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Summary
Summary
Acclaimed and beloved on both sides of the Atlantic, Joanna Trollope earned rave reviews for The Brass Dolphin. "A true page turner...irresistible," said the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "Trollope...can't write a dull novel."Legacy of Love unspools a thread of history, adventure, and romance that spans nineteenth-century colonial tumult to World War II as told through the eyes of three women of the same family.Each of the women finds herself in a far more exciting, exotic world than she'd ever imagined--and each must draw on hidden strengths to survive. Legacy of Love combines Trollope's keen exploration of family life with a beautiful and complex story of bravery, tragedy, and love.
Author Notes
Joanna Trollope was born in Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, England on December 9, 1943. She graduated from Oxford University. She worked on Chinese affairs in the Foreign Office in London for two years, and then became a teacher. In 1980, she became a full-time author.
Her first books to be published were a number of historical novels written under the pen name Caroline Harvey. These were followed by Britannia's Daughters: Women of the British Empire, a historical study of women in the British Empire. The Choir was her first contemporary novel. Her other works include A Village Affair, A Passionate Man, The Rector's Wife, Girl from the South, The Soldier's Wife, and Balancing Act. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In a trio of linked novellas, TrollopeÄunder her historical-novel pseudonym Caroline Harvey (The Brass Dolphin)Äfollows the romances of three adventurous women. Spirited, flirtatious Charlotte Brent, deathly bored with life in the countryside of early Victorian England, marries Hugh Connell, a rich officer, and accompanies him (bringing her sister Emily, who narrates) as he joins the doomed army of occupation in Kabul, Afghanistan. There, Trollope introduces the dashing womanizer Alexander Bewick, the British Resident (loosely based on the historical figure Alexander Burns). The Afghans evict the British army and take the women and children hostage, but between Charlotte's pluck and Bewick's daring, a successful rescue is inevitable. The second novella takes place in England two generations later, where Harvey more convincingly evokes her familiar historical terrain. Charlotte and Bewick's granddaughter Alexandra, who has grown up in the shadow of her illustrious ancestors, leaves home to care for the elderly Emily and discovers her own poise and capabilities with a little help from a reclusive artist. In the third, Alexandra's charismatic daughter, Cara, suffers and works through WWII. The three generations of women are very similar: intelligent, impulsive and nave. Each has to choose between a handsome, stylish, silly young man and a brooding, driven, older man; not surprisingly, each makes the same choice. The novellas sometimes feel a little cursory, especially in the third, where wartime years are dismissed in a sentence in order to get on with Cara's romance. But Harvey brings a practiced hand to these nuanced narratives of young women's trials, sexual awakenings and self-discoveries. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Writing as Caroline Harvey, England's popular Joanna Trollope depicts three generations of women whose beauty and sense of adventure draw them to strong men and interesting lives. The saga of Charlotte, her granddaughter Alexandra, and her great-granddaughter Cara is told in separate sections. Charlotte's begins in the early 1840s when, living quietly with her sister Emily and their widowed mother, Charlotte agrees to marry Hugh Connell, a wealthy soldier bound for Kabul. She's not in love with him, but marriage offers possibilities of adventure in exotic places, so, accompanied by Emily, she travels to India and on to Afghanistan. The East is everything she dreamed of, but Hugh, conventional and stuffy, is less satisfying. All this changes, though, when she meets and falls hard for handsome and notorious Alexander Bewick. But then war breaks out, and soon Charlotte endures different sorts of adventures, including a spell as a hostage, from the kind she'd contemplated. In the early 1900s, Alexandra is living unhappily with her parents in Scotland. Her mother, Charlotte and Alexander's daughter, criticizes her for not being adventuresome like her grandmother, but when Great-aunt Emily invites Alexandra to stay with her in Cornwall, she finds her vocation: she begins a farm on the estate that she'll soon inherit and also meets the famous artist Michael Swinton, who paints her portrait and changes her life. The third story begins in 1939, as Cara, spoiled and self-absorbed, graduates from school and WWII begins. Obliged to spend the war working the land and helping her crippled mother Alexandra, she is resentful, lonely and humiliated in love. At the close, however, a family tragedy will end that self-absorption and lead her to a sense of purpose. Typical of the genre: true love is found (and conquers), money is no problem, and the future is ever promising. Literate but lite. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Score another big winner for Joanna Trollope writing as Caroline Harvey. Known to Masterpiece Theatre viewers as the author of The Choir (1995) and The Rector's Wife (1991), this skillful weaver of tales creates a historical romance-epic spanning the years from 1841 to World War II. Its sense of place as well as time will please armchair travelers when Harvey takes readers to Afghanistan with the British military just as rebels threaten to overthrow the foreign occupying force. As Arabian horses swirl up dust in the barren landscape, Charlotte, married to decent but dull Hugh, is irresistibly drawn to the infamous British Resident in Kabul, the dashing Scottish rake Alexander Bewick; and her conservative sister, Emily, councils caution as the rebel forces draw near. The family saga continues with Alexandra, Charlotte's granddaughter, who is called to Cornwall to nurse the now elderly Emily. Her daughter, Cara, a student oblivious to the inevitability of a second world war, is next in line and faces more than her share of tragedies. Readers will find it difficult to set aside this deftly written and triumphant page-turner. --Whitney Scott
Library Journal Review
Immensely popular British writer Trollope (Marrying the Mistress) is less well known in North America for her historical romances, written under the pseudonym Caroline Harvey. The second Harvey book to be published in America (after The Brass Dolphin), Legacy of Love is a novel in three parts featuring three generations of daring Englishwomen from the same family who challenge societal mores to pursue love and passion. Although unexceptional in its writing and plot, the book reveals Harvey's vast knowledge of travel and history, from Victorian England and British-ruled Afghanistan to World War II. This title will appeal to libraries holding large historical/popular romance collections, but readers seeking the distinctive Joanna Trollope style will be disappointed.DZaheera Jiwaji, Edmonton, Alta. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.