Spotlight & Giveaway: Her Lost Words by Stephanie Marie Thornton

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Stephanie Marie Thornton’s new release: Her Lost Words

From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to Frankenstein, a tale of two literary legends—a mother and daughter—discovering each other and finding themselves along the way, from USA Today bestselling author Stephanie Marie Thornton.

 
1792. As a child, Mary Wollstonecraft longed to disappear during her father’s violent rages. Instead, she transforms herself into the radical author of the landmark volume A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she dares to propose that women are equal to men. From conservative England to the blood-drenched streets of revolutionary France, Mary refuses to bow to society’s conventions and instead supports herself with her pen until an illicit love affair challenges her every belief about romance and marriage. When she gives birth to a daughter and is stricken with childbed fever, Mary fears it will be her many critics who recount her life’s extraordinary odyssey…

1815. The daughter of infamous political philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, passionate Mary Shelley learned to read by tracing the letters of her mother’s tombstone. As a young woman, she desperately misses her mother’s guidance, especially following her scandalous elopement with dashing poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary struggles to balance an ever-complicated marriage with motherhood while nursing twin hopes that she might write something of her own one day and also discover the truth of her mother’s unconventional life. Mary’s journey will unlock her mother’s secrets, all while leading to her own destiny as the groundbreaking author of Frankenstein.

A riveting and inspiring novel about a firebrand feminist, her visionary daughter, and the many ways their words transformed our world.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Her Lost Words 

CHAPTER 1

March 1814

MARY GODWIN

Mary tugged closer the tartan shawl that still smelled of Dundee’s wild heaths, wondering if she was ready to shed the final lonely moments of her journey home from Scotland—that eyry of freedom where her father had sent her to be educated by an old radical friend so she might be brought up a philosopher like her mother.
At nearly seventeen years old, Mary understood her education was now considered complete even as she tucked into her reticule the well-loved volume of her mother’s most celebrated— and vilified—book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Mary had read every book written by or about her mother, save the one that her father had strictly forbidden her, but this was her most beloved, and she’d been rereading its fabric-soft pages since the Osnaburgh had begun its traverse of the murky Thames.
Live each day as if it were your last.
For a woman with no intention of living beyond the age of thirty-eight—the age her mother died—Mary reasoned, at best, she had only twenty-two years left to live. Truly live.
Ahead of her, London bustled beneath soot-filled skies, and

with the motion of the city came a return to her old life. Whether she wished it or not.
Standing on the deck, Mary rocked on her heels—London’s frenetic energy was catching even from this distance—until she spotted her father’s ramrod posture among the crowd milling about the wharf, a standout in his eccentric emerald waistcoat. Decorum forgotten, Mary waved wildly to catch his attention while burly sailors sprang to action to secure the Osnaburgh. Oh, how she had missed her father!
He had been her sole family for so many years. And it had been enough, at least for her. Her father had obviously needed something more.
Scotland’s heather-speckled hills and the white-capped waves of the North Sea—the same that had caused Mary a week of seasickness and now made her striped cambric carriage dress hang looser on her bones—may never have existed as the weary Osna-
burgh passengers jostled her forward onto the pier. Mary’s sudden
joy evaporated the moment she spied the gray-garbed wardress of a woman standing next to William Godwin. Mary wanted her father to be happy—truly, she did—but it was near impossible to find solace in her father’s remarriage, to dour Jane Clairmont.
The noise and sun-rotten stench of the docks closed around her like a fist as her father and termagant of a stepmother approached.
“Grata domum, Mary.” William Godwin kept both hands on
his mahogany walking stick like a philosopher of old. The im- age was marred only by that eye-numbing emerald waistcoat.
“Gratias tibi,” she responded in flawless Latin, preening at
the pride reflected in her father’s warm gray eyes. It was an old game of theirs, conversing in Latin. Once she’d mastered the ancient language of the classics, they’d moved to French until Mary could converse just as easily in both languages. She’d

learned early how to capture her father’s praise—through the accumulation of knowledge.
Jane—who also understood Latin—merely ignored their ex- change. Mary recalled her stepmother responding once in the dead language during a dinnertime conversation. It was shortly after she’d joined the Godwin household, but Mary’s father had ignored her, and Jane never again partook of their forays into Latin.
William Godwin rubbed the bend in his nose and appraised Mary with an approving nod—her stoic father abhorred tender embraces, especially in public, but his eyes had taken on an extra mistiness that made Mary hope he might embrace her, just this once. Instead, he gruffly cleared his throat before di- recting arrangements for the delivery of her portmanteau.
“You should have arrived an hour ago,” Jane tutted under her breath, replacing the polished timepiece in her pocket. “Supper will be late and there’s nothing to be done about it.”
“My apologies. I learned much in Scotland, but not how to control the winds.” Baiting her stepmother had been a favorite pastime before Scotland—like a tattered bear in a ring, Jane usually responded with growls and much gnashing of her pointed little teeth. Now that Mary was older, she had promised herself to try harder with Jane upon her return. In less than a minute, she was back to old habits.
Be kind, Mary, her father had implored when he’d first in-
formed her of his upcoming marriage. For me.
More than ten years later and she was still trying.
“Please forgive me.” Mary wished her father had come alone to meet her. “It’s been a difficult journey and I’m out of sorts.”
Jane scowled but didn’t scold further, which Mary took as a small measure of progress.
“The porter assures me your trunk will arrive this afternoon.”

Her father gestured with his walking stick away from the Os- naburgh. “Shall we?”
“Indeed. If we hurry, I might still salvage the chestnut soup.” Jane was already marching through the crowd in the direction of Skinner Street, leaving Mary and her father to trail behind like unruly attendants.
“It is good to see you, corculum.” At that moment, with the
salt of the North Sea in her hair and the ground still pitching beneath her feet like the decks of the Osnaburgh, her father’s words were a safe harbor. “I hope you don’t mind the walk. I thought to hire a coach, but my wife reminded me that we must economize. And so . . . we walk.”
Mary strolled alongside her father, hearing the hum under his breath and knowing it was because she was back home. However, she wasn’t quite as content. London’s cramped streets were a far cry from Dundee’s wild heaths, and the city closed in on her, the ramshackle buildings blocking out the spring sun- shine, the refuse and turgid brown waters gurgling down the uneven gutters. Even the poisonous black snake of the river Fleet was so different from the sparkling creeks she’d left be- hind in Scotland. London’s grit settled on her like the finest ash as they passed first Newgate Prison, with its wagon of pallid inmates bound for the gallows at Tyburn Square, and then Newgate Market, where a forest of waxy hog carcasses with unseeing eyes hung on racks outside the butcher shops.
Mary heaved a sigh of relief when they finally arrived at 41 Skinner Street, the ground-level bookshop that had also been the Godwin family home in recent years. Her father opened the door to the accompaniment of the shrill yapping of Jane’s three russet turnspit hounds. Mary ignored them because by then her eyes had landed on the best treasure of all.
Books.

The tiny shop and even tinier press of M. J. Godwin & Co. sold stationery, maps, and games. An avid reader, Mary’s step- mother had named the entire enterprise after herself, although no one called her M. J. or Mary Jane any longer. The shop was a way to make ends meet, but the real prizes inside these four brick walls were the scores of glorious books stacked on every space that would hold them. Much of the shop was dedicated to the lucrative new business of selling children’s books, but famil- iar names beckoned: Descartes, Locke, and Voltaire, along with the works of Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Paine, and so many others Mary’s father had placed in her hands from the moment she could read.
It was Mary’s first memory, her father teaching her to read amid the musty scent of spindle mushrooms and autumn’s final decay at the St. Pancras cemetery. Seated on her father’s lap atop her mother’s grave, she’d shivered against the damp while a crow rooted among piles of decomposing oak leaves and Wil- liam Godwin guided her tiny finger over the chiseled letters of the tombstone.
“M-A-R-Y.” William Godwin’s voice had caught on each letter. “Your mother’s name was the same as yours, corculum.”
“What does that mean,” she’d asked with a wrinkle of her nose. “Cor-, cor-cul . . .”
“Corculum,” he’d repeated. “It means little heart. For you’re an
offshoot of your mother, and I loved her very dearly.”
She remembered watching her father remove an embroi- dered handkerchief from his hellfire-red waistcoat and blow his nose, this staid man who was greater and wiser to her than any other being on earth. Given his tender feelings for her mother, Mary still didn’t understand how her father had developed any affection for Jane Clairmont, since her stepmother was the least sentimental—or kind—person she knew.

“Mary! You’re back!” Ignoring the yapping dogs, Mary’s stepsister Claire bounded down the stairs in a riot of shiny chocolate-hued ringlets and pink muslin ruffles. Less than a year her junior, Claire moved about the world like a shimmering hummingbird. A nearsighted, very loud hummingbird, who was still somehow endearing to everyone she met. “You’ll never guess tonight’s dinner guest!” She turned to her mother—Claire ignored William Godwin as much as Mary ignored Jane—and wrinkled her nose. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
Alas, the books—and any semblance of quiet—would have to be postponed.
“Where is Fanny?” Mary cared little for dinner guests but deeply for her half sister, who was conveniently missing from the melee.
“Mother had to pack her off to the country to visit our aunts.” Claire’s voice dropped. “One of Fanny’s moods, you know.”
A heaviness settled upon Mary’s shoulders, for Fanny was prone to sweeping depressions and terrible crying jags. Sud- denly Mary missed her eldest sister’s tallow-scented embraces and thought of the solemn manner in which Fanny showed off her collection of pinned butterflies and other insects. That was Fanny’s way—always quiet and deferential. Whereas Claire . . . “Guess who is coming to dinner tonight, Mary?” Claire in-
sisted. Her enthusiasm was catching. “Guess!”
“Hmm . . .” Smiling, Mary tapped a finger to her chin be- fore removing her gloves. She couldn’t help herself; her attempt not to needle her stepmother didn’t extend to Claire. “Is it Mr. Burr again? I did enjoy performing speeches last time he came to visit.”
Claire narrowed her gimlet eyes. Mary had won that par- ticular speech competition with Aaron Burr and outshone her stepsister’s efforts to impress the former American vice presi-

dent with an ill-rehearsed song. “Don’t be an addle-plot.” Claire poked Mary in the ribs with a roll of her doll-like eyes. “Not Mr. Burr.”
Mary removed her bedraggled travel bonnet and barely sup- pressed a fresh smile as her father switched into his sharp-toed crimson Moroccan slippers. Some things never changed. “Then who?”
“Percy Bysshe Shelley,” Claire exclaimed, but only sighed at Mary’s blank stare. “The poet?”
“You girls will be your most charming tonight”—Jane shook a stern finger—“no talk of politics or philosophy, only the weather and the state of the roads.” Her long nose verily twitched with disdain as she placed a stern matron’s mobcap— no frills, only one row of sensible English bobbin lace—atop her head. Mary’s stepmother need never worry about being driven from the throne of beauty, given that she’d never had a place there to begin with. With one barked command, Jane shooed her precious dogs upstairs. “Percy Shelley is currently your fa- ther’s best hope for solvency.”
Mary turned to her father in alarm and watched in dismay as his ears turned the same color as his outlandish slippers. Money had always been in short supply in the Godwin house- hold, especially since her father had taken on Jane and Claire, but things had improved somewhat after her stepmother had wrangled him into opening the bookshop instead of relying solely on his pen. (It seemed more prescient to sell other au- thors’ works, considering that few cared to purchase William Godwin’s writings in the salacious aftermath of Mary Woll- stonecraft’s death.) But what Jane was insinuating . . .
“Surely things aren’t so dire that you’re planning to marry off one of us to salvage your accounts?” The idea was anathema to Mary—her father’s perpetual lack of funds had always meant

there would be no dowry for the girls, and thus marriage was unlikely. The very thought of trying to pair one of them into a match somehow advantageous to the family finances would have been entirely out of character for a man who claimed to want nothing more for his daughters than education and inde- pendence.
Although, given the narrow scope of suitable positions for young women—most notably those of wife and mother—Mary had often pondered what options her future held. A paid com- panion or governess? Spinster caretaker of her father and step- mother into their dotage?
Fortunately, her stepmother was quick to assuage the first of Mary’s fears, only to replace it with another. “Percy Shelley is already married with an infant daughter and a second babe on the way. However, if your father did arrange a marriage for you, you’d say your vows and be a dutiful wife. Jaws will flap if you’re still unwed by your twentieth year. Four years may seem ages away, but they’ll pass sooner than you think.”
Mary ground her teeth so hard they nearly fractured. “I care little about the opinions of small-minded people, and further- more, I plan to make my own choice when it comes to marriage, if I ever marry. Anything less is oppression.”
“Of course you’ll choose your husband, if and when you de- cide to marry.” Ever the peacekeeper, Godwin cleared his throat even as Jane threw her hands in the air. “Addressing the prob- lem at hand, Percy Bysshe Shelley is an ardent admirer of my early work and is in a financial position to help moth-eaten radicals such as myself.”
“He’s a baronet’s son,” Claire gushed as she sashayed up the stairs. “Just wait until you see him, Mary. He’s so terribly noble.” “He may be nobility,” Jane groused, “but his boots are filthy. He tracked a mess into the dining room both times he’s come to call.”

“Mud on the carpets is a worthy price to pay if Shelley will lower the ebb waters of my accounts.” Mary was struck by the deep furrows between her father’s brows. His expression soft- ened once Claire had disappeared upstairs and Jane marched toward the kitchen, nattering under her breath about wayward daughters and chestnut soup. “Be forewarned,” he said to Mary, “your sisters are both quite taken with Percy Shelley. Claire turns quite addlepated when he’s in the same room, and Fanny falls ever more silent, if you can imagine such a thing.”
The floorboards creaked overhead, and Claire started sing- ing “Sweet William’s Farewell to Black-Eyed Susan” upstairs. The songbird sound of the broadside ballad made Mary smile, albeit briefly.
“How bad is it?” Mary asked quietly while her father un- locked the glass case that held the shop’s most priceless volumes alongside her mother’s first edition works. There were so many of them—it boggled the mind to think that one person could write so many important works over the course of so short a life. “The accounts, I mean. Surely you have something set aside?”
Her father’s sigh was fraught as he thumbed through the cloth-bound treasures, absentmindedly pulling them out and replacing them one by one. “Not this time, I’m afraid. If Shelley doesn’t build me a raft with his funds at dinner tonight, you’ll soon have to visit me in debtor’s prison.”
The announcement was as unexpected and painful as run- ning into a brick wall in the dead of night. Imagining her father as some sort of heathen philosopher trapped within one of the infamous workhouses while overrun with vermin and deathly fevers made bile skitter beetle-like up Mary’s throat. If her fa- ther went to such a place, he’d likely never come out.
There was already a gaping hole in her life left by her moth- er’s absence; Mary couldn’t fathom a life without her father.

Dust motes danced around William Godwin as he sighed and ran his hands over his bald pate—the last remnants of his hair had retreated while she was in Scotland. He picked up a rare blue cloth volume—Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by William Godwin—and turned it over in his hands. Her mother had been so famous at the moment of its publication that he hadn’t even needed to identify her in the title. Everyone knew who the Author was, although how humble Mary Wollstone- craft of Hoxton had become such a renowned—and vilified— writer was still a mystery to Mary so many years later. “This has been the way of things since I published this damnable book about your mother. I wish I’d never written the cursed thing.”
And of course, its reception upon publication had created such a violent backlash that the publisher had refused another printing outside the tiny first run. So the book had condemned Mary’s mother without even paying the bills.
“Why did you write it?” The question was tentative. Several years ago, her father had forbidden Mary to read it: I’m afraid you’ ll get the wrong idea about your mother. You’re still too young to understand who she truly was, he’d said. Few adults could comprehend her genius.
William Godwin weighed his words so long she feared he wouldn’t answer. “To beat out the dissenters who sought to dis-credit her radical ideas,” he finally said. “And the opportunists who aimed to popularize on their fragile acquaintances with her. Your mother was famous, or infamous, depending on whom you talked to. I thought people would appreciate her if they understood what she’d overcome. Instead, I made things worse.”
Mary did know, she’d learned from Claire—who had heard
it from her mother—that Mary Wollstonecraft’s life had scandalized society to the point where the entry for prostitution in

the conservative publication The Anti-Jacobin Review read “see: Mary Wollstonecraft.” As a child, Mary herself had suffered the aftereffects when parents refused to let their daughters play scotch hopper with her, one mother even going so far as to lecture young Mary, insisting that she had Mary Wollstonecraft’s foul blood running in her veins. Surely this would incline the neighborhood’s children toward licentiousness, just if they played with her.
And yet, Mary had never read her father’s memoir. Godwin had kept this lone copy locked away, and Mary never had the pocket money to procure her own. She couldn’t have found a copy anyway, given that it had been published so sparingly following the public outcry upon its release. That, and although she’d learned to talk politics from her father—a subject typically forbidden to women—he generally refused to speak of her mother.
However, she was a young woman of the world, no longer a child. Surely he would allow her to read it now.
Mary would have broached the subject then, except Godwin replaced the rare volume in the case and glanced with shining eyes about their cramped little bookshop. “God, but your mother would have loved this place,” he murmured under his breath. “Did you know that we used to walk to the village of Sadler’s Wells to visit the bookshop there before you were born? I always suspected you soaked up your love of books while still in the womb.” He rubbed the purple crescents beneath his eyes, seeming far older than his fifty-eight years. “I always feel closest to her when I’m knee-deep in books.”
Mary held her breath, hoping that he’d dole out more of these precious diamonds of memory. Her father so rarely talked about her mother and never in Jane’s presence. Instead, Godwin

only glanced around the shop and gave a groan worthy of the condemned. “And now I’m about to lose even this place.”
Mary rested her hand on his forearm. Her heart contorted into painful knots seeing him so despondent. “You believe this Shelley fellow is the answer to all of your problems?”
Godwin straightened and the moment of vulnerability evaporated. “Percy Shelley is a spoiled charmer. However, there’s more than cotton between his ears—he read my book Political Justice and called on me before traveling to Ireland. He wrote to me about the protests he organized against British rule there.” Mary leaned against the shop’s battered wooden stool. “Well,
Father, you are a bit of a luminary.”
“Only among foolish young men who seek to emulate bent- backed revolutionary philosophers.” Still, Mary could tell her praise lightened his mood, if only slightly. “Shelley promised to help my finances if I gave him advice, which I did. He even bottled my words as incendiary messages and cast them into the sea in Ireland to further fan the flames of actual rebellion.”
So Percy Shelley was a rebel. And a dreamer, if messages in bottles were any indication.
Just like her father. Except dreamers needed to be tethered to this earth.
Mary brushed the shoulders of her father’s jewel-toned jacket with two authoritative swipes, then straightened the lapels of the waistcoat. “Then it’s his turn to hold up your gentleman’s agreement.”
Godwin turned a critical eye on her. “Indeed. I believe Shelley will enjoy conversing with the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. He mentioned during our last visit that he read my thoughts on marriage in Political Justice and your mother’s condemnation of
the institution in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Our views
apparently informed his stance against marriage.”

Mary arched an eyebrow. “But isn’t he married?”
Godwin shrugged. “He seems to have been swept away by his bride, Harriet. Love can do that, you know, catch the most skeptical of us unawares.”
Her father’s faraway look made Mary suspect his mind had unspooled an even greater distance. “Never fear, Father. We’ll make sure this Shelley fellow can’t squirm out of his promise to you. You won’t lose the bookshop,” she promised.
Or be taken to a workhouse.
Godwin gave her shoulder a distracted pat before his hand fell. That thimbleful of affection would have to be enough. “I can always count on you, corculum.”
Mary watched her father’s red-slippered retreat, noting the new stiffness of his walk. It was good to be home again, if only to help her father, although it wouldn’t be long before her feet itched to stroll the moors or whisk her away somewhere new. But as an unmarried young woman— a poor unmarried woman—that simply wasn’t done. No, she’d have no escape.
Which made her ever more thankful for books.
Mary ran her fingers over them, wondering which she’d take to bed with her that night. She loved the comfortable scent of aged paper and the creak of old bindings, the heft of a beloved volume in one’s lap while immersed in words richer than the finest velvet.
Even more tempting than that daydream was the sudden discovery that her father had forgotten to lock the glass cabinet behind the counter.
The forbidden memoir about Mary’s mother beckoned even as her father’s prohibition circled like a storm of crows. This was the first time the rare and scandalous volume had ever been within Mary’s reach. Who knew when the opportunity would present itself again?

You must live for her now too.
Mary recalled her father’s constant admonition at her mother’s grave. But how could Mary live for her mother if she didn’t know her?
Moments later, the glass case’s other volumes had been pushed together and the incriminating dust marks indicating the now-missing book had been blown away. Her shoulders hunched over a tartan-wrapped package, Mary hurried upstairs with her treasure of ink and paper.
First, dinner, where she might save her father from ruin.
Then she would read about her mother. And learn who she really was.

Excerpted from HER LOST WORDS by Stephanie Marie Thornton, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023

Excerpt. ©Stephanie Marie Thornton. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

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Meet the Author:

Stephanie Marie Thornton is a USA Today bestselling author and a high school history teacher and librarian. She lives in Alaska with her husband and daughter.

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