‘Unexpected Companions’ is a fascinating debut novel, which was ranked 4th on Amazon’s Hot New Releases. The story intertwines the lives of three extraordinary, but very different women, who broke past the standards and stereotypes of their times, and the life of a teenager, Ellie Hardwick, their descendant, who goes to school in Richmond. These ghosts from her family history must guide the struggling Ellie and help her come to a realisation and to inspire her to achieve her dreams, just like them. I sat down with Nicole Stout, the author with a warm smile, to find out more.
What was your main inspiration for this book?
The idea for the book came about because my in-laws were visiting from Bermuda in 2017. They stayed for about two weeks and whilst they were here, my mother-in-law was telling me about her grandmother, Amy Mello. She told me about this fascinating woman who was clearly very influential for her. But there were a lot of gaps in Amy’s life story. We knew that she was a single mum, bringing up three children in the 1930s and that she had, at some point, lived in America. She’d had a first husband, but they didn’t actually know his name. We didn’t know a lot about Amy’s second husband either. I was just intrigued, and curious and nosy.
I started researching a bit to see what I could find about her, from a genealogical perspective. It was as I was doing that research, that I felt I wanted to write all this down. And then, as I was thinking about how best to tell her story, it occurred to me that there were other women on my side of the family that were also quite inspirational and different in the sense that their life journeys didn’t look like the usual ones of their social time. Those two other people were Charlotte Burne and Winifred Davies. And that was how the story came about.
What did your research look like, particularly for Amy?
She was the hardest to research. My first point of call with Amy was speaking to family members, and using the website Ancestry, which brought up other digital sources. In the US census from 1920, you can see her name listed. I mentioned, in the book, that they pronounced the names differently and the US census is where I got that from because she’s actually down as Annie Soinmonds due to a miscommunication. Then we have their marriage certificate, which I also found very interesting because I realised that he was still married six months before that. I feel like there’s more intrigue there to be found for the next book. My mother-in-law was also very helpful because she went to the archive centre in Bermuda and got Amy’s first marriage certificate. These are incredibly helpful pieces of information for family research because you’ve got the residence address, you’ve got what they do, you’ve got their parents’ names and so they can tell you a lot more about a person. So that was Amy.
The other two had less secrets to unveil because most of them had already been revealed. My grandfather was genuinely slightly obsessed with Lotty Burne! Lotty was his aunt and, although she had died when he was quite little, his father and uncles and aunts had quite a lot of positive things to say about her. We have boxes of family letters upstairs from Lotty’s time. I read all the letters that had been from around the time before she was born, all the way through her life. There’s family diaries and some notebooks from when she was younger. My grandfather had made a booklet on Lotty at some point and it was quite useful as a reference point because it’s just a bit of background and a summary of her life. Lotty wrote a lot. A lot of folklore that I refer to is from her ‘Shropshire Folk-lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings.’ She also wrote extensively in the Folklore Society Journal. So that was how I got Lotty together. The Burne family were particularly interested in their own family history. I think that it’s a testimony to Lotty’s influence because the interest in history doesn’t seem to be in the older generations; her aunts and uncles on the Burne’s side found her style of personality a little trying!
Winifred Davies was my grandmother. She was a curious one because she never spoke about her childhood and I think that it was very different to her adult life. She had a semi-detached house in Kent, having come from her endlessly poor tenant farming family. One of the most interesting things was getting in contact with her cousins who had gone and helped out on the farm in the summer. It was interesting to hear their stories. I ended up talking to another archive, this time in Powys and they were able to send me her father’s medical records.
What were the key challenges you faced when writing the book?
I had plenty, in many ways. I started writing and then got stuck. I didn’t really know where it was going and I started again. I hadn’t appreciated and hadn’t done enough of the planning behind it. If you decorate a room, you spend more time prepping the walls and doing all of the boring stuff before you actually get anywhere near a paintbrush. And I think, to be fair, writing a novel or writing any book is a similar thing. I knew what I wanted to write but I had to do the prep work. That was definitely a hurdle I had to overcome.
After that, I didn’t find the writing too difficult because I’d found a method that worked. The next hardest thing for me was when to stop researching and to start writing. I could still be researching and editing now. You just have to decide that you’ve got enough to write what you want to write. You always feel like there’s something else- I discovered that Amy’s first child died when I was first writing the book and I was like ‘What?!’ You always feel like there’s something else that you might find as you go along.
Do you have a favourite figure that you wrote about? Who do you find the most relatable?
Am I allowed to say a bit of all of them? Is that cheating? I would say I possibly related a bit with each of them. There were parts of each of them that I found inspiring and parts of each of them that I thought, if we sat next to each other at a dinner table, would drive me insane.
I loved Amy’s sense of self and her confidence and determination. You can see that with her life choices. If she doubted herself she would never have told you. I think that that’s something that should be admired because I think, especially with women, we can start down the self-doubt and self-deprecation when it’s totally unnecessary. I really admired her for that.
I loved Lotty’s curiosity and not being embarrassed which I thought was just fantastic. Especially in a world in which her aunts and uncles were a bit like ‘We would rather you sit at a table and be quiet.’ There were all sorts of comments about what she was like as a teenager and how they didn’t really approve. And it’s because she had an opinion and shared it and that wasn’t really what they thought she should do. I think that’s what made her so interesting. Her curiosity to go out to ask people questions and not be afraid to ask people several questions, not just the one is incredible!
My granny is probably the most obvious one to be the inspiration because at some point I knew her. I always saw her as a calm, kind person, who was still able to get what she wanted, just didn’t have to shout about it.
Combine those three together and you’ve got all the things I admire.
Who was the main inspiration for Ellie, the struggling main character?
Probably a bit on me, to be honest. I was bullied when I was about her age at school and I definitely feel that left a mark. In a very similar way, it was within a group that I wanted to consider friends and that makes it much harder to move away from because you’re like a moth to a flame, being drawn back into the circle even though it’s not healthy for you. Some of the experiences that Ellie goes through, like getting lost without her parents in the theme park, happened to me. When I was growing up, the style of your day-to-day life was so different. I’m sure you’ve heard this plenty of times but we didn’t have mobile phones! Social media just wasn’t there- you’d get home and get back on the telephone with somebody. The problems didn’t so much follow you into your bedroom. They weren’t next to you pinging away as you were trying to go to sleep. It’s a different way of living and communicating and all that comes with benefits and challenges. I also spoke with some people who were of that similar age to see what their experiences were as well.
What do you want readers to take away from your book?
On a very broad level, I hope that inspires people to go away and ask questions about their own family and write down and find out their own stories because I think there’s no such thing as a boring family history, you just probably don’t know it. I think it’s so important that we tell our stories and that it’s not just the very wealthy or the very famous that get their stories heard. I’d love that to be an inspiration.
There were three messages that I wanted the three women to give to Ellie- value yourself, work hard and be passionate about something. I hope people find inspiration in these women.
Unexpected Companions is out now and available at amazon.co.uk or via her website www.nicolestout.co.uk.
