It’s the eve of the American Civil War, there’s unrest in Ireland as the people cope with yet another famine, and Edward, Baron de Salis has fallen in love with a girl young enough to be his daughter. We see his ineffectual attempts to be a good father and a good landlord at his various estates, his uncertainties about his life, his attempts to find personal happiness as the world changes around him in ways he can’t quite grasp — and then the point of view changes and we see the events through the eyes of his young wife.
Each new narrator show us a bit of the story we’ve seen before from a completely different viewpoint, and then carries the story on to a new point of crisis before handing the story off to another character. Through the multiple points of view, across three generations and a background of tumultuous world events, we fully see the story of a family troubled by scandal and horror yet drawn together by love.
Best-selling author Susan Howatch often takes the inspiration for her stories from historical events, both in setting her books during wars and famines, and in looking to history for plot elements. This book takes events from the lives of the Plantagenet kings of England and reinterprets them in a new setting with complex and believable characters.
The writing is beautiful and the story is compelling and disturbing. Perhaps not for the mother-daughter book club, but a first class novel .