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I’ve never been to Egypt.  I often set books in places I’ve visited—and I’ve been to over fifteen countries­—but I’ve never been to Egypt, except in imagination. My great passion is history, however, and Egypt is a history lover’s dream. I couldn’t resist it as a setting for a novel.

It is hard to write about the 19th century and not bump into issues surrounding the long, slow, disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and what the English called “the Eastern Question.” England needed the Ottoman Empire as a buffer to Russian expansionism in ways too complex to go into in  detail. (Think trade routes to India, for one thing.) In researching various books, I became intrigued by the figure of Muhammad Ali Pasha, nominally viceroy of Egypt on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan. In digging deeper, I discovered:

courtesy of Wikimedia
  • Muhammad was actually Albanian, a solider in service to the Sultan sent to drive the French from Egypt. He did so well, he set himself up as governor.
  • Over decades he also absorbed all of Palestine including what is now Syria under his rule. His son, head of the Egyptian Army, threatened to take Constantinople and topple the empire not once but twice. Russian intervened the first time. England, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and (eventually) France the second time, clipping Muhammad’s wings.
  • His armies also took Nubia (what is now northern Sudan) and grafted it on to Egypt, They built Khartoum as  a military outpost.
  • He was modern and forward thinking in many ways, bringing Western engineering, education, and medicine to Egypt.
  • Under his rule they even opened a medical school for women in 1832. Women graduates were called hakimas, healers, and cared for women and children.
  • He was also despotic, ambitions and cruel. The source of much of his wealth came from trading in and using the labor of enslaved people. Khartoum was a slave trading center.

However, I don’t write straight up historical fiction. I write romance, and I like to think I write “family  centered” romance. The heroes and  heroines of recent books are the children of characters in my earlier books.  When my English hero, raised by a tribe of ferociously  strong women  (his mother is the heroine of Dangerous Works), meets the daughter of a French doctor, trained in the famous medical school, but raised in a male dominated home with a jaundiced view of marriage, their relationship is complicated, to say the least.

I was able to weave that background together with what I learned about Egypt into their story in Cairo, as they  travel down the Nile to Khartoum, and as they are forced to flee back  to create The Price of Glory and I’m thrilled with  the results.

The Price of Glory

by Caroline Warfield

Richard Mallet comes to Egypt with dreams of academic glory. He will be the one to unravel the secrets of the ancient Kushite language. Armed with license to dig, he sets out for Meroë, where the Blue Nile meets the White. He has no room in his life for dalliance or entanglements, and he certainly doesn’t expect to face insurrection and unrest.

Analiese Cloutier seeks no glory—only the eradication of disease among the women and children of Khartoum. She has no interest whatsoever in romantic nonsense and will not allow notions about a lady’s proper role to interfere with her work. She doesn’t expect to have that work manipulated for political purposes.

Neither expects to be enchanted by the amorous power of moonlight in the ruins of Karnak, or to be forced to marry before they can escape revolution. Will their flight north take them safely to Cairo? If it does, can they build something real out of their shattered dreams?

Preorder here.

Note to readers: This book is a Historical Romance, early Victorian, set in Egypt 1839-1840 and is a sensual, but not steamy romance.

About the Author

Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

My website:  http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

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