“I’d always felt there had to be more to life than simply listening. For that’s what women did. From the moment we entered the world, we were compelled to keep our lips sealed and ears primed so our fathers, brothers, other men, God, could pour their wisdom into them. So they could tell us what to read, eat, when to retire to bed, attend church, when to speak and, most of all, when and whom to marry. All the while, we had to smile and nod, regardless of our opinion on the matter.”

The Escapades Of Tribulation Johnson is the fifteenth novel by best-selling Australian author, Karen Brooks. In the early spring of 1679, seventeen-year-old Tribulation Johnson is sent away from her family in Chartham to avoid marriage to a wealthy but boring old baronet.

Tribulation’s interest in writing mocked, barely tolerated by her father, Rev. Howell Johnson, and her wish to become an actress was met with disgust, but apparently noted by her older sister, Bethan, by whose machinations she ends up in London with her widowed older cousin, the rather infamous playwright and poet, Aphra Behn, whose “poetry is excellent, her political writing can be scathing and her ability to lampoon is exceptional.”

After an undignified introduction, “I marvelled that here I was, Tribulation Johnson, the daughter of a country vicar, tucked into a threadbare chair in a London parlour, my belly settled and sated, a glass of perfectly drinkable wine in my hand, opposite one of the most notorious women in the country. Drum roll. Sound the trumpets. The Aphra Behn. My bloody cousin.”

She finds herself with a tiny part in Oedipus, being put on by the Dukes Company at Dorset Garden but though she overcomes the stage fright of her first night, her theatre career goes in a different direction. She makes some friends amongst the cast and crew, but others believe her role was gained through nepotism: her relationship to Aphra. And even though she works tirelessly as the company’s bookkeeper/prompter, there’s a lot of resentment.

The other new member of the cast replaces lead actor Matthew Medbourne, arrested for his suspected part in the Popish Plot. As Jonathan Rickman, he is there to act, but intelligencer Gabriel Freeman is also in the employ of King Charles II’s recently removed spymaster, Joseph Williamson, to identify possibly papist contacts of possibly papist Medbourne.

Tribulation notices that he always listens but seldom says much. And he seems very interested in anything Aphra says or does. Their initial encounters are less than friendly, which doesn’t really bother Tribulation. Sure, she finds him attractive, but a man is the last thing she needs.

Gabriel Freeman has been trying to avoid London, and any reminder of the wife and baby daughter who died while he was conducting battles at sea. But now, the royal succession issue makes his presence essential. Grief and guilt still plague him, but in his role as Jonathan Rickman, he encounters the very distracting Tribulation Johnson, whose name seems apt.

Back when she was a country vicar’s daughter, Tribulation spent a lot of time reading to, and learning from the elderly Lady Adeline, a woman of very diverse interests. It broadened her knowledge and fed her appetite for writing. Some months after she has joined the cast at the Dukes, the unfairness of a certain incident makes her so angry, she impulsively writes and publishes an essay which brings her to the notice of the King, with a surprisingly positive result.

Thereafter, she is encouraged by Aphra to write, this wholehearted support a marked contrast from Howell Johnson’s attitude. Aphra explains that most of all, she wants to reach people: “As a woman, I cannot argue in Parliament or even in a coffee-house. I cannot vote in a guild nor run for office. I cannot take arms but I can write. My plays — the words I put in the characters’ mouths, the plots, and themes, whether they are couched in comedy or drama, are like secret instructions to the people: instructions in things it’s impossible to insinuate into them in any other way.”

As the story progresses, Tribulation finds herself cast in various roles, sometimes simultaneously: actress, assistant prompter, co-writer of plays, playwright and covert surveillance. Success with playwriting affects her: “My heart sang as words I’d penned echoed around me, repeated by familiar and strange mouths. It was a heady, addictive sensation and I relished it. Did all writers feel this way? Did Aphra? No wonder she didn’t allow the spiteful observations of her foes to stop her. No wonder the men wanted to keep this thrill for themselves. The power it bestowed was dizzying.”

Tribulation and Aphra weather various upheavals, domestic, career and political: theatre shutdowns, moving house, mergers, and questions about her paternity that might explain Howell Johnson’s treatment of her, and they somehow get entangled in a royal assassination plot.

Brooks gives the reader a fabulous collision of reality and imagination, interweaving fact with fiction, all of it rich in historical detail. The dual narrative is from the perspectives of Tribulation and Gabriel, who are supported by a marvellously diverse cast of real people and fictional characters, and while it follows actual historical events, there are plenty of twists and turns that keep the reader fully engaged. Thoroughly compelling historical fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and HQ Fiction.