Saturday, January 15, 2011

Mine Is The Night-Liz Curtiss Higgs

Mine Is The Night
Liz Curtiss Higgs
WaterBrook, Mar 15 2011, $14.99
ISBN: 9781400070022

In 1746 those who supported Prince Charles’ claim to the throne during the failed Jacobite Rebellion are paying the price. Widow Marjorie Kerr saw her two sons Donald and Andrew die at Falkirk and her family’s title stripped for supporting Charles. She and one of her widowed daughter-in-laws Elisabeth head to Selkirk where her cousin Anne lives in meager conditions.

Marjory knows she is a charity case imposing on a poor relative she ignored for a decade. Ann, who earns her living as a lace-maker, allows them shelter. Elisabeth is unafraid of hard work as she is talented with a needle. She obtains work sewing shirts for Widower single father Michael Dalgiesh’s haberdashery. Marjory becomes the cook for her cousin and her daughter-in-law. She also fears for the life of her butler Gibson who should have been here before then, but has failed to arrive. Meanwhile wealthy hero Lord Jack Buchanan is expected shortly and his arrival could prove disastrous to widows of traitors.

This is an entertaining eighteenth century Christian romance starring three Kerr females struggling to survive in a world turned upside down by the late men in their lives. Elisabeth and Marjory turn to the Lord for guidance when things look dire and gloomy. Although the story line is straightforward with no surprises from start to finish, ending the way the audience expects, the strong surviving women and the solid support cast make for a fine historical (see Here Burns My Candle for the previous Kerr saga).

Harriet Klausner

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