Mr. Rochester

Shoemaker gives Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester a book of his own. There are hints of Jane's early life in his; both are lonely children, although their circumstances are much different. Rochester loses his mother early and, as a second son, follows a path laid out for him by his autocratic and largely absent father, from private tutoring to an apprenticeship at a counting house to college at Cambridge and then, at age 18, to Jamaica. Then come his disastrous marriage; his return to England, mad wife in tow, when he inherits Thornfield; and his dissipations in Paris, until, finally, Jane comes into his life. Readers will not find the brooding and tortured Rochester who is such a force in Jane Eyre; in these pages, he is a bit of a dull dog. It's interesting to see, nevertheless, how Shoemaker constructs a biography from the information provided in Brontë's novel and also to see the events familiar from that novel through his point of view. Recommend this to anyone eager for another take on Jane Eyre.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2017 Booklist

In this work of historical fiction, Shoemaker depicts the private life of Mr. Rochester from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Who exactly is the mysterious Mr. Rochester, and how exactly did he become entangled in that hellish marriage with Bertha Antoinetta Mason? Shoemaker delves into the as yet untold past of Edward Fairfax Rochester, bringing to light the events that led him to Thornfield Hall and his beloved Jane. Readers begin their acquaintance with Mr. Rochester on his eighth birthday as he is sent off to his first days of school at Black Hill under Mr. Hiram Lincoln. Sadness imbues Edward's life-shaped by the early loss of his mother and the constant manipulation, neglect, and bullying of his father and older brother, Rowland. As the pieces of his life come together, readers watch Edward make his way toward an unavoidable future set out for him by Brontë. He meets pivotal mentors who teach him the rules of the world he is meant to enter, eventually following his inheritance to the shores of Jamaica, where things quickly become more complicated than he is prepared for. Shoemaker's detailed writing will transport readers to a bygone age of romance and heartbreak. Agent: Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Puzzling over Rochester, the brooding romantic antihero created by Charlotte Bront in her classic Jane Eyre, a debut novelist elaborates his back story and adds some new, explanatory developments to the tale.Edward Fairfax Rochester meets Jane Eyre two-thirds of the way through Shoemaker's sizable, solid first work of fiction, which means that most of her book is devoted to his earlier life and character formation, while the closing third retells the familiar narrative, this time delivered from his, not her, first-person perspective. It's at that switchover point that "gruffness," brusqueness, growling, and "foul mood[s]" begin to characterize the man who, previously, had seemed not so much angry as a wounded introvert. Shoemaker evokes Rochester's comfortless childhood that leaves the boy "yearning for the larger shows of love" denied by his widowed father and callous elder brother, Rowland. Pining for a real home and family, he must make do with an eccentric private school and two friends, nicknamed Carrot and Touch, a learning-the-ropes job at a woolen mill under the not-unkind care of Mr. Wilson, and four lonely years at Cambridge University before setting off for Jamaica to make his fortune and fall into the engineered trap of marriage to mad Bertha Mason. As the years pass, Shoemaker disposes of Carrot, Touch, and Wilson, as well as Rowland and others, intensifying Rochester's isolation at Thornfield-Hall, with Bertha raving in the attic. And then Jane arrives. While these facts conform largely to Bront's romancethere's one significant departurethe character of Rochester doesn't quite. This figure, who is submissive and unchallenging as a child and young man, lacks the saturnine charisma of the original. Also absent are the physical presence and the dangerous, irresistible dynamism of Bront's Byronic icon. Reader, this lily needed no gilding. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.