Spirit Burns By Tina Jackson

Spirit Burns
By Tina Jackson
Reviewed by Paul Steven Stone




Full disclosure, I've been a fan of Tina Jackson since first reading her wonderful novel, The Beloved Children. That novel, like this one, brings history to life with characters so real, complex and interesting you find yourself compelled to keep reading to learn their full story.


Spirit Burns takes a rich and fertile moment in British history told from the point of view of the Suffragettes, an often neglected driving force for change that fueled cultural and class upheaval in Britain. The lives of the woman portrayed are offered in relation to the shocking need for women of that period (the late 19th century) to be released from the bonds, legal and cultural, that kept them subservient and far poorer than their male counterparts in British society.


Spirit Burns focuses on the lives of three women who represent Britain’s stagnant class structure of the period in question. These women—a mill worker, a stage performer and a young lady of the upper class—all suffer from the lack of opportunity to express themselves and grow as active partners and competitors to the males who dominate and control their lives. Nothing holds them down more than the lock-tight grip of poverty and reduced opportunity that was the lot of 19th century woman. Miss Jackson is as deft with words as she is in building characters and events you can believe in.


Spirit Burns is literature at its finest! I recommend it unhesitatingly.