the fate of all hangs precariously in the balance.

Camille is quite headstrong, with a tendency to ignore convention, take risks, not toe the line. Mariele is less so, at first in awe of, and perhaps a little envious of Camille. But neither is stereo-typically 'feisty' and both are hugely aware of their place in society, and their duty, despite railing against it at times. 

The horrors of war, the effects of the violence not only on the soldiers but on the civilians, are graphically and unsparingly described. The author has an economy of words which gives us the bare detail, and somehow makes it more visual. However for me the main interest lies in the development of the young women and their burgeoning awareness not only of what war can do to people's lives, but of their own place in the world. Did it take war to make them realise that marriage and children are sometimes not enough, or was it the age in which they were living? There is a stark contrast between their privileged existence and the plight of the poor of Paris. The women who live in the poorer quarters agitate for change and a powerful message comes through that women from all corners of society want, nay demand, more rights.

Woven into this driving narrative are the individual stories, the breaching of the divide between rich and poor, and the brave people who acted seemingly out of character (the actress who turns her theatre into a hospital, for example) and the social niceties which had to be ignored, to the acceptance of some and to the horror of others: moments when young ladies cannot be chaperoned, and the day that Mariele brings two poor children back to her family's grand house demonstrate that this was an age where the older generation in particular were at first scandalised and then had to grow to accept the changes all around them, changes that would endure beyond the war.

The pacing of the book is fast; rarely a page goes by without the plot moving forward, and this completely chimes with the subject matter. These were eventful, frightening times and this is expertly conveyed. A great read which I heartily recommend. It also introduced me to a period of French history about which I knew very little, so I asked Mary (MK) for a few more details.

AW: Welcome, Mary, to the blog, and congratulations on Paris in Ruins. May I begin by asking what drew you to this particular period of Parisian history? I suppose we are all more familiar with the earlier periods of revolution and war, and I did wonder whether the appeal for you was the burgeoning of the women's rights movement?

MKT: Thanks, Annie. I wish I could say that I was driven by the women’s rights movement, being a feminist myself. However, the real reason has to do with another novel I wrote—Lies Told In Silence—and the interest expressed by readers to learn more about Mariele, a woman who featured in that novel as Helene’s grandmother. So I did the math and figured out that Mariele would have been about 20 in 1870, and voila, the Franco-Prussian war.

AW: I know that Sarah Bernhardt was a real person but I had no idea of her tireless work during the siege. Were any of the other characters - apart from the generals and political leaders - based on real people?

MKT: Several of the people involved in the Commune are real: Auguste Blanqui, Emile Keratry, Paule Minck. But the only other real person that I turned into a character is Louise Michel, leader of the Montmartre Women’s Vigilance Committee, and a woman that Camille spies on. Louise Michel was a feminist, a writer, and an anarchist. She was also one of the founders of the Society for the Rights of Women (La Société du Droit des Femmes). Louise believed passionately that women should have autonomy and equality and she actually fought as a soldier during the Paris Commune.

AW: How difficult was it for you to research? I understand that much of the history can be learned from source material but your detailed descriptions of the streets and buildings in Paris suggest to me that you've visited in person? If so, was it relatively easy to find the buildings mentioned in the novel?

MKT: Paris In Ruins benefited from the discovery of several first-person accounts of the siege and commune that were written in English. It also benefited from a three-week visit my husband and I made to Paris where I took so many photos, visited all of the places mentioned in the novel, and took in several museums that featured 19th century Paris. We had a marvellous time absorbing that unique atmosphere that Paris has to offer.

AW: Finally I must thank you for the opportunity to read Paris in Ruins and ask where your writing will be taking you next?

MKT: You are so welcome! I have two novels in different stages at the moment. One is set in early twentieth century Hong Kong and is on submission with several publishing houses. The other is a contemporary novel—a first for me—about identical twins one of whom disappears to expose a crime while the other takes over her life.

Many thanks for inviting me on you blog today, Annie. It’s a true pleasure to talk about my writing. 

AW: You're welcome, thanks for chatting today. Readers can find Paris in Ruins:

Kindle Paperback 

"Paris 1870. Raised for a life of parties and servants, Camille and Mariele have much in common, but it takes the horrors of war to bring them together to fight for the city they love. War has a way of teaching lessons – if only they can survive to learn them."

And you can find MK Tod on Facebook, Twitter, and on her Blog