by Jill Marie Landis.
Ballantine hardback, 367 pages. 2002.
1866. Kentucky.
Sara Collier had had only one day of wedded bliss before her husband, Dru Talbot, leaves to fight in the Civil War. He is a doctor. Both are young, but she is very young. He comes from a good and wealthy family. She comes from poor, uneducated people with no money. As he goes off to war, Sara stays with his sister, Louzanna, who has always been fragile and never recovered from her fiancé’s death. She hasn’t been outdoors since that time. They are left behind well-cared for financially and with the freed slave, Jamie, to care for them.
But the war is long and circumstances change. It was a time after being told her husband had died that Sara runs off with a Yankee soldier. When he deserts her, she is left with a child and no money. She manages to make her way back again, only to have her father hit her and turn her away. Louzanne takes she and her two-year-old daughter in.
Then Dru, the supposedly dead husband and brother, returns.
Excellent story! Ah, Jill Marie Landis is magic with her stories. This is a beautifully told tale of love gone awry, of people’s struggles. Dru has a hard time accepting that his wife slept with another and produced a child, yet he doesn’t stop loving her. The strain between them is told so well. Their struggles and all that develops is near perfect.