I love the intelligent, compassionate historical romance writing of Grace Burrowes. My latest read has an interesting Canadian twist with welcome diversity. The handsome dark features of the MacGregor laird, Asher, are little known to arise largely from his Canadian First Nations mother. I enjoyed the rustic recollections of the beautiful but “absolutely uncompromising” Canadian wilderness, where families weathered the winter in a longhouse. Asher’s existence was unknown to his father, who had sailed home without his wife, as did many early European settlers in our country’s history. The child remained until the unfortunate loss of his family to illness, when he was reconnected with his father’s side. Asher’s present task is finding a husband for a reluctant American heiress. Despite their strong attraction, Hannah fears becoming a man’s chattel in accordance with the mysogynistic laws of the day. Her stepfather’s self-serving and abusive treatment of family in Boston is worrying, and Hannah can’t see how to intervene unless she returns as an independent woman. Asher protects her with subterfuge when unchaperoned time together might have forced their marriage, knowing that freedom of choice is essential to the determined heiress. In an early escapade, they’re stuck in a Scottish snowstorm, surviving with shared warmth: “We sleep together, like kittens, and use both our coats as extra blankets.” Asher’s family conspires to throw the couple together, and every stolen moment is savoured as possibly their last: “Hannah closed her eyes, the better to catalogue sensations to hoard them up against the barren expanse of the rest of her life.” Asher’s uncanny ability as a trained physician give him helpful insight into Hannah’s persistent limp: “The physicians of the previous age knew something we modern fellows have forgotten: much of effective medicine has to do with interviewing the patient. Not examining him or her like a laboratory specimen, but earning the patient’s confidences.” Although Asher moved to Scotland at a young age, his slipping into brogue and Gaelic seemed less likely than his first language would have been. We know nothing about which First Nation he came from or where it was, although the subject matter was shared with Hannah. These details would have lent more to the story. Nevertheless, I loved the novel, and found many passages that caused me to stop and admire the crafting of the words, beginning with the first sentence: “Asher MacGregor, Ninth Earl of Balfour, had crossed the Atlantic five times in his thirty-some years on earth, each passage worse than the last, each leaving him a little more symbolically at sea.” Here are others:
Beautiful writing from an excellent author of this genre. - Irene Plett Details: Grace Burrowes, The MacGregor’s Lady (2014, Sourcebooks, ISBN 1402268726); quotations on pages 1, 63, 112, 205, 233, 275, 351, and 356. Topics: Book reviews, historical romance, Grace Burrowes, Highlands, Scotland, Canada, First Nations, diversity, domestic violence, feminism
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WriterIrene Plett is a writer, poet and animal lover living in South Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Categories
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