Tea at the Empress
Tea at the Empress
In the 1920s, suffragist Edith fights to climb the ladder at Victoria’s Daily Colonist, while trying to live the life of a free, modern woman in a society that isn’t quite ready for it.
In the 1910s, Edith sees the love of her life head off to fight a far-away war, while she struggles to find her way around Victorian attitudes, especially her mother’s.
Trying to build her future, Edith suddenly finds herself face-to-face with her past as long-hidden family secrets make their way out into the open.
In alternating timelines, Tea at the Empress examines an era when the personal was undeniably political for women, in general and individually, as they worked to figure out how to bring a new and better world to life.
Review quotes:
“Edeana Malcolm’s Tea at the Empress is a delight. The character of Edith positively sparkles on the page — a young woman living a life of excitement at a time when women were only beginning to access hard-won human rights. It is this exploration that makes the book so timely and needed today as those rights are threatened anew in North America. While Edith’s story provides plenty of humour, nostalgia and entertainment, it also serves as an important call to action for this and future generations. A necessary book for a complex world.”
— Carleigh Baker, author of Bad Endings, winner of the City of Vancouver Book Award
“Using real headlines from the Daily Colonist to suggest shifts in time, Edeana Malcolm recreates 1920s Victoria, BC through the experiences of Edith, a late-twenties young woman who is the family rebel in more ways than is immediately clear. Tensions are high at family dinners as her siblings’ growing children disrupt the order her mother craves, and Edith’s past enters the family home. Just as Iona Wishart’s Lane Winslow Mysteries transport Nelson, BC back to the 1940s, Malcolm shifts Victoria, BC back in time through familiar locations, local events and Edith’s rich and complex past. It’s delightful to follow Edith on her many missteps.”
— Yvonne Blomer, author of The Last Show on Earth, Victoria Poet Laureate (2015–2018)
“How do you deal with painfully wrong choices forced on you? With people making decisions for you that should not have been theirs to make? A society structured to allow that to happen? How do you endure a lifetime with the shattering consequences of sexism? A heartfelt novel of healing long sadness, Edeana Malcolm’s Tea at the Empress examines the hidden suffering in the real costs of inequity through the life of a young woman in Victoria, Canada through World War I, Spanish influenza and the twenties. In a youthful voice that engages readers, Malcolm’s rhythms and mystery draw us in. Independent Edith is immediately appealing as she dons her flashy flapper dress, checking out how the “fringes shimmered and shimmied — the perfect dress to wear to a family dinner to which I hadn’t been invited.” Edith is a loveable narrator through and through, the grief of her stolen autonomy appeased only with her conviction that love is the truest part of ourselves, that it was never wrong to love, only painful to lose relationships and people, to have choice stolen by war myths and social norms. Tea at the Empress is a thought-provoking story about the gendered economic oppression endured by a suffragette, the hidden losses behind the flashy garments and dreams of fairness.”
— Cynthia Sharp, author of Rainforest in Russet