A Different Kind of Fire – A Novel

A Different Kind of Fire
415 Pages
ISBN 978-1-64136-865-0

Ruby Schmidt has the talent, the drive, even the guts to leave behind her childhood home and the beau she always expected to marry to go to art school. Rebelling against the insipid imagery woman are expected to produce, Ruby embraces bohemian life. Her burgeoning sexuality drives her into a life-long love affair with another woman and into the arms of an Italian baron. With the Panic of 1893, the nation spirals into a depression, and Ruby’s career takes a similar downward trajectory. After thinking she could have it all, Ruby wonders how she can salvage her life. Rather than join the queues at the neighborhood soup kitchen, pregnant and broke, she returns to Texas,—and finds greater challenges there.

Set against the Gilded Age of America, a time when suffragettes fight for reproductive rights and the right to vote, A Different Kind of Fire depicts one woman’s battle to balance husband, family, career, and ambition. Torn between her childhood sweetheart, her forbidden passion for another woman, the nobleman she had to marry, and becoming a renowned painter, Ruby's choices mold her in ways she could never have foreseen.

Suanne Schafer

About Suanne Schafer (San Antonio, Texas Author)

Suanne Schafer

Suanne Schafer, born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War, finds it ironic that grade school drills for tornadoes and nuclear war were the same: hide beneath your desk and kiss your rear-end goodbye. Now a retired family-practice physician based in San Antonio, her only child has fledged the nest. Her pioneer ancestors and world travels fuel her imagination. She originally planned to write romances, but either as a consequence of a series of failed relationships or a genetic distrust of happily ever-after, her heroines are strong women who battle tough environments and intersect with men who might—or might not—love them.

Suanne completed the Stanford University Creative Writing Certificate program. Her short works have been featured in print and on-line magazines (Bête Noire; Brain, Child; Empty Sink Publishing; and Three Line Poetry) and anthologies: (Night Lights, Graveyard, 166 Palms, and Licked). Her debut women’s fiction novel, A Different Kind of Fire, explores the life of Ruby Schmidt, a nineteenth century artist who escapes—and returns—to West Texas. Suanne’s next book explores the heartbreak and healing of an American physician caught up in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

You can follow her at: http://suanneschaferauthor.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SuanneSchaferAuthor Twitter: @SuanneSchafer Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7703847.Suanne_Schafer amazon.com/author/suanneschaferauthor Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/suanneschaferauthor/ https://its-suanneschafer-author.tumblr.com https://www.instagram.com/suanneschafer/

Other Books by This Author