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This uniquely constructed multi-period novel opens in 2010. Lucy Ellis is nearly done with the manuscript for her first novel, a work of biographical fiction about Amy Robsart, the heiress wife of English nobleman Robert Dudley. Amy’s shocking death and the resulting scandal – she was found with a broken neck at the bottom of a short staircase at her residence, Cumnor Place, in 1560 – put an end to his future marriage prospects with her rival for his affections, Queen Elizabeth I.
Dunn sets up interesting equivalences between her modern heroine and her 16th-century subject. Lucy is a breast cancer survivor, a disease Amy may have suffered from herself, and they were both betrayed by their husbands (Lucy’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, Ben, cheated on her with her good friend). Lucy feels these similarities give her unique insight into Amy’s mindset, though she’s self-aware enough to question how much of herself she’s putting into her depiction of Amy.
A consummate researcher dedicated to historical accuracy (in other words, she’s a writer after our own heart), Lucy insists on flying from Australia to England for a six-week trip. She knows a firsthand view of Amy’s former haunts will add color and depth to her story, and she hopes to make it easier to visualize Amy living there in her own time.
But Lucy arrives across the globe under a cloud of worry. She has a small brain tumor, meaning her cancer may have returned, and her headaches are worsening. After they learn the truth, her friends and family are distraught that Lucy’s delaying her biopsy.
Readers may find Lucy’s choice unwise at best, but she’s a determined woman. Lucy presses on with her novel regardless, perhaps sensing it may be too late if she doesn’t seize every moment to complete it. At the same time, Lucy faces memories from her own past, including that of a long-ago teenage romance, and persistent emails from her estranged husband.
The stakes are high in both accounts, as the two women strive to take control of their lives as best they're able. In recounting the parallel journeys of both Lucy and Amy, Shades of Yellow doesn’t use the story-within-a-story structure we’re most familiar with, but something more original and effective in showing how a historical novel comes to be.
The scenes involving Amy don’t always occur in chronological order but arise organically via Lucy’s writing journey and as she reads parts of her manuscript to family members, including her English grandfather, himself a writer.
We see Amy in the afterlife, speaking with her Angel, desperate for a word from her husband now that he’s also passed into the beyond. As Lucy visits Amy’s burial site, we see Amy kneeling in church, desperate and frightened, while Lucy tunes into the emotions she senses from that mental image and gains new understanding about her subject. Amy as an adolescent, during her first bloom of love with her Rob. Amy on her last day of life, sending her servants away. And in the modern strand, Lucy revises her book, pens new chapters, considers new angles, adjusts her timeline, fills in “these vast gaps of unknowing with her imagination.”
It all gets wonderfully meta. Lucy’s grandfather questions why Amy’s guardian angel needs to be included (“So, you’re certain you want to write a more experimental historical novel?”), and Lucy ponders a suggestion from her grandfather’s literary agent, who spurs her to consider adding a witchcraft thread to attract an editor. “How on Earth do I weave these witches into my story without having to pull everything apart?” she thinks.
Walking through Tudor England on two levels, both firsthand and via the stories revealed later through its artifacts, is an affecting, multi-dimensional experience. Not all answers are forthcoming, which seems appropriate for a novel presenting the ways that people come to grips with the unknown.
Shades of Yellow was published by Other Terrain Press (Australia) in September 2025.
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