Pomp and Circumstance - Hardcover

One of Stewart's (Ellis Island, 1982; The Glitter and the Gold, 1989) most knock-kneed and sway-backed entries in the supermarket-checkout paperback-rack stakes. This whopper takes place in England, America, and India in the mid-19th century and involves lifetime lovers, murders, plots, atrocities, and love and sex all around. A jumble of old pulp clich‚s. Adam Thorne and Lizzie Desmond vow as children to be faithful- -but then, later, impoverished Adam finds he's suddenly an earl, part Indian (one-eighth, to be exact), and, further, that he's expected to return the Idol's Eye (a pink diamond) to a Hindu temple. Dark deeds and derring-do ensue. In the meantime, Lizzie has inadvertently killed her horrid father in self-defense. She'll marry a sadistic Virginian, go to America, oppose slavery, and rescue the son of a slave who sacrificially kills her husband. Then it's extradition for Lizzie. She's sentenced to be hanged...but, well, Lizzie will marry twice again, and Adam will marry handsome Sybil (who, like Adam, has produced a child through adultery). Adam, now in the House of Lords, accomplishes Good Works--both during the day and slithering around at night in disguise--while both Lizzie and Adam are the targets of villains: a southern senator and a factory-owning kin-by-marriage. Lots of violence (particularly on the plantation), a kidnapping, while those High Up take an interest: the Queen, Disraeli, even the US greed-boss Jim Fisk. Salable and cheerfully awful. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Stewart ( The Glitter and the Gold ) here serves up another high-spirited tale. Sweeping in its scope, if lacking somewhat in depth, the adventure follows its main characters through a host of dramatic settings. In mid-Victorian England, 18-year-old Adam Thorne and Lizzie Desmond are passionately in love and plan to marry until destiny separates them: Adam unexpectedly inherits an earldom; Lizzie accidentally kills her father and is forced to flee. Lizzie is launched on an odyssey through Paris and the court of Napoleon III; to Civil War Virginia, where she succeeds in freeing the slaves of her ogreish planter husband; back to England; and, finally, to the New York of the robber barons. Adam, meanwhile, sets out for India where he becomes a hero in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, returns to England to a marriage of convenience, and launches a daring career as a Tory politician. But the two never forget each other, and their undying love is the tentpole around which Stewart hangs a fast-paced, colorful plot replete with historical detail. Although the dialogue is sometimes anachronistic and Stewart's use of stereotypical dialect for the black characters seems gratuitous, overall this is an entertaining read in the freewheeling, romantic tradition.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.