The Homecoming/The Question

Christmas came early for me with excellent novels to review, including the latest volumes of Cynthia Harold-Eagles's saga the Morland Dynasty.

The Homecoming, the 24th volume of the story of a Yorkshire family, begins in 1885 with widowed Henrietta Morland free to marry a long lost love.

As marriage to a divorced man is considered shameful, the couple move to London and quickly adapt to its sights and sounds at a time of great social and industrial unrest.

They gain friendship and support from newly married Lady Venetia Fleetwood, herself a victim of prejudice as she struggled to become a doctor.

Extensively researched and full of domestic and historical details, this novel is complete in itself, but the story continues in The Question.

In this hardback novel the growing families are deeply affected by political reform, the onset of the Boer War and the Suffragette movement as Queen Victoria's reign comes to a close.

Morland Place, which has lain empty and neglected, becomes a family home once more.

As the author hopes to take the story to the present day, I hope there are many more novels as good as these to look forward to.

Margaret Malpass

Blind Jack

Alan Plowright's novel is indeed a tale of triumph over adversity.

In 1724 a son of a farm labourer suffers from an attack of smallpox and loses his sight. To a country boy only seven years old it is terrifying, but Jack is determined his handicap is not going to hinder him.

He learns to climb, swim, ride and hunt, and his first job is guiding visitors to various local landmarks.

He learns to play the fiddle, providing himself with yet another lucrative way to earn a living.

Jack's pleasant manner and handsome physique ensure his attraction to the ladies, a feature that lands him in many scrapes and eventually causes him to leave the district.

Many adventures follow, including a stay in London, a race against a stagecoach, an elopement and a spell in the army fighting Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Not just a good tale, Blind Jack's setting in the Yorkshire countryside is an added bonus.

Its excellent descriptions of familiar places and life in the 18th century add much to the dialogue.

Well worth spending your Christmas tokens on! Available from Moorfield Press at £7.50.

Beryl Simister

Nora, Nora

Peyton lives with her widowed father in the small town of Lytton, Georgia. They are looked after by a housekeeper who has a son known as Boot.

Peyton spends most of her time outside school with Boot and Ernie, who is a 34-year-old loner.

Into this quiet backwater comes a distant cousin Nora, who smokes cigarettes and drives a pink Thunderbird!

Nora shocks the town with her "unsouthern" ways, and Peyton in her early teens finds her fascinating and unsettling.

Nora seems to be a free spirit and helps Peyton grow up, but she realises the young woman is troubled about something in her past that she is running away from.

There are vivid descriptions of small town America in the 1950s and a young girl growing-up in Anne Rivers Siddons' novel.

Altogether a gentle, feelgood book.

Pam Spencer

A London Lass

Elizabeth Waite's novel, set in London's East End, is the heart-warming story of pretty young Jane Jeffrey who spends her childhood living in poverty and fear.

Jane's lovable nature has been subdued by the brutal beatings inflicted on her and her mother Alice by her father Mick.

When, after a particularly vicious attack, Alice agrees to put Jane in care, the girl feels terrified and confused, rejected and unloved.

Surrounded by those who come to know and love her, she slowly gains confidence in herself and trust in others, and understands how her mother's sacrifice gave her a brighter future.

Full of warmth and domestic detail, this romantic paperback published by Time Warner, catches the spirit of its age.

Margaret Malpass