To be released August, 2023. Or so.
Be the first to be notified when Ursa Major, Elena Yatzeck’s debut novel becomes available for pre-order. It is the first volume of a projected trilogy.
Ursa Major
A Novel
Mole, Naples Old Harbor, 15 June, 1794, 9:55pm - On balance, Ursula Oglethorpe thought, at least her situation could not possibly get any worse. She was pursued by a crew of outraged pirates and their captain, who had a reputation of taking no prisoners, and not in a good way. She hoped but could not be certain that she was not also pursued by a certain Monseigneur Henry Bethisy de Mezieres, Bishop of Uzes, who might or might not have seen her pilfer a few things from a Cardinal’s palace in Rome.
Urs did not know the streets of Naples well, and Mount Vesuvius across the bay had been rumbling and spewing clouds of ash much more aggressively than usual. It was an odd sort of tourist attraction on the best days, she felt. Today, the noise and heat had brought many more people out into the streets than might normally have been there. She had slipped on countless noxious substances, created mayhem by diving through the middle of a group of slow-moving nuns, and tipped over a cheese cart. She was sweaty and tired, and the air smelled of smoke and sulphur.
Urs had seen reduced options to evade her pursuers when she hit the harbor, but she had made it worse by darting out onto the pier, or “mole,” which jutted for almost half a mile into the water. She was not a good swimmer. Well, let us admit that she was not a swimmer at all.
Urs was no longer on the mole, at the moment, to be sure, but that was not any better, since she had plunged into a doorway and then sprinted up the stairs of the pier’s lighthouse. She found herself now at the very top, in the lantern, dazzled by the bright light pointed to the west, and with the irate lighthouse keeper shouting angry curses at her from where she had shoved him out of her way on the landing below. She tried to remember how to tie a reef knot in the slippery looking rope she had found hanging on a peg. It was something about around a tree, twice, and into the rabbit hole? She wished she had studied and practiced knot-tying on the many nights she had spent sleeping in barns and under hay stacks in the last three months. She had regrets. More than anything else, Urs was terrified of heights.
Characters
Ursula Oglethorpe
…has chosen her own name at age six. She aspires to fame and glory. She is determined to make her mark through physical and strategic leadership—rescuing a captive princess, if possible, but otherwise leading a great army to a righteous victory.
Airmedh Jones
…(also a self-chosen name) is one year younger than her sister Ursula. Air has chosen a life path which follows in the footsteps of the Tuatha de Danaan and the Druids. She engages in a spirited correspondence with Iolo Morganwg, self-proclaimed current World Chief Druid.
James Sims
…comes originally from Botany Bay. He stowed away on a sealing ship bound for China at age 8, and immediately thereafter survived a rigorous Jesuit education from ejected missionaries leaving China for the West in the 1760s. He is a multi-lingual expert on ancient texts, and wields a deadly cutlass as needed. He is currently first mate on the ship Balai au Vagues.
Dread Pirate Bartholomew Roberts
…is the self-titled namesake of the Caribbean’s most famous pirate of the early eighteenth century. Like all corsair captains in the St Malo tradition, Bart runs her ship, Balai au Vagues, as a small business, with all major decisions approved via majority vote by the crew. In the novel, we find the crew on the brink of voting upon whether to embark on what has become an annual run to Iceland for the purpose of transporting salt cod to Brest.
Caroline of Braunschweig
…has been carefully shielded from the world by her protective parents, the Duke and Duchess of Braunschweig, which has allowed her to build some formidable skills at the harpsichord. Unbeknownst to her parents and their court followers, however, she leads a double life.
Monseigneur Henry Bethisy de Mezieres, Bishop of Uzes
…yearns for the days when his family served as trusted advisors to the British monarchy. His goal is to restore the Stuarts to the English throne, and his own reinstatement to high position as the newly restored Roman Catholic position, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Princess Ekaterina Vorontsova
…is an ambulatory Russian aristocrat who takes an interest in Ursula’s endeavors.
Setting
Europe, 1796
The French Directory rules France, the fourth in a series of revolutionary governments who have been in place since the storming of the Bastille in 1789. France has conquered and absorbed Flanders, and is now at war with Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia. George III rules Great Britain and Ireland in a constitutional monarchy which has been in place roughly since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Austria is ruled by Frances II, grandson of Empress Maria Theresa. Italy is not yet united into one country, but the smaller principalities on the peninsula, including lands ruled directly by the Pope called the “Papal States,” are actively in the process of being conquered by Napoleon. Frederick the Great has been dead for a decade, and Prussia is ruled by his nephew, King Frederick William II. Prussia has just finished negotiating with Russia on a new partition of Poland, which erases it temporarily from the map. Empress Catherine the Great has been ruling Russia since overthrowing her husband, Peter III, in 1762. She has new headaches with France, now that the Poland partition has given her a direct border on the battle frontier. Catherine also engages actively in territory disputes with the Ottoman Empire, just south of the Russian Empire, which has been ruled by Sultan Selim III since 1789.