The Cherished Wives
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
In four absorbing volumes, Valerie Anand has traced the Whitmead family from before the time of the Magna Carta through the Restoration to the early 1700s. Now, with The Cherished Wives, Anand turns to a more modern heroine in Lucy-Anne Whitmead, a late eighteenth-century bride.
Lucy-Anne's parents have arranged for her to marry a distant cousin, George Whitmead, a merchant with the East India Company and a man she hardly knows. Lucy-Anne’s great aunt Henrietta offers the anxious young bride a wedding gift far different from the usual trinkets or linens: "I wish you well, my dear, and I wish you power and freedom too; more of them than I have ever had."
Henrietta's words echo in Lucy-Anne's mind long after the novelty of becoming a wife and mistress of a Surrey estate has faded. It is that memory of Henrietta's faith in her—along with a more practical gift Henrietta makes in her will—that sustains Lucy-Anne through hard times as a wife, mother, and grandmother.
With characteristic authenticity and passion, Anand creates a moving portrait of a woman to be cherished and a time to be remembered.
The Cherished Wives follows The Faithful Lovers in her Bridges Over Time series.
“Valerie Anand has been building a remarkable body of work, a series of
historical novels that have recreated England’s history both accurately and vividly.” —The Anniston Star
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
English novelist Anand's ironically titled fifth entry (after The Faithful Lovers) in her Bridges Over Time series features sensitive, free-spirited women who rebel, outwardly or inwardly, against selfish, chauvinistic husbands, lovers and fathers. The action is set in England and India between 1740 and 1801. In 1742, Lucy-Anne Browne marries her self-important, dictatorial second cousin, George Whitmead, who is absent for years at a stretch as a merchant of the British East India Company. After becoming pregnant during her secret affair with down-to-earth bailiff Stephen Clarke, Lucy-Anne clandestinely gives birth to a baby, Hugo, who is adopted by a clergyman and his wife on the condition that she promptly end the liaison. Two decades later, her legitimate son, Henry, a wealthy, exploitative landlord and coach-builder, weds Emma Kendall, who seethes at being ``to Henry, little more than a human pisspot.'' Meanwhile, George, returning from India for keeps, suffers fits of insanity during which he mistakes Emma for his secret Indian mistress. To cap the melodrama, Emma dies giving birth to her third child, Sophia, who will rebel against her father by eloping with one of his tenants. Keenly observant of her characters' foibles and strengths, Anand combines authentic period detail with deft plotting, blending in historical figures such as astronomer William Herschel and Robert Clive, ambitious colonizer of India. Her turbulent, ongoing saga remains a delight.
