The novel begins in 1715 England, when the main character, Barbara, a somewhat wild country teenager, marries an older, handsome Earl Devanne, in an arranged marriage. Barbara is head-over-heels in love with him and after a while, he too has fallen in love with her.

But a deep, dark secret threatens to ruin everything they built together.

Barbara who was fifteen when they married, surprises everyone with her confidence and ability to take care of the situations that come her way. She is especially close to her grandmother, Dutchess Tamworth, who is the matriarch of the family. She is also close to her brothers and sisters. Her mom and dad have always been estranged from them. Leaving them to be raised by their grandmother.

It is a coming-of-age story. Barbara is twenty-one at the book's end. In those short, six years, she goes through deaths, betrayals, economic collapse, heartbreak, and much more.

I still think about the characters days after I've read it.

Historical Fiction and Historical Romance Fans.

My childhood was filled with glorious books, Little Women, Lad A Dog, Black Beauty, Little House on the Prairie, Caddie Woodlawn. They were as real to me as the life around me, a lower middle class one in a small oil refinery town in Texas. My grandfather, an invalid, was a huge fan of the writers Frank Slaughter, Frank Yerby, and Zane Grey. By the time I learned to read, I was sneaking his square, cheap (a dime, I think) paperbacks off and reading them. Pirates. Passion. History. It has never occurred to me to write anything but historicals, a kind of time travel into other minds, other lands, other eras, other cultures, other worlds. That's what I wish for my readers, that my books take them far away into another place and time and that they enjoy themselves there and maybe even learn an interesting fact or two.

My blog: http://www.karleenkoen.wordpress.com

My website: http://www.karleenkoen.net

New York Times Best Seller
4.4 Stars
743 Pages
Published July 12,1986

338 Words

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