Gay Daly

My new book Miss Havilland is my first novel. It grew out of my childhood in Santa Clara Valley, now Silicon Valley, then a sleepy little place where orchards, not computers, created wealth. My family settled in California in the middle of the 19th Century, and no one ever left the state, with two notable exceptions. My great grandfather went to medical school at Penn but took the train straight home as soon as he graduated. Our cousin Evelyn had a chance to get out: she was asked to do military intelligence in Washington during WWI. Eventually, she came home, too, but not before she got engaged to a man who lived in New England. She didn't marry him. As far as I know, he never talked about her decision. I always wondered why she came home, and my novel explores that question: the pain and loss that may have been involved in her decision.

My first book Preraphaelites in Love is non-fiction: a group biography of five male artists in Victorian England and the women who modeled for and often married them. The question the book explores is: What happens when you fall in love with a physically beautiful woman and assume that physical beauty translates into emotional and spiritual beauty? Some of these marriages were fascinating disasters; others were surprisingly happy. The book is based on my reading of thousands of their letters—Victorians saved letters because they treasured them—as well as interviews with scholars and descendants of these artists and their models.