Fifteen Wild Decembers

Author/Guide: Karen Powell

Why a Booktrail?

1830s, 1840s: The story of the Bronte sisters

ISBN: 978-1787704817
Genre: Historical, Inspired by true events

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What you need to know before your trail

Isolated from society, Emily Brontë and her siblings spend their days inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape to which she has become so passionately bound, she is simply unable to function.

To the outside world, Emily Brontë appears taciturn and unexceptional, but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment. A violent phenomenon is about to burst forth that will fuse her imaginary world with the landscape of her beloved Yorkshire and change the literary world forever.

Locations

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England - Yorkshire - Bronte Country
A: Haworth - Brontë Parsonage Museum
B: Haworth - Main St
C: Haworth - St Michael & All Angels Church
D: Scarborough - Anne Bronte Grave

Travel Guide

Bronte Country

The story of the Bronte Sisters is well-known to many but there are many who will discover their magic in this novel. It evokes the setting and the landscape with loving prose and it’s a wonderful homage to the landscape.

The Brontës were born in the village of Thornton but are best known for having lived in the village of Haworth.

Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849), were well-known poets and novelists. Sadly, they published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell as women were not respected as much as men were in the literary field. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily’s Wuthering Heights, Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works became masterpieces of literature after their deaths.

Booktrailer Review

I love the Bronte sisters and know their story quite well but this book really gave it a fresh and interesting edge. I reentered their lives and saw things I hadn’t seen before or things I hadn’t noticed before which was lovely.

The setting of course is what draws many to the Bronte sisters stories and I have been to Haworth and the Parsonage many times. This book gave me the very same feelings of standing on the moors and it gave me chills when I read the descriptions of the book.

I still dislike Branwell and love the girls even more for what they did, at the age they did it, at the time they lived. Such remarkable women and this novel does them justice and then some.

I can see the passion behind the author’s choice to write this book and reconnect with this world. Thank you Karen Powell for bringing these voices to the fore again and for recreating the landscape so that I might now read a few lines and be immediately transported back there.