Romance novel set in HERTFORDSHIRE and Cricklewood
Talking Location With Barbara Stark-Nemon: Portugal, Spain, Southern France
3rd September 2025
#TalkingLocationWith ... Barbara Stark-Nemon, author of Isabela’s Way: Portugal, Spain, Southern France.
More than a decade ago, a fourteen-year-old embroideress from Portugal in the early 17th century took up residence in the deep reservoir of book ideas living in my brain. She demanded to be written about. A sense of place has always been critical to my work as a novelist. Whether I’m writing about 20th century Germany, contemporary northern Michigan, or 17th century southern Europe, I need to personally experience the sights, sounds, tastes and feel of my books’ settings. For that reason, I have traveled extensively to research my novels. For my new work, Isabela’s Way, that meant three trips to southern Europe to trace the path of my character as she escapes Inquisition-era Portugal to find her way through Spain, and France and into the safety of the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg. She embroiders along the way in secret codes on behalf of the clandestine string of safe houses that shelter refugees.
Back in 2017, I was invited by a poet friend to visit her idyllic home in the Pyrenees. It was magical, and the town became a setting for a stop on the sojourn of my main character. On that same trip, a chef friend hosted a week of cooking and biking in Macanet de Cabrenys , Spain. From there we visited Girona and Besalu, pre-Inquisition centers of Jewish scholarship and mysticism. This became the home of another major character- Isabela’s protectress, and my exploration into France as far as Carcassone acquainted me with the sights and sounds of a critical path all my characters would travel at the climax of the story.
Portuguese dish
Travel restrictions during the pandemic meant that I had only traveled to places which allowed me to write about half of my manuscript by the end of 2021. I spent the year and a half of the travel ban researching online the history and lifestyles of Europe in the 17th century. I wrote with what I had, but I was stalled.
I had previously experienced the wonder of traveling to a location and feeling the story of my work in progress open up in new ways. I wanted that feeling again. I wanted to explore local museums, eat local foods, breathe the scented air and watch the light change over landscapes.
Fortunately, in the spring of 2022 I was able to return to Europe with my husband and drove, cycled, traveled by train and walked through the rest of Isabela’s story. We began in Madrid where a tour guide refreshed our memory of the history of Jews in Spain. We spent a whole day in the Prado tracing the history of art in the 17th century.
Next, we bicycled and riverboated from Salamanca, Spain, down the Douro River in Portugal to Porto. From Portugal we traveled to France, where we stopped in Toulouse. My research into a famed Converso (secret Jew) physician and his family mansion led me to tour it, and this became an important setting for the developing plot.
As long as we were in the southern France, I wanted to see Vincent Van Gogh’s Arles. We did a detour to the Camargue, the vast wetland bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and two branches of the Rhone River. Famed for its wild white horses, wide variety of birds and many ancient stories, in the space of our beautiful afternoon there, it became the setting for a critical part of Isabela’s Way.
Portuguese olive grove
From Arles we traveled to Lyon on the recommendation of a friend who had learned of the city’s history as a textile center. I was particularly intrigued by the traboules, or secret passageways, originally used to conduct water, but later to transport silks and other goods to and from the river. Our explorations in Lyon revealed these astonishing pathways to be perfect for hiding my characters and assisting in their escape from danger.
As a bonus, our tour guide knew of an active weaver with looms and techniques hundreds of years old. We visited the shop and that became another important location at a critical plot point.
Weave shop Lyon
The tastes of local food, the artwork and exhibits of medical devices and herbal remedies from the 17th century, the glorious gardens and farmland, and the Mediterranean light all enlivened and provided the magic that my characters deserved and that allowed me to finish writing Isabela’s Way.
Barbara Stark-Nemon
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