The Maternal Element by Kate Nicholls

The Maternal Element by Kate Nicholls

Siberia 1833.

Forty-one-year-old Maria Mendeleeva is enduring her seventeenth pregnancy. Her husband Ivan has lost his sight, and her brother Vasily has left their grandfather’s glass factory in ruins. The factory Maria hungered for as a child. On the brink of poverty and her family’s only remaining hope, Maria must find a way to make the factory viable. She must find the power to bring her grandfather's dreams back to life. She must make the glass sing.

The Maternal Element is a sweeping, gripping epic with an extraordinary woman at its heart. Maria Mendeleeva – mother of Dmitri Mendeleev, who devised the Periodic Table of the Elements – is a heroine like no other. A woman who refuses to be quashed by circumstance, Maria fights against the strictures of her time to gain an education for herself and for her children as she traverses the Urals of Russia seeking opportunity and safety for her family. A vivid and visceral portrait of a woman history has long since forgotten, The Maternal Element is a manifesto for truth, female empowerment and defying societal expectations.

Kate Nicholls was born in the UK in 1954. Raised in a theatrical family, she had a successful acting career but gave it up to study evolutionary biology. She raised and homeschooled her five children while researching lions in the Okavango Delta. A passionate believer in liberal arts education she founded a homeschool company in 2011. She lives happily in Rome where she studies, teaches and writes overlooking the Tiber. She is the author of Under the Camelthorn Tree (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2019).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781784633998
ISBN 10	1784633992
Title	The Maternal Element
Author	Kate Nicholls
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Salt Publishing
Year published	2026-06-15
Number of pages	400
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.