Book Details:

Genre: Dual time Suspense/Thriller

Published by: Bethany House Publishers

Publication Date: April 2023

Number of Pages: 384

ISBN: 9780764238345

To purchase The Vanishing at Castle Moreau click any of the following links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | Baker Book House

Guest Post by Jaime Jo Wright

The Secret Women of History

Writing stories where history intersects with the present is always a familiar scouring of the past for interesting tidbits. What I find there is often surprising, and this time was no exception. The conversation between my friend and I went something like this:

Friend – “Did you know that in the 1500s there was a female serial killer?”

Me – “Do go on!”

Friend – “She was a countess—Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary—who was fascinated with the abduction, torture, and murder of hundreds of girls and women during a twenty-year time span.”

Me – “Maybe that’s too gruesome for readers?”

Friend – “But a castle with secret women . . . think about it!”

And think I did. Because so very often this is how history is. It’s a treasure trove of what my friend and I call the “secret women of history.” These are the women who, for good or for bad, impacted our pasts with significant influence.

Take Mary Shelley, for example. Not many in her time would have dubbed her Queen of Horror, and some preferred to credit her husband for penning the famous novel. And she’s synonymous with the elements of the dark and the Gothic, not unlike her male counterpart, Edgar A. Poe.

So when I wrote The Vanishing at Castle Moreau, inspiration struck in the form of women whose stories have either been told less or not told at all, and perhaps not even remembered. It was a natural transition then to a castle with a famous authoress of Gothic horror, who had women notoriously vanishing on the castle’s property. I wasn’t expecting a fictional marriage of sorts between Elizabeth the serial killer and Mary the horror writer, but so goes the way of fiction, right?

Exploring vanishing women in a novel such as The Vanishing at Castle Moreau became important to me on multiple levels. For centuries, women have been victimized. How many cold cases of young women still exist across the world today? How many times in history were women disposable enough to be warranted with little investigation into their disappearances?

Take the women of Elizabeth Bathory’s bloody rampage. It wasn’t until Elizabeth grew discontent and branched into the higher echelons of society to find her victims that the disappearance of so many women became a more pressing matter of concern. The caste system of lower class and those in servitude warranted a passing concern but could easily be explained by other measures than a rampaging killer wearing a dress and boasting a title.

Mary Shelley herself bore the skepticism of those around her and even the rumor (or truth?) mills that she saved her husband’s dehydrated heart for sentimental purposes. Surely this couldn’t be a woman of great wisdom and respectability! Yet she did devote most of her widowed life to raising her child and to education.

What would happen if there were a castle, a writer with dubious intent, women who vanish over the decades until we arrive to present day only to meet with the emotional conundrum of questioning whether the castle itself is the demon, or perhaps the demon is us?

To be sure, all castles hold secrets. Many of them never speak and never will speak of what they witnessed. Their histories have been lost to the annals of time. Any ghosts that brushed against their stone walls were unable to grip the stories played out within. Hundreds of these stories—no, thousands—are the stories of women and girls who forged life from the hardness of the world in which they lived. The unsung ones who disappeared either in life or into the past never to be heard from again.

These women are the blossoms that spread throughout generations. The impressions made on our futures. The ancestors who deserve to be heard. Even if their stories include evil. Even if their tales are tragic. Most especially if their spirits were warriors.

Read an excerpt from The Vanishing at Castle Moreau

May 8, 1801

Jaime Jo Wright — Author of The Vanishing at Castle Moreau

Jaime Jo Wright is the author of six novels, including Christy Award winner The House on Foster Hill and Carol Award winner The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond.

She’s also the Publishers Weekly and ECPA bestselling author of two novellas.

Jaime lives in Wisconsin with her cat named Foo; her husband, Cap’n Hook; and their littles, Peter Pan and CoCo.

To learn about Jamie click on any of the following links:
www.jaimewrightbooks.com (& check out her Podcast – MadLit Musings!)
Goodreads
BookBub – @JaimeJoWright
Instagram – @JaimeJoWright
Twitter – @JaimeJoWright
Facebook – @JaimeJoWright

Visit all the Stops on the Tour!

Tour Participants: