An Ipswich author is preparing to share her first novel with the world, a story of forbidden love, fearless determination and women’s fight for the vote. 

Kate Baker, 53, is the author of Maids of Steel, a story which spans 14 months and two continents. The novel will be published next week on Tuesday, February 28. 

With International Women’s Day just around the corner, its release is timely.  

Readers are first introduced to the protagonist of Emma in 1911, a quiet New Yorker whose parents have sent her to Ireland in the hopes of quelling their daughter’s dream of Suffrage. 

“This is an early version of a woman who is seeing other women wanting to have their voices heard,” explained Mrs Baker, who lives in Bentley on the outskirts of Ipswich.  

Far from being deterred, when Emma arrives in Queenstown (now known as Cobh), she is swept up in the women’s rights movement which was steadily gaining momentum in Cork. 

The novel follows a skeleton of real-life events, with Mrs Baker’s fictional characters putting flesh on the bones of the story. 

It all began, she said, with a notepad, a few sentences and a glass of wine.  

“I had gone to Cobh in 2019, on a city break with a girlfriend,” said Mrs Baker. They visited the Cobh Heritage Centre, and were intrigued to learn of 'coffin ships’,  

These were vessels carrying thousands of Irish people away from the country in the wake of the potato famine, so-called because they were rife with disease and many never lived to see their destination. 

Mrs Baker’s imagination was set alight, and she and her friend spent the evening dreaming of a woman returning to Ireland, ready to learn about the grandmother who had fled the country decades before – and thus, Emma was born. 

On Tuesday, Mrs Baker will be signing copies of Maids of Steel in Waterstones in Ipswich town centre. 

To preorder a copy, call the shop on: 01473 289044