The Sea Scape - Softcover

Another Cornish comfit by the author of the Tregaran books (The Legacy of Tregaran, 1991, etc.), but this time stuffed with an awfully familiar filling. There's this beautiful bastard girl, Guinevere Ellis, living with her mam who serves as housekeeper (among other things) for a crude Bodmin Moor farmer. In between stints of grueling work in the fields, Guinevere roams the moors, teaches herself to read, and falls for sensitive young Julian Polleven, scion of the family that runs things in the coastal town of St. Marvell. He vows undying love, then disappears to fight the Boers, leaving Guinevere pregnant. So she deserts the farm, and in St. Marvell meets her surprise half-brother, a fisherman, then goes to work processing fish. Her baby, Lily, is born about the time she learns that Julian has died, and things get worse when Julian's awful father threatens to take Lily away from her. To safeguard the baby, Guinevere agrees to marry a nice fisherman named Jeb. But then Julian limps back from South Africa to intercede before things go all amok, and to further smooth the way, Jeb dies in a storm at sea. The story's a clich‚ on which all the Cornish atmosphere is wasted. Lide at low tide. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Love once again conquers all, including class differences, in Lide's ( The Legacy of Tregaran ) appealing romance set in 19th-century Cornwall. Feisty Guinevere Ellis, known as Jenny, lives with her scheming mother, the maid of all work at run-down Penwith Farm. By chance, she mets and falls in love with Julian Polleven, a gentle aristocrat. But their love, naturally, is destined to follow a hard course. Julian must leave on a military assignment, and Jenny flees the farm and Farmer Penwith's lecherous grasp. For the next few years, life proves cruel at times but more often rewarding, as Jenny meets the brother she never knew she had, bears Julian's child and forms friendships with the gruff but kind residents of a Cornish fishing village. When Julian is presumed dead and his father threatens to take her daughter from her, Jenny learns the value of compromise. Although Jenny's reflections on past events distance the reader and Lide's attempt to capture the Cornish dialect is frustrating, this tale of love, longing and desperate struggle works its sure charms.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.