Ten years ago, Key
West writer Joanna Brady came across an article about
a U.S. Coast Guard cutter being named after a woman called Barbara Mabrity.
Intrigued, Brady decided to find out more about her. What she discovered served
as the inspiration for Brady’s first published novel, The Woman at the Light.
Brady, a native of Canada, had always been interested
in writing and history. After she had her children, she got a job writing ad
copy in Toronto.
She made a few attempts at a novel, but they were unsuccessful. Her decision to
move to Florida
in 1995 would change all that. “I left Canada because I hate the cold,”
she says. “I picked Key West
because my husband and I had vacationed there, and we love the town. It’s an
unusual place. It’s not just a party town. It has a certain sophistication that
attracts a lot of creative people.” Brady’s experience as a freelance writer
and copywriter led to writing weekly freelance articles for the Key West Citizen. A few years later,
Brady’s fascination with Barbara Mabrity would take her from journalist to
published author.
For Brady, lighthouses have always had a magical quality,
especially the Key West
lighthouse (which now serves as a museum.) According to Brady’s research,
Barbara Mabrity was married to the keeper of the Key West lighthouse in the 19th
century. After her husband died of Yellow Fever, she took over the job. “I discovered that Barbara was part of a
sisterhood of women who had taken over as lighthouse keepers after the deaths
of their husbands or fathers,” Brady says. “There were at least four of them in
the Key West
area, but Barbara was the most well-known.” Brady started out with the
intention of writing her biography but couldn’t find enough information.
“Researching and fact checking were difficult because none of the early Key
Westers wrote much down, and many of the books I read contradicted each other,”
Brady explains. “For example, a hurricane blew down the lighthouse in 1846.
Some versions of the story say that Barbara’s children were killed in the
storm. Other versions say that was impossible.” Given these difficulties, Brady
decided to write a fictional short story based on Barbara Mabrity. She soon
realized that the story had the potential to become a novel. “Fictionalizing
Barbara Mabrity and turning her into Emily Lowry opened up a lot of
possibilities,” Brady says. “But we do meet Barbara Mabrity as a minor
character in the book.”
The Woman at the Light
tells the story of Emily Lowry, whose husband tends the lighthouse on an
isolated island off the Key West coast. One afternoon in 1839, he disappears,
leaving a pregnant Emily to take over his duties in order to support herself
and her children. When an escaped slave washes up on the island, Emily finds
herself in a relationship that puts her at odds with society’s rules and
changes her life forever. Brady doesn’t think Barbara Mabrity would have been
too pleased with the book. “Miss Barbara was pro-Confederate,” Brady says. “She
would have been appalled by an inter-racial romance.”
The Woman at the Light
was released in April, 2010 as a Print-on-Demand book but was eventually picked
up by St. Martin’s Griffin,
a big six traditional publisher, who re-released the book in July, 2012. This
left Brady wondering, “Okay. What do I do for an encore?”
It was a challenge for Brady to find the time to write every
day in addition to her newspaper columns, so last year, she dropped her weekly
columns and now does occasional freelance work. This has freed her up to write
another book, which she completed this summer. “This one,” she says, “though
not a sequel, has a similar title – The
Woman at the Chateau. It will be exciting to people who enjoy ghost
stories, romance, and World War II history.” She says it was a big challenge,
but it was fun to write and early readers have found it fun to read. The story takes place in Brooklyn, Key West
and Southwestern France. Felicia Milford, a young American artist with an art
gallery in Key West, spends a summer in a village in France. Gifted with ESP since childhood, she meets the ghost of a
beautiful French aristocrat, Colette de Montplaisir, who has been haunting a
nearby chateau where she was murdered by the Nazis in 1944. Colette is still
mourning the loss of her husband and daughter. Felicia traces her daughter, now
an elderly woman, and helps locate
her, bringing about a reunion by
channeling their conversation. With it comes
love, forgiveness and redemption. “I know it sounds crazy, but it really
draws people into it,” Brady says of the emotion-filled story. This novel, hot
off Brady’s computer, is not yet in print, but she hopes it will be soon.
Meanwhile, she is exploring ideas for yet another book, set in West Berlin
after the war. Stay tuned.
Brady’s Florida book The
Woman at the Light, is still her published “baby,” and she hopes more
readers in Florida will discover it. “It occupies a special place in my heart,”
she says. “I’d like readers to come away from it thinking that their time
reading about Key West’s glorious and
nefarious past was well spent. I hope they can say they enjoyed the story and
learned a lot about the oldest settlement in South Florida.
I read all the reviews posted by readers and some of them send my spirits
soaring. It’s very satisfying for me to
think I’ve struck a chord with people who read my novel.”
For more about Joanna Brady, visit her website at www.joannabradysite.com.
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