To Crown with Liberty By Karen Ullo

Historical fiction you could believe was just historical.

Where to get it

*And if you need even more of a preview: Karen will be live on Facebook today at 1 pm here reading an excerpt of the book and hosting a raffle for a free copy. Go try to win it!

My review

I am so excited to finally be able to talk about my friend, Karen Ullo’s new book! When I say I’ve been waiting excitedly for this book, I mean tell all my friends to buy it before it’s even available excitement.

To Crown with Liberty is a historical novel based on legends from Strange True Stories of Louisiana by George Washington Cable. It follows Alix de Morainville Carpentier, a young woman who fled France in the wake of the French Revolution. As an era closes in her home country, Alix finds herself in a burgeoning new one. With her new life, come new challenges.

In the swamps of Spanish Louisiana, Alix contends with enslavement and grief, both in the world around her, and inside herself.

As we can expect from Karen, the writing is beautiful. She transports the reader to Marie Antoinette’s elegant sitting room and the murky swamps of Louisiana alike. Historical figures like Thomas Jefferson and King Louis XVI interact seamlessly with fictional ones like the Carpentier family.

I have two favorite settings for historical fiction. World War II and the French Revolution. When I learned that Karen was taking on the latter, I knew it would be something special. Although the book is fiction, Karen’s attention to detail and accuracy are evident on every page. There’s also great care taken to represent each character, real or fictional, as complex and earnest.

Karen was kind enough to discuss how To Crown with Liberty came to be with me.

The interview

Tell me about your daily life. What are you doing if you're not writing?

I’m a mom of two boys, one of whom has autism and ADHD, so the business of family takes up most of my day. The rest is usually spent doing my work as editorial director of Chrism Press.

How did you come up with the idea for this book? Did it start with George Washington Cable’s stories, a premise, or something else?

It started with Strange True Stories of Louisiana, which I read many years ago, and my imagination was instantly captured. I actually first adapted the story of Alix de Morainville as a screenplay about 15 years ago. It’s a story that not only cries out to be read but to be retold and embellished…because frankly, Cable didn’t do nearly enough with revolutionary France. The original will leave you wanting more. So I gave it more.

Of course, I did more than embellish it. I made it my own in many ways, from changing certain plot points to expounding my own themes rather than just Cable’s. But it all started with Cable, and he remains the originator of both the idea and the main characters. (Although it really started with Sidonie Delahoussaye, or with Joseph Charpentier and his wife…but you’ll have to read the appendix of To Crown with Liberty to find out the true story behind Cable’s probably-not-true True Stories.)

I remember you once saying you were buying an average of one book for historical research per chapter of To Crown with Liberty while you were writing it. Tell me about the research that you did for To Crown with Liberty. Were there any surprises?

Oh, gosh. The research. It certainly felt like I was buying a book per chapter for a while there, and I also went to France so I could physically stand in as many of the book’s settings as possible. I went to all of the ones that still exist except Notre Dame, which is of course closed due to the fire. If the setting is historical–say for example Versailles–then basically every detail is accurate to the time. The china patterns, the furniture upholstery, you name it. It’s not necessarily what you see in Versailles today; it’s what was there in 1788-89. I used primary sources, secondary sources, memoirs, internet sites, maps, models, paintings… I didn’t have to travel to Louisiana because I live here, but I still had to do a great deal of research. Want to know about eighteenth-century indigo production? I’m your girl. There’s a reason this book took nearly five years to write.

The only historical inaccuracies in To Crown with Liberty of which I’m aware are actually Cable’s. His story is rife with anachronism, and I fixed most of it, but there were a few minor errors I decided to keep. For example, there was no church in the town of Plaquemine, Louisiana in 1795–but Cable put one there, and it gave me the opportunity to introduce a character who could challenge Alix, so I kept it.

Which character was the most interesting to write and why?

Well, it’s Alix de Morainville’s story, entirely told in her own first-person narration, so of course she’s the one in whom I invested most of my efforts. Among the other fictional characters, I’d have to choose Celeste Carlo, the black “wife” of the Neapolitan Mario Carlo, who leads the expedition into the Attakapas territory through the Louisiana swamps. It was illegal for a black person to marry a white person, so although Mario and Celeste consider each other husband and wife, there’s neither legal nor sacramental authority to confirm their union–which is deeply troubling to them both, but it’s Celeste through whom we hear their story. She’s also devoutly Catholic despite her illicit marriage. She’s just a woman who wants what so many others want: to marry the man she loves and raise her family in peace. But she has no right to do either one.

Among the historical characters, the one who really stands out is Thomas Jefferson. He was in France as the United States’ Minister Plenipotentiary at the start of the Revolution, and he’s just a fascinating man: a genius and a man of high ideals who nevertheless fell spectacularly short of following his own beliefs, especially in his personal life. I’ve done my best to portray him accurately and evenly, the good alongside the bad.

Did real life ever change the trajectory of the plot or characters? How do your real-life experiences or interests show up in the book?

It was actually the opposite: the book proved prophetic to real life in ways I absolutely never intended. I suppose it’s the nature of political upheaval to always follow the same patterns, but writing about the French Revolution during the 2020s was downright creepy. I wrote about the storming of Versailles, and a couple months later, watched a very similar mob storm the U.S. Capitol; I started a chapter with the line, “After the plague came the war,” just a couple of months before Russia invaded Ukraine in the wake of the COVID pandemic. The same patterns kept repeating on the news shortly after I had written about them in history–and there are definitely lessons we should take from that if we want to avoid a repeat of the Terror.

But my own experiences and interests do show up, of course. It would be false to say Alix is a reflection of myself, but I am definitely present in certain aspects of her character. Her musicianship, for example–Alix plays harp and guitar while I’m a classically trained singer, but music is something she and I share. And there are tiny things most readers probably won’t think to note, like the names of the villagers in Morainville, Alix’s hometown in Normandy. I took the surnames from the people I met in my own travels to Normandy. I’m everywhere in this book, from the rhythm of my prose to the choices of details.

The harp was definitely a nice touch to her character. It is so true that history tends to repeat itself. Where can we find you online to keep up with your future stories?

My website is karenullo.com, where you can also sign up for my newsletter. I’m on Facebook as Karen Ullo, Author, and Twitter/ X and Instagram as @karenullo. But I don’t actually use X and Instagram much. The best ways to keep in touch are through my newsletter and Facebook.

Thanks for taking the time to discuss To Crown with Liberty with me, Karen.

Thanks for having me!