Midnight: Three Women at the Hour of Reckoning

When Jane Austen's father deeded the family home to her brother, Jane was tossed to the winds, no money to her name, probably too old to be wed. At this bleak moment, she receives a proposal of marriage from a rich but boring man. Midnight takes us to the hour of her decision: between financial security and her writing career. When sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin eloped to France with Percy Bysshe Shelley, she was already pregnant. Midnight finds her pacing the Italian shore, five days after her husband has ventured out in a shaky boat on a stormy day. He has not returned. Joan of Arc maintained faith in divine rescue until she was tied to the stake. Realising that she would burn, she recanted. In Midnight, she confronts her imminent death before facing the flames again.