The Jessica Letters sounded as if it ought to be a good book: a young woman from Georgia starts writing book reviews for a paper in New York. After traveling to the city and meeting the paper’s editor, they begin to correspond, and eventually fall in love. Conceptually, there’s nothing wrong with it. In practice, it’s pretty awful.

Philip, the editor, is smug and condescending and talks a lot about how man has a dual nature and woman a single one. Jessica is arch and stereotypically feminine, and the authors have tried to make her at once intellectual and an angel in the house type, and it doesn’t really work. And then there’s a whole melodramatic thing with Jessica’s father not allowing her to correspond with Philip, which mostly serves to show us that he’s even more self-involved that he originally appeared.

And you know the bit at the end of Jane Eyre where Jane and Rochester apparently communicate telepathically? There’s a thing like that in The Jessica Letters, too, only more so.

I think I might have found it all very interesting on some level if I hadn’t been so busy cringing.

At least it was short.

After reading The Middle Temple Murder, I downloaded another J.S. Fletcher book: The Talleyrand Maxim (is this where Robert Ludlum got his book-naming scheme? There’s another one called The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation. I think I’m saving it for last.)

I started The Tallyrand Maxim, decided it wasn’t remotely like The Middle Temple Murder, realized that stories about blackmail tend to make me really uncomfortable, and abandoned it for a Joe Muller mystery.

Then I picked it up again, and immediately became completely absorbed.

So, it really isn’t much like The Middle Temple Murder, except in a general stylistic sense. It’s actually barely even a mystery.

The Talleyrand Maxim takes place in the town of Barford, two years after the accidental death of manufacturer John Mallathorpe. Mallathorpe is supposed to have died intestate, so his property was split between his brother’s children, Harper and Nesta Mallathorpe, who have now moved into his house at Normandale Grange, along with their mother. The book begins when Linford Pratt, head clerk in a local solicitor’s office, gets hold of Mallathorpe’s will, which does not leave the money to the niece and the nephew, and uses it to blackmail Mrs. Mallathorpe.

You see the beginning of the blackmailing scheme from Pratt’s point of view, and throughout the book you almost always know what’s going on, but it’s still exciting, partly because all the points of view are handled thoughtfully, and partly because things keep happening. I was rarely confused about the things that had already happened, but I was almost always surprised by the new developments.

It’s not a perfect book, by a long shot. Most of the characters are a bit on the cardboard side, and Pratt, the most complex of them, isn’t the most consistent villain ever–he alternately relies on other peoples’ self-interest and fails to realize that accomplices might have their own agendas — but it’s exciting and well constructed. In some ways I didn’t like it as much as The Middle Temple Murder, but I think it might be a better book.

There are, apparently, three books of stories about Emma McChesney, a travelling saleswoman, but I wish there were more. They’re by Edna Ferber, and they are…kind of fantastic, actually. I was skeptical, and I shouldn’t have been.

Emma McChesney is in her mid thirties, but looks younger. She has a teenage son named Jock, who has both faults and flashes of brilliance. She travels for the T.A. Buck Featherloom Skirt Company, and she is almost, but not quite, too good to be true.

The stories all show Emma McChesney in pretty much the same light — full of common sense, but not above feeling foolish sometimes. She has a knack for business only equaled by her knack for dealing with people. She’s awesome, and everyone knows it. If they don’t, they learn pretty quickly.

Something else I really like: Emma McChesney ages, and her life changes a lot over the three books. Ferber tells us Emma’s and Jock’s ages at intervals, and Emma’s hard work and experience help her to advance in the T.A. Buck Company, and even when she gets as high as she can go, she doesn’t stop working and innovating. And nothing comes too easily, which makes the nice things that do happen all the nicer. Emma McChesney isn’t perfect, but she’s one of the best female role models I’ve ever come across.

In Roast Beef, Medium, Emma McChesney travels for T.A. Buck, takes some time out to keep her son on the right track, and gets a new job.

In Personality Plus, Jock McChesney finds his share of success, and is sometimes almost as cool as his mother.

In Emma McChesney and Co., Emma gets what, in any other book, would be considered a happy ending, just — well before the middle of the book.

So, once upon a time there was this French melodrama called Les deux orphelines. It got made into movies a few times in the 1910s. Then, around 1920, D.W. Griffith was looking for a story to make into his next movie. He’d just had a big success with a beefed-up melodrama, Way Down East, so he decided to use Les deux orphelines and stick it in the middle of the French Revolution. He changed the name to Orphans of the Storm, got Lillian Gish to be in it, and filmed the whole thing in Westchester County. And it was awesome, in spite, or perhaps because, of the frequent references to Bolshevism in the intertitles.

I watched Orphans of the Storm last week on a college TV station, so when the movie ended there were a couple of guys talking about the movie, which is where I came up with the bit about Westchester. They seemed to be more interested in talking about how Griffith’s place in Mamaroneck was called Satan’s Toe than the movie itself. Anyway, this morning I checked Project Gutenberg’s New eBooks feed and found that they’d uploaded the novelization of the movie, also called Orphans of the Storm and full of pictures from the movie. I have not read it yet, and I’m not sure when I’ll get around to it, but I thought it was a very nifty thing and I wanted to share it.

I decided this morning that I wanted to make a list of ten books I’ve covered in this blog that I would wholeheartedly recommend. Not my favorites, because there are a lot of books — Tracy Park, for one — that I love too much to be able to think about them objectively. I’m not totally sure I’m looking at these objectively, but I do think they’re good, and I can’t see any reason why people shouldn’t still be reading them. I’m a little bit sad that I was only able to come up with six, though. Keep in mind that my standards, as usual, are incredibly inconsistent.

1. A Woman Named Smith. Obviously. This is the book that made me start this blog. It’s just…fun, and occasionally touching, and full of reasons not to be forgotten. And my appreciation of Sophy Smith increases every time I reread it.
2. The Indiscreet Letter. Go ahead and read it. It’s short. It won’t take long. It’s hard to say what makes this one such a favorite of mine, but I think it’s the idea of all these strangers on trains being incredibly honest with each other, and connecting across class boundaries and social convention.
3. The Wide, Wide World. I honestly don’t understand why this book isn’t considered a classic. Okay, so there’s a lot of semi-distasteful religious stuff, but people should either deal with it or look past it, because this is such a foundational piece of American literature, and kind of a good read, too.
4. Keineth. It wonderful to see a book for kids that’s neither condescending or too insistent on growing up. There’s nothing very unusual about this story, except its charm and its sense of freshness in the face of clichés.
5. Somehow Good. It’s so deeply involved in it’s own historical moment that I sort of understand why no one reads William De Morgan anymore. But it’s also really good. And it’s so rare to find an author who can make a silly and melodramatic storyline so convincingly low-key.
6. The Riddle of the Sands. I’m reluctant to put this here just because I read it so recently and haven’t really had time to let it sink in, and also because it’s a little less forgotten than the others, but I was so impressed by it. It’s apparently the first ever thriller, and — well, it’s kind of thrilling.

I’m having trouble putting into words how much I liked When A Man Marries. The is the second Mary Roberts Rinehart book I’ve read, and it’s not much like Dangerous Days. For one thing, nothing particularly tragic happens. For another, it’s mostly pretty funny (I suspect these two things are related). Also, it’s a mystery novel. And at first, I thought  a lot about those differences, but then it occurred to me that the things that make the two books similar–good writing, for example–are at least as important. After that, I got really absorbed, and mostly stopped thinking about anything that wasn’t actually happening in the book for a while.

Kit McNair is the narrator, so we learn a lot about her personality, but very little about her life. Her mother is in Bermuda and her father is out west on business, but she doesn’t seem to have a chaperone. She’s recieved quite a few proposals of marriage, most of which seem to have come from two men.

The first of these is Jimmy Wilson, and he stopped proposing to Kit when he fell in love with Bella Knowles, a classmate of Kit’s from boarding school. Jimmy and Bella got married, but he drove her nuts, so they ended up getting a divorce.

The book opens on the anniversary of theat divorce. Jimmy is moping, so Kit decides to host a dinner at his house to cheer him up. She asks Max Reed, the other frequent proposer; the Mercer girls, Betty and Leila; and Dallas and Ann Brown, a married couple. The Browns bring along their friend Tom Harbison, an engineer visiting from Chile. It’s only after they all get there that the complications begin. First, Jimmy gets a telegram saying that his Aunt Selina is coming to visit. She disapproves intensely of divorce, and she’s sort of responsible for Jimmy’s financial well-being, so Jimmy’s kind of terrified, and he and the Dallas Browns come up with the idea of having Kit pretend to be Bella. She takes a lot of convincing, but eventually she agrees.

Then:

• Harbison, the only person besides Aunt Selina who isn’t in on the masquerade, falls in love with Kit;
• Takahiro, the Japanese butler, becomes ill an has to be taken to the hospital;
• Bella sneaks in through the basement;
• Takahiro turns out to have smallpox, and the house is quarantined;
• Ann Brown’s pearl necklace is stolen; and
• A policeman is found in the basement.

It’s all very exciting, and there’s enough going on that it’s hard to sort out which incident belongs to which subplot (which is a good thing). I was a little disappointed by the ending, but the rest of the book makes up for it. And I loved Kit’s narration, which takes place at some point in the future. She’s constantly saying things like, “we later found out — but I’m getting ahead of myself,” which I normally find really frustrating, but in this case makes a lot of sense for Kit as a character.

The characters in general are a strong point. Each of them has his or her own personality, and their relationships with each other are, for the most part, funny and believable. I’m probably going to be reading a lot more Rinehart books in the future.

The Middle Temple Murder, by J.S. Fletcher, is another bestselling mystery novel, this time from 1912. Apparently Woodrow Wilson was among its fans. And although there are some iffy bits–there’s something amusingly unlikely about the beginning, and one too many coincidences at the end, I think it deserves fans.

The main character, Frank Spargo, is a journalist, a sub-editor on a paper called The Watchman. Strolling home from work in the small hours of the morning, one of the policeman he always says hi to as he passes by is like, “Hey, check it out! We found a body; come see!” The policeman then invites Spargo to accompany the body to the morgue. Eventually an actual detective shows up, and invites Spargo to investigate the crime with him. It’s kind of bizarre. Throughout the book, everyone is incredibly helpful to Spargo. Witnesses show up out of nowhere to provide him with information. His boss allows him to lavish money on the case. The only people who aren’t helpful are the people directly involved with the crime. Sort of.

Really, though, it’s pretty good. There’s a lot of investigating, and a lot of different witnesses who don’t have anything to do with each other, which is always nice, because it gives an illusion of realism. Spargo’s visit to a club off Fleet Street is a high point, as is his trip to a town called Market Milcaster, long past its glory days as the home of an important race meeting.

It’s not a brilliant book, but it’s well-plotted and well-written, and there’s at least one genuinely surprising twist, and the exciting conclusion is actually a bit exciting. The Middle Temple Murder was more than sufficient to get rid of the bad taste The Mystery of a Hansom Cab left in my mouth.

Fergus Hume’s Mystery of a Hansom Cab was hugely popular in, like, 1887, but I’m not quite sure why. I mean, I didn’t figure out who the murderer was, sure, but I felt like Hume’s attempts at misdirection were more important to him than the integrity of the plot. Trying to figure out the solution isn’t a huge part of reading mystery novels, for me, but I like to at least have the option, and I think lying to the reader is the ultimate sin a mystery writer can commit.

Also, the crime wasn’t that exciting.

The book takes place in Melbourne, and the obvious local knowledge Hume brings to the book is one of the best things about it. Most of the main characters are originally English, including the murder victim, a Mr. Oliver Whyte. He gets into a cab one night, very  drunk and accompanied by a friend. The friend leaves the cab en route, and when the cabman tries to wake up Whyte to ask his address, he finds that Whyte has been poisoned with chloroform.

People keep making a huge deal out of this, acting as if it’s the most horrific crime ever committed in Australia. Maybe it’s because it isn’t 1887 anymore and I’m jaded, but poisoning someone with an overdose of something that knocks them out isn’t all that brutal, as murders go, and when you know everything about the commission of the crime except for the identity of the murderer, it’s not all that mysterious either.

The mystery turns on the fact that most of the men in the story wear light-colored coats over their evening dress and have blond moustaches. One of the young men, Brian Fitzgerald, admits to picking Whyte up off the street, hailing the cab, and leaving, but insists that it was someone else who got into the cab with Whyte and, obviously, poisoned him. Fitzgerald is arrested, because although he has a perfectly good alibi, he refuses to tell anyone what it is, although we soon find out that it involves some secret that would hurt his fiancée, Madge Frettlby.

There’s a lot of predictable stuff about secret marriages and illegitimate children, along with a few real surprises and a lot of borderline dishonest narration. The bit that made me really angry — and there’s a spoiler coming up here, if anyone cares — is when Madge’s father, Mark Frettlby, hears the name ‘Rosanna Moore’ and is visibly startled. Brian Fitzgerald wonders to himself why hearing that name should disturb Mr. Frettlby, even though he must already know that Mr. Frettlby and Rosanna Moore were secretly married before Frettlby married Madge’s mother. Is this as big a deal as I’m making it out to be? I can’t really tell if I’m overreacting or not. One thing I do know: ‘Frettlby’ is a really entertaining name.

Next up: The Middle Temple Murder, a bestseller from 1912 that I really liked.

I’ve spent some time lately looking at lists of bestsellers from the early twentieth century. I probably won’t ever read all of these books, but the list seems like a good source of recommendations. And Project Gutenberg, as it turns out, has the list handily formatted with links to the available etexts. So here’s that, with the non-fiction sections deleted and maybe a little bit of commentary.

1900

1. To Have and To Hold , Mary Johnston
2. Red Pottage Mary Cholmondeley
3. Unleavened Bread Robert Grant
4. The Reign of Law James Lane Allen
5. Eben Holden Irving Bacheller
6. Janice Meredith Paul Leicester Ford
7. The Redemption of David Corson Charles Frederic Goss
8. Richard Carvel Winston Churchill
9. When Knighthood Was in Flower Charles Major
10. Alice of Old Vincennes Maurice Thompson

1901

1. The Crisis Winston Churchill.
2. Alice of Old Vincennes Maurice Thompson
3. The Helmet of Navarre Bertha Runkle
4. The Right of Way Gilbert Parker.
5. Eben Holden Irving Bacheller
6. The Visits of Elizabeth Elinor Glyn  I’ve read this…probably about three times, I think, although I usually skim the bit in France. Elinor Glyn was really funny, and people shouldn’t forget that.
7. The Puppet Crown Harold MacGrath
8. Richard Yea-and-Nay Maurice Hewlett I really liked The Little Iliad, so I’ll probably give this a try.
9. Graustark George Barr McCutcheon This should have been awesome, but instead it was really disappointing. Grenfall Lorry is no Rudolf Rassendyll.
   
10. D’ri and I Irving Bacheller

1902

1. The Virginian Owen Wister
2. Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch Alice Caldwell Hegan I’ve taken a look at this book a few times. I don’t think I particularly want to read it.
   
3. Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall Charles Major
4. The Mississippi Bubble Emerson Hough
5. Audrey Mary Johnston
6. The Right of Way Gilbert Parker
7. Project Gutenberg has 2 etexts for this:
   • The Hound of the Baskervilles A. Conan Doyle
   • The Hound of the Baskervilles A. Conan Doyle  Of course I’ve read this one. I’m not sure how many times. Lots. I even quoted it from memory in the final for my tenth grade English class, which was probably not a great move. In the following year’s final, I think I referenced Five Little Peppers Abroad, so…Yeah. That was worse.
8. The Two Vanrevels Booth Tarkington
9. The Blue Flower Henry van Dyke
10. Sir Richard Calmady Lucas Malet

1903

1. Lady Rose’s Daughter Mrs. Humphrey Ward (Mary Augusta Ward?)
2. Gordon Keith Thomas Nelson Page
3. The Pit Frank Norris
4. Lovey Mary Alice Hegan Rice
5. The Virginian Owen Wister
6. Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch Alice Hegan Rice
7. The Mettle of the Pasture James Lane Allen
8. Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son George Horace Lorimer
9. The One Woman Thomas Dixon Jr.
10. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come John Fox Jr.

1904

1. The Crossing Winston Churchill  I kind of love that Winston Churchill used to be a fixture on the bestseller lists.
2. The Deliverance Ellen Glasgow
3. The Masquerader Katherine Cecil Thurston
4. In The Bishop’s Carriage Miriam Michelson Oh, I love this book. Authors used to use “stout” to describe people who are supposed to be attractive all the time, but this was the only book in which I ever found it convincing.
5. Sir Mortimer Mary Johnston
6. Beverly of Graustark George Barr McCutcheon Yeah, I think we all know I’m not going to read this one.
7. The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come John Fox Jr.
8. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Kate Douglas Wiggin I would be pretty ashamed of myself if I’d never read this one.
9. My Friend Prospero Henry Harland
10. The Silent Places Stewart Edward White

1905

1. The Marriage of William Ashe Mary Augusta Ward
2. Sandy Alice Hegan Rice
3. The Garden of Allah Robert Hichens
4. The Clansman Thomas Dixon Jr.  This is sort of peripherally on my reading list, in that it’s part of the trilogy that starts with The Leopard’s Spots, which is the book that The Birth of a Nation was based on. And I’ve been meaning to read that for a couple of years now.
5. Nedra George Barr McCutcheon From here on, lets assume that anything by George Barr McCutcheon is not on the reading list.
   
6. The Gambler (not available) Katherine Cecil Thurston
7. The Masquerader anonymous (Katherine Cecil Thurston)
8. The House of Mirth Edith Wharton I found this book totally infuriating when I read it in high school. Everyone is so fickle.
9. The Princess Passes C. N. and A. M. Williamson I am sure I will eventually read this, since I’m by way of being a fan of the Williamsons.
10. Rose o’ the River Kate Douglas Wiggin

1906

1. Coniston Winston Churchill
2. Lady Baltimore Owen Wister
3. The Fighting Chance Robert W. Chambers
4. The House of a Thousand Candles Meredith Nicholson
5. Jane Cable George Barr McCutcheon
6. The Jungle Upton Sinclair  I’ve read excerpts from this, in middle school, I think. We read the description of the sausage factory and then went to the cafeteria for lunch and found that they were serving sausages that day.
7. The Awakening of Helena Richie Margaret Deland
8. The Spoilers Rex Beach
9. The House of Mirth Edith Wharton Die, Lily Bart!
10. The Wheel of Life Ellen Glasgow

1907

1. The Lady of the Decoration Frances Little
2. The Weavers Gilbert Parker
3. The Port of Missing Men Meredith Nicholson
4. The Shuttle Frances Hodgson Burnett
5. The Brass Bowl Louis J. Vance
6. Satan Sanderson (not available) Hallie Erminie Rives That is an extremely intriguing title.
7. The Daughter of Anderson Crow George Barr McCutcheon
8. The Younger Set Robert W. Chambers
9. The Doctor Ralph Connor
10. Half a Rogue Harold MacGrath

1908

Fiction

1. Mr. Crewe’s Career Winston Churchill
2. The Barrier Rex Beach
3. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine John Fox Jr.
4. The Lure of the Mask Harold MacGrath
5. The Shuttle Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. Peter F. Hopkinson Smith
7. Lewis Rand Mary Johnston
8. The Black Bag Louis J. Vance
9. The Man from Brodney’s George Barr McCutcheon
10. The Weavers Gilbert Parker

1909

1. The Inner Shrine Basil King
2. Katrine Elinor Macartney Lane
3. The Silver Horde Rex Beach
4. The Man in Lower Ten Mary Roberts Rinehart
5. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine John Fox Jr.
6. Truxton King George Barr McCutcheon
7. 54-40 or Fight Emerson Hough
8. The Goose Girl Harold MacGrath
9. Peter F. Hopkinson Smith
10. Septimus William J. Locke

1910

1. The Rosary Florence Barclay
2. A Modern Chronicle Winston Churchill
3. The Wild Olive Basil King
4. Max Katherine Cecil Thurston
5. The Kingdom of Slender Swords (not available) Hallie Erminie Rives
6. Simon the Jester William J. Locke
7. Lord Loveland Discovers America (not available) C. N. and A. M. Williamson
8. The Window at the White Cat (not available) Mary Roberts Rinehart
9. Molly Make-Believe Eleanor Abbott
10. When a Man Marries Mary Roberts Rinehart

1911

1. The Broad Highway Jeffrey Farnol I recently read a book by Farnol — The Money Moon — and liked it. I expect this is one of his historical romances.
2. The Prodigal Judge Vaughan Kester
3. The Winning of Barbara Worth Harold Bell Wright
4. Queed Henry Sydnor Harrison
5. The Harvester Gene Stratton Porter
6. The Iron Woman Margaret Deland
7. The Long Roll Mary Johnston
8. Molly Make-Believe Eleanor Abbott  I don’t know why I feel so pleased to see Eleanor Hallowell Abbott among the bestsellers. I mean, this was almost a hundred years ago. But I sort of feel like I’m rooting for her. And I do like the book.
9. The Rosary Florence Barclay
10. The Common Law Robert W. Chambers

1912

1. The Harvester Gene Stratton Porter
2. The Street Called Straight Basil King
3. Their Yesterdays Harold Bell Wright
4. The Melting of Molly Maria Thompson Daviess and another edition
5. A Hoosier Chronicle Meredith Nicholson
6. The Winning of Barbara Worth Harold Bell Wright
7. The Just and the Unjust Vaughan Kester
8. The Net Rex Beach
9. Tante (not available) Anne Douglas Sedgwick
10. Fran J. Breckenridge Ellis

1913

1. The Inside of the Cup Winston Churchill
2. V. V.’s Eyes Henry Sydnor Harrison
3. Laddie Gene Stratton Porter
4. The Judgment House Sir Gilbert Parker
5. Heart of the Hills John Fox Jr.
6. The Amateur Gentleman Jeffrey Farnol
7. The Woman Thou Gavest Me Hall Caine
8. Pollyanna Eleanor H. Porter Far more awesome than people give it credit for being.
9. The Valiants of Virginia (not available) Hallie Erminie Rives Who is this woman, and what does Project Gutenberg have against her?
10. T. Tembarom Frances Hodgson Burnett

1914

1. The Eyes of the World Harold Bell Wright I actually own a copy of this, but I’ve  not yet read it. It does have a nice frontispiece, if I recall correctly.
2. Pollyanna Eleanor H. Porter
3. The Inside of the Cup Winston Churchill
4. The Salamander (not available) Owen Johnson
5. The Fortunate Youth William J. Locke
6. T. Tembarom Frances Hodgson Burnett
7. Penrod Booth Tarkington I’m honestly not exactly sure if I’ve read this. Probably I should make sure.
8. Diane of the Green Van Leona Dalrymple
9. The Devil’s Garden W. B. Maxwell
10. The Prince of Graustark George Barr McCutcheon

1915

1. The Turmoil Booth Tarkington
2. A Far Country Winston Churchill
3. Michael O’Halloran Gene Stratton Porter
4. Pollyanna Grows Up Eleanor H. Porter  I really liked this sequel, and for that reason it brings up bitter memories of Miss Billy.
5. K Mary Roberts Rinehart
6. Jaffery William J. Locke
7. Felix O’Day F. Hopkinson Smith
8. The Harbor (not available) Ernest Poole
9. The Lone Star Ranger Zane Grey
10. Angela’s Business (not available) Henry Sydnor Harrison

1916

1. Seventeen Booth Tarkington
2. When a Man’s a Man Harold Bell Wright
3. Just David Eleanor H. Porter  Read it. Nice, but kind of generic.
4. Mr. Britling Sees It Through H. G. Wells
5. Life and Gabriella Ellen Glasgow
6. The Real Adventure Henry Kitchell Webster
7. The Bars of Iron Ethel M. Dell
8. Nan of Music Mountain (not available) Frank H. Spearman
9. Dear Enemy Jean Webster I love this book, but I cringe when I think about it being really popular in 1916 and loads of people giving credence to the crackpot eugenics stuff.
10. The Heart of Rachael Kathleen Norris

1917

1. Mr. Britling Sees It Through H. G. Wells
2. The Light in the Clearing Irving Bacheller
3. The Red Planet William J. Locke
4. The Road to Understanding (not available) Eleanor H. Porter
5. Wildfire Zane Grey
6. Christine Alice Cholmondeley
7. In the Wilderness Robert S. Hichens
8. His Family Ernest Poole
9. The Definite Object Jeffrey Farnol
10. The Hundredth Chance (not available) Ethel M. Dell

Objectively, I’m pretty sure that Her Kingdom, by Amy Le Feuvre, is a terrible book.But it’s also old and fat and printed on thick, soft paper, and really nice to curl up on the couch with when the weather is beginning to get cool.

Anstice Barrett’s father has just, leaving her almost penniless. She goes to her elderly cousin Lucy for advice, and Lucy tells her to marry Justin Holme, who is a bitter widower with three uncontrollable children. This is a totally ridiculous idea, made more so by the fact that Justin is only home about two months out of each year, that his house is in a very rural area, and also that Justin hates women. It’s so ridiculous that the only reason Amy Le Feuvre can come up with to have Anstice accept the offer is to that she’s haunted by a dream of drowning children. Or something.

Anstice’s cheery personality and good sense make a strong impression on the Holme children (the boy, Ruffie is about eight. The girls, Josie and Georgie, are a bit older, although their father does not actually remember their ages.) as well as everyone else in the neighborhood. She also finds God, in a segment that makes very little sense to me, but which I find really interesting. I was going to try and describe it, but I couldn’t make the description not sound offensive, so I gave up.

Eventually, of course, she and Justin fall in love, and it’s all very nice and predictable. It’s weird, but the only good thing I can find to say about this book is that I really enjoy reading it every time. Huh.

Also, I love the name ‘Anstice’.