The Story Behind the Story... The Making of a Gentleman by Ruth Axtell Morren

The germ of the idea
for The Making of a Gentleman came to me as I was researching an earlier regency, maybe even as early as Winter Is Past or Dawn in my Heart.

  I read about a Quaker woman, Elizabeth Fry, in the late 18th and early 19th century who began to minister to the prisoners at Newgate. Very few people had ever done such a thing before and conditions were horrific, even for those transported to
Australia. The majority died on the way.

   At the same time I read another snippet somewhere about the royal pardons the English monarch could issue. One incident involved a nobleman who had committed a serious crime. His wife petitioned for his life, and the Prince Regent, moved by her plea, granted a royal pardon, based on sentiment alone.

   Those two real-life incidents in history gave me the germ of an idea for a story about a woman who ministers to an escaped convict from Newgate.

   At the same time, I began getting to know a woman in my church. For years, she and her husband were involved in prison ministry. After she was widowed, she carried on the work alone. Year after year, she has been faithful, holding a Bible study during a week night and taking turns with the Sunday service at a local men’s correction facility.

   I moved away for a few years, and when I returned this year and gave her a copy of The Making of a Gentleman, which I had dedicated to her, she surprised me with
some news of her own: She had recently married…a man who had once been an inmate at the facility. As she started reading my story, she was amazed at the parallels.

   Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction!

Save the Date! You won't want to miss our annual open house event on December 11th!