Karen Ullo

The Warble

The Official Blog of Karen Ullo

Two Awards from Catholic Reads!

Two Awards from Catholic Reads!

Nov 18, 2024

In the past week, Catholic Reads released their annual Editor’s Choice Awards, which are given in each genre, and a new addition this year, Reader’s Choice Awards, which are voted on by their newsletter subscribers. To Crown with Liberty took home BOTH the Editor’s Choice Award for Historical Fiction and First Place in the Reader’s Choice Awards!

I’m so incredibly honored to see how much both professional reviewers and ordinary readers are enjoying the book. Thank you, Catholic Reads, and thank you to every single person who voted in the awards. Your support means the world to me.

Is To Crown with Liberty Based on my Family?

Is To Crown with Liberty Based on my Family?

Jun 29, 2024

For those who’ve read To Crown with Liberty, you know that there are two characters, Mario and Celeste, a white man and a black woman who refer to each other as husband and wife, but whom the law forbids to legally marry. They have four children, whom Mario was forced to purchase from Celeste’s former slave master, and then set free, so that his own children could have the rights of being his children.
When my mom read the book, she asked if I had based these characters on our family. I didn’t—they’re from Strange True Stories of Louisiana by G.W. Cable, the book on which To Crown with Liberty is based. But it occurs to me that maybe G.W. Cable based them on my family.
You see, back in the late 19th century, after slavery but before interracial marriage was legal, I had a some-number-of-greats uncle who fell in love with a black woman, took her into his home as wife despite not being able to legally marry, and was then forced to legally adopt his own children in order to give them familial rights such as inheritance. They lived in New Orleans (or somewhere nearby)—the same place that Cable lived, right around the same time that he wrote Strange True Stories.
So maybe Mario and Celeste were based on my family after all. And if not, they were surely based on some similar couple of the era.
(Photo is not my ancestors—I don’t have one of them. It’s just one I found on the internet.)
To Crown with Liberty is Finally Here!

To Crown with Liberty is Finally Here!

May 1, 2024

Finally–FINALLY!–the day is here! To Crown with Liberty is available to the world from Chrism Press, WhiteFire Publishing, or your favorite online retailer.

Want to read it for free? One of the very best things you can do to help your favorite authors is to request their books through your local library. Nearly every public library system in the US has an online request form for patrons. All you have to do is login with your library card and ask. If they want any information that you’re not sure about, just email me, karenulloauthor [at] gmail.com, and I’m happy to help. And I bet your other favorite authors would say the same.

ABOUT THE BOOK: 

New Orleans, 1795. In the wake of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, Alix de Morainville Carpentier—a former lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, now married to her gardener—seeks peace and security in the Spanish colony of Louisiana. But her journey into the man-eating swamp called Attakapas reopens the wounds of her old life in France. Alix is forced to reckon with the choices that saved her life at the cost of her honor—and perhaps her soul.

In revolutionary France, the Old World is dying; the quest for liberty, equality, and fraternity has become a nightmare where the price of dissent is blood. In the wilderness of Spanish Louisiana, a new civilization is beginning to emerge—but in this budding New World, the slave trade perpetuates the systems of oppression that sparked the revolution. Caught between old and new, scarred by trauma and grief, will Alix ever find a home where she can truly be free?

To Crown with Liberty is a historical novel based on riveting legends from George Washington Cable’s Strange True Stories of Louisiana (1888).

Please join me TODAY at 1:00 pm Central on my Facebook page for a live event celebrating To Crown with Liberty. I will read an excerpt from the book, complete with silly French Revolution props, and I’ll give away a signed copy to one lucky attendee. Please come join the fun!