Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Q&A with Sarah Raughley

 


 

Sarah Raughley is the author of the new novel The Queen's Spade. Her other books include the young adult novel The Bones of Ruin. She has taught at McMaster University in Ontario.

 

Q: The Queen’s Spade was based on historical events--what inspired you to write this story?

 

A: The historical events themselves inspired me to write the story! I was thinking of a short story to write and remembered this figure I'd come across, a Yoruba princess named Omoba Ina whose name was changed to Sarah Forbes Bonetta, taken and gifted to Queen Victoria as her ward/goddaughter.

 

It's such a bizarre and exciting story but strangely, Sarah's story isn't really well-known. I thought, that's a travesty! I mean, this needs to be a Netflix movie!! It needs to be a musical! The world needs to know!

 

Especially because Queen Victoria had a strange penchant for adopting children of color across Britain's colonies and there's something kind of insidious about that.

 

So I wanted to tell her story but bring in that insidious part, making it text rather than subtext in Ina's story. A revenge thriller featuring an African princess. Who wouldn't want to write that!

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: There were books on Black Victorian Englanders, and a lot of academic research I did as a postcolonialist into 19th century Britain and Africa. I watched and read what I could about Sarah herself, though there's not a whole lot about her.

 

What surprised me about her is that she was in these elite British circles and talked about a whole lot in the papers at the time. But after she got married and moved to Africa with her husband, and especially after she died, it's like Britain no longer cared about their African princess any more. It was like she was erased from history....

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says, “Raughley deftly weaves together information about and critiques of colonialism, power, and racism.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Much respect to Kirkus for seeing my greatness lol!!

 

Q: What did you see as the right balance between history and fiction as you wrote the book?

 

A: I love Bridgerton and I love period pieces of all kinds. I think sometimes writers take a colorblind multicultural approach and that can be really fun.

 

But with this book, especially given how Sarah was given as a "gift" and erased from history and held to these crazy standards, I really wanted to be real as to what life would have been like for a young African girl in the 19th century in these very rich white spaces. Probably not all that different from today.

 

The Queen's Spade doesn't do colorblind and it brings the realness when it comes to what life was like not just for Black people, but for different ethnicities, races, classes, genders and so on. But I think that's what makes the fictional aspect - the revenge thriller - have stakes that are so much higher.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I'm working on a companion novel for The Queen's Spade. It's so much fun and very similar and very different in some ways. Let's just say the more I learn about Sarah Forbes Bonetta's story, the more I notice that there are other interesting Black women whose stories need to be told!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I hope you love vengeful, chess-master Sarah/Sally/Ina as much as I do! The Queen's Spade is a YA/Adult crossover that's sure to keep you entertained throughout the blood, rage and romance!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

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