Thursday, July 21, 2022

📚 10 Things You Might Not Know About Birthright by Jeanette Baker #10things

I'm delighted to welcome Jeanette Baker to the blog today as part of the blog tour for BIRTHRIGHT, the exciting new women's fiction.

Jeanette Baker is the award-winning author of twenty paranormal, historical and contemporary novels, most of them set in the lush countryside of Southwest Ireland where she lives with her husband and writes during the “Seasons of Silence,” the autumn and winter months. Her ancestors, the O’Flahertys, hail from the counties of Kerry and Galway. She takes great pride in the prayer posted by the English over the ancient city gates, “From the wrath of the O’Flahertys, may the good Lord deliver us.”

Jeanette spent many years teaching 6th grade in a small school nestled under a canopy of Eucalyptus trees where the children consistently surprised her with their wisdom, their hopefulness and their enthusiasm for great stories. Currently, she enjoys the company of her own grown children and her precious grandchildren.

Jeanette graduated from the University of California at Irvine and holds a Master’s Degree in Education.

She is the Rita award-winning author of NELL.

Her latest book is the women’s fiction, Birthright.

You can visit her website at www.JeanetteBaker.com or connect with her on Facebook.

10 Things You Might Not Know About Birthright

1) It took me four years to write Birthright, the longest ever for one of my books.

2) Despite taking the longest to write Birthright, it is also the shortest of the 20 books I’ve written.

3) This was the most difficult book to write because it is based on a true story and the characters, although I changed their names, are recognizable to those involved.

4) Even though the story is based on real events, I had no direction when it came to the characters’ thoughts, painful memories and regrets. These are my own creations.

5) Claire’s accident in Tralee never happened. I needed a reason for a change of heart for Father O’Sullivan and Norah Malone.

6) In Massachusetts, all original adoptee birth certificates were first sealed in 1974 but current Massachusetts law seals records only for adoptees born in the 33-year period from July 14, 1974 to Jan. 1, 2008, when a new law went into effect.

7) My husband was researching my family tree on Ancestry when he came upon a name that was very familiar to him. Upon further research, he made contact with a woman he knew nothing about but who was definitely his oldest sister’s child. She had been adopted ten months after she was born.

8) Always, the problem solver, my husband flew from California to Nashville to meet this young woman and was delighted to welcome her into the family. However, his sister, the woman’s birth mother, was not happy about the exposure of her secret. The complications were many with his family of nine siblings, and their children, particularly when, come to find out, this wasn’t the only child born out of wedlock to the oldest sister.

9) This was the point where I thought my book was finished. I wanted out of the entire, unbelievable, confusing series of events. Then, somehow, feelings changed, visits to and from Ireland were arranged and decency prevailed.

10) Father Patrick O’Sullivan is a completely fictional character.

Two women on a course to confront the past, one to expose its secrets, the other to bury them.

Claire Williams travels halfway across the globe from Southern California to Ireland to find the mother who gave her up and the questions that need answering. Norah O’Connor is equally determined to avoid revisiting the most shameful time of her life and the devastating decisions she was forced to make.

Claire’s presence fifty years later is the engine for the confrontations to come when neighbors Norah has known forever recognize Claire’s resemblance to a younger sister. Norah must face the man who fathered both her daughters, and decide to either hold the secrets that continue to embitter her or release them for the shame that will surely mark her.

“Jeanette Baker’s award winning novels have earned her a place in the paranormal genre beside giants such as Barbara Erskine and Kristin Hannah. Now she brings her unique writing style and compelling characters to the stage of contemporary Ireland, sharing a world as alluring as its secrets are opaque.”
—Lauren Royal, New York Times and USA Bestselling Author.

“Gorgeously descriptive and unforgettably moving, Baker’s novel is a wondrous journey of the heart.”

—Candi Sary, author of Magdalena

“Birthright will find a welcome place in any library strong in stories of mother/daughter relationships, Irish culture, and the special conundrums faced by adult children who seek answers to the decisions their birth parents made.”

—Diane Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review