Innocence to Engagement

Evelina Gleaves was born in 1895 at the Washington, D.C. Navy Yard. The daughter of a Naval officer, she came of age in various parts of the country as her father's postings changed, from Newport, Rhode Island — a world of Society rules, expectations, and carefully maintained appearances — to the Bremerton, Washington Navy Yard, at the time still a frontier town recently carved from the “forest primeval.” There were many other stops along the way, but Steena struggled mightily to find her place.

She was a tomboy and, by her own admission, “agin' all rules,” which put her at odds with her mother, who was decidedly Southern and determined to shape Steena into a debutante. Steena longed to be authentic and desperately hoped for independence in an era that offered women very little of it. She never gave up hope that exceptionality would exempt her from conformity. It would be a hard series of lessons along the way.

In a recent writing exercise, the assignment was to write the back cover summary for your book jacket. I include it here in an aspirational form (put your wallets away!):

Evelina “Steena” Gleaves has never truly belonged, not in the grand salons of Newport, nor among the dazzling ranks of Washington's society debutantes, and especially not in the Navy Yards across the country where her father was posted. The daughter of a decorated Navy captain but never truly “moneyed,” Steena moves through a twilight world of rigid rules and watchful eyes, her heart torn between yearning for acceptance and resentment of the roles forced upon her.

As the glittering facade of the Gilded Age gives way to a tumultuous new era and a looming war, Steena's rebellious streak — and her refusal to play by the rules — make her both an outsider and a target. Friends slip away, alliances crack, and her early brushes with love leave her aching for something more real than the scripts handed down by family and tradition. When world events and family circumstances force her to see the true costs of conformity, Steena faces a fateful choice: will she deny her true self for a place at society's table, or risk everything to forge a different destiny?

Sweeping from Navy yards to ships to foreign lands, The Captain's Daughter is a tale of longing and belonging. It is the riveting first installment of the Innocence to Engagement trilogy — a passionate coming-of-age story about a young girl, about a young country, about standing apart, daring to “be,” and the perilous decisions around choosing your “people.” Steena's journey is as wrenching as it is luminous, and a reminder that sometimes the truest courage is simply refusing to hide.