The Widow's Fire

By Paul Butler

The Widow’s Fire explores the shadow side of Jane Austen’s final novel Persuasion, disrupting its happy ending and throwing moral certainties off balance. We join the action close to the moment when Austen draws away for the last time and discretely gives an overview of the oncoming marriage between heroine Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. This, it transpires in The Widow’s Fire, is merely the beginning of a journey. Soon dark undercurrents disturb the order and symmetry of Austen’s world. The gothic flavor of the period, usually satirized by Austen, begins to assert itself. Characters far below the notice of Anne, a baronet’s daughter, have agendas of their own. Before long, we enter into the realm of scandal and blackmail. Anne Elliot must come to recognize the subversive power of those who have been hitherto invisible to her — servants, maids and attendants — before she can defend her fiancé from an accusation too dreadful to be named. Captain Wentworth himself must learn the skills of living on land; the code of honour and secrecy which has protected him on deck no longer applies on the streets of Bath.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inanna Poetry and Fiction Series
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781771334082

Paul Butler

A former federal prosecutor, Paul Butler provides legal commentary for CNN, NPR, and MSNBC and writes for the New York Times and Politico. A law professor at Georgetown University, he is the author of Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice (The New Press) and lives in Washington, D.C.

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