It's lucky for us that author Tracy Chevalier went to a William Blake exhibit at the Tate Museum in 2001. She bought a souvenir notebook with a Blake image on the cover and said one day she'd write about Blake. The day arrived, over two years since she saw the original exhibit, and her fourth novel, BURNING BRIGHT, is a gorgeous literary feat of imagination and narrative crafted around the life of Blake.

The opening pages of the novel draw the reader in vividly to the daily life of late-eighteenth century London and the emotional risk of a country family, the Kellaway's, moving to the city to work for a circus. The descriptions of circus life are so fantastic that I never even needed to William Blake to show up in the story! Most of the novel is told through the eyes of children: The country boy Jem Kellaway learning how to be street-savvy from Maggie Butterfield, Masie Kellaway's dangerous infatuation with the handsome son of the circus owner, and, of course, the hazardous risk of William Blake's free thinking attitude during the days of the French Revolution and it's impact on English life. She also creates beautiful vignettes of daily life that are so vivid that you can smell horses in the circus tent, fire in the hearths, and blood on the city streets. Chevalier's distinguished ability to bring yesterday alive is one reason Girl with a Pearl Earring went on to be Oscar nominated film. She crafts her research with genuine emotion and that makes her writing absolutely impossible to put down, this book included.

Chevalier continues to burn bright in her quest to understand woman in history. Currently she is working on a novel about a fabulous woman know as Mary Anning, a 19th century fossil collector who discovered the first pre- dinosaur fossils on the rocky cliffs of England. The drama kicks in when Mary sells her findings to famous male geologists that steal her glory while she lives in poverty. Chevalier is the sort of writer that once you read one of her books you'll want to read everything she's written and I can't wait for her next book to publish!