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Anne-Marie MacDonald’s queer coming-of-age novel set on the Scottish border during Victorian times has been secured by Tramp Press.
Co-founder Sarah Davis-Goff acquired UK and Ireland rights from Tracy Bohan at the Wylie Agency for Fayne, which is scheduled for publication in August. The novel was first published in Canada in autumn 2022.
The synopsis reads: “In the late 19th century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious ‘condition’.
“Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing in Fayne House which depicts her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress, holding Charlotte’s brother, Charles Bell. Charlotte has grown up with the knowledge that her mother died in giving birth to her and that Charles, the long-awaited heir, died at the age of two.
“When Charlotte’s appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of the estate, her father breaks with tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter. But when Charlotte and her tutor’s explorations of the bog turn up an unexpected artefact, her father announces he has arranged for her to be cured of her condition and her world is upended. Charlotte’s passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.”
MacDonald said: “I knew from a very young age that I was wrong in the world. And the idea of looking through the eyes of somebody who’s born with an intersex trait has been quite compelling to me for a very long time. It’s not an exotic quality. That’s why I’ve decided not to treat it as a spoiler. That’s just who Charlotte is, that’s her body. That’s normal. It’s the world that has a problem and is going to make it a problem for her.”
Davis-Goff said: “For a publisher, Fayne is an absolute dream: you’re always on the look-out for something that’ll keep you up at night, for characters that you want to hold close, for a story that you’ve never heard before. Ann-Marie MacDonald brings us all that and more in Fayne.”
In 1996, MacDonald’s first novel, Fall on Your Knees (Vintage), won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Fiction, the People’s Choice Award and the Libris Award. In 2002, it became an Oprah’s Book Club title. She is also the author of Adult Onset (Sceptre) and Belle Moral (Vintage).