|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
At 85, Christina Holloway calls herself “a really good example of it’s never too late to pick up an endeavor of whatever you want to do.”
In her case, she said, “I decided to give myself the time for it,” and after a decade of researching and writing, she has finally launched her first book, a historical novel based on her Anglo-Irish family in the late 1800s.
This spring, Holloway self-published the 464-page paperback, “Whispers Across a Sea: A Novel of Victorian Ireland,” with the assistance of Girl Friday Productions and guidance from Susan Lyn McCombs, a writer and editor in Berkeley.
These days instead of writing, Holloway is busy at her Stanford campus house commandeering the publicity part of releasing a new book. She is giving interviews, including a recent one in the middle of the night so it could run live on air in Dublin, Ireland, and she’s booking discussions with local book clubs in person and long-distance groups on Zoom.
She smiles when she talks about the newfound celebrity status that has come with her late-in-life career as an author.
“I’m waiting to be discovered right here and now,” she said with a laugh.
But she’s serious when she speaks about her potential next step. Holloway sees her book as a natural fit for PBS’ “Masterpiece,” along the lines of the popular hit “Upstairs, Downstairs” from the 1970s. In fact, one of the show’s executive producers has a copy of the book, because Holloway just FedExed it to her.
“I want to make it into a TV mini-series,” she said, because her family saga portrays Ireland “at a time in history that has been overlooked” yet is so fascinating.
On her book’s back cover she describes it as “a time of vast privilege, inequality, turmoil, and change.”
Holloway’s novel focuses on her grandmother, Lucie Mary Niven Franz, whom she lived with in Southern California as a young girl when Holloway’s mother spent years in a sanitarium convalescing from tuberculosis. Granny Lucie identified with the situation after losing her own mother at age 10 in Canada. Lucie was sent off to live with well-to-do family members in Ireland until she returned home at 20.
Lucie used to regale Holloway with stories about their ancestors, the Youngs, moving from England to Ireland.
When Lucie died in 1949, she passed along a treasure trove of old letters, photos, paintings and a diary that documented the Young family’s immigrant story. Those shared memories and the memorabilia that sat in boxes in Holloway’s garage for years, inspired the book.
Before working on this project Holloway was best known for being an environmental activist.
“I come from a lineage of very strong women,” she said, crediting her grandmother’s and great-aunts’ forthrightness and resiliency with playing a part in shaping her own drive and spirit.
Holloway co-founded Environmental Volunteers, served as first co-executive director of the Trust for Hidden Villa, was a former Board member of Peninsula Open Space Trust and Yosemite Conservancy, and past President of the Junior League of Palo Alto.
Aside from acting as editor of her high school newspaper, and writing for newsletters for some of the above organizations, Holloway has little training as a writer. Surrounded by heirloom portraits hanging on her walls, she started her book by writing short vignettes centered on the people she read about in her family’s materials and other historical accounts.
Holloway then turned the people into individual characters, and jokes about developing a split personality to flush them all out. She also added fictional characters such as Norah Gossett, the cook’s daughter who landed in prison after protesting for Irish independence.
“I assumed their thoughts and placed them in history … and just kept moving the arc of the story forward, constantly rewriting,” Holloway said, until she had about 600 pages.
Her editor then helped pare down the manuscript to 48 short chapters.
Holloway’s neighbor and friend, Sunny Scott, worked on the book’s photos, graphics, cover and website.
The book has ranked number one on Amazon’s “New releases in British & Irish Dramas and Plays.”
For more information, visit christinahollowayauthor.com.
Redwood City attorney sues ‘First Amendment auditors’ after Menlo Park disputeApril 2, 2026 11:31 am
