Character Spotlight ~ Kay Marshall Strom's Grace Winslow

Today the spotlight shines on.......................Grace Winslow


Kay Marshall Strom is a prolific non-fiction author who has channelled her passion to voice the injustice of slavery into writing the Grace in Africa trilogy, starting with The Call of Zulina. The trilogy focuses on the life of an innocent woman living in a corrupt and dangerous world. I hope you enjoy this insight into Grace Winslow.

Over to you, Kay:~


Brief physical description

Grace Winslow is the lovely daughter of an English seaman and his African princess wife, owners of the area's major slave holding fortress. With silky mocha skin and auburn tints in her black hair, she is a girl with one foot in the white world and one in Africa, but she belongs to neither. Raised behind the walls of her parents' compound, with almost no access to the world outside, Grace is educated and laden with lovely things, but she is conveniently ignorant of her parents' cruel trade.

Think Halle Berry!

Strengths and weaknesses

Weaknesses

Spoiled, impulsive, headstrong

Strengths

Able to grow and learn, empathetic and sensitive, strong will, decisive leader, has the gift of grace

Quirk (if any)

Strangely innocent

Your inspiration for the character

In writing the book, Once Blind: The Life of John Newton, a biography on the 18^th century slave ship captain turned preacher and abolitionist who penned “Amazing Grace,” I virtually met a couple from his life--an English seaman and his African wife who ran a slave camp in the 1700s. At the time I asked myself: “If they'd had a daughter, who would she be--English or African?” That story question was the beginning of Grace Winslow.

Background to the story

While I was in West Africa working on yet another book, I visited a slave fortress off the coast of Senegal. In one cell I saw a pair of baby manacles chained to the wall. My heart froze in horror. It was there that Grace Winslow began to weave herself into a story.

Thanks for sharing with us, Kay ~ I hope her stories bring more light to the darkness that slavery hides behind.


On Thursday, the spotlight shines on Maggie Brendan's Juliana & Josh from The Jewel of His Heart.

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