One of my all-time favourite novelists. I know very little about Ms Belle. It will take me ages and ages to write my impressions and reviews of all of her novels so for the time being I'm just going to ramble on about how I first discovered her books. I used to attend Belconnen High School in Canberra, Australia which had a wonderful library which I did not fully appreciate at the time.
One day I discovered a novel called "The Moon in the Water" which completely captured my fancies as it was had poetry, literary allusions, historical detail, a handsome anti-hero, a lively and intelligent heroine and lashings of drama and romance. At the time, I was completely and madly in love with the headstrong Francis Heron even though in hindsight, I think he was rather selfish and impulsive. Anyway, perhaps that's what made him so lovable. No one writes about dysfunctional families better than Pamela Belle! She puts them all through heartbreak, mental anguish and grief.
From "The Moon in the Water": Pamela Belle was born and bred in Suffolk, the daughter of a local prep school headmaster. She went to the University of Sussex, and is now teaching in Hertforedshire. The Moon in the Water is her first novel.
"The moon that
in the darken'd water dwells,
Is't that which danceth
in the sky by night?
And does the Unicorn exist?"
Thomazine was born heiress to the lands and fortune of the Heron dynasty, and she was born under a dark and troublesome star ...
Orphaned at ten years old, growing to womanhood in a family of cousins, these were the young years when she met the headstrong Francis, the years when they both dreamed of the mystic uniform ...
But the sweep of the times was against them. Francis was banished and imprisoned. Thomazine forced into black and loveless wedlock, and the onrush of beating drums and naked steel heralded the turbulent years of England's Civil War ...."
Review
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"And remember the
Unicorns, and remember also,
The Chains of Fate will not bind us forever,
And the chains of love are stronger"
The blood red tide of civil war ran deep over the land, and Thomazine became the man of a wife she would learn to hate for his perfidy.
She married Dominic whom she could never love, believing her Francis to be dead. When she learned the truth ... that Francis lived, Thomazine rode north on a mission hung with the chains of fate.
Those chains weight down her journey, moving through land occupied by enemy soldiers, finding the man she loved at the price of deserting her own child, and losing Francis again to the urgent demands of Montrose's cause in Scotland.
Time and again, the chains of fate would tear Thomazine and Francis apart, through siege and battle, through the evil designs of men, yet one day, some day, the chains of love must prove stronger ...
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"One day when I'm in London and rich and famous, then you can come to me with this and ask me to do it again and I will, because you were the very first person to ask me to draw ..."
As Alathea reflected upon her changed fortune son that fateful day in the glorious summer of the Restoration, the future for the eleven-year-old daughter of Francis and Thomazine Heron looked bleak indeed.
Only a month before they had been forced to leave their beloved Goldhayes when her uncle, Simon Heron, returned with the King to claim what was rightly his. Now this chance encounter with young John Wilmot uncovered her secret passion for drawing and changed her life for ever.
Nine years passed before Alathea was able to realised her promise to the Earl of Rochester, by which time, having survived a family tragedy, the threatening attentions of her jealous half-brother, the devastation of both the Plague and the Great Fire, and forsaken marriage for her career, the beautiful, headstrong, gifted child had grown up into fame, fortune, and now the mistress of this notorioius rake.
But the destiny of the fiercely independent artist was as yet unfulfilled, and in time the wheel would come full circle for Alathea, child of dreams and truths and Unicorns.
Review
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For Christie Heron, ruthles ambition is the lodestar of his destiny.
Determined to break free from his humble origins in the border country of Northumbria, he enlists in the household of Richard of Gloucester, rising with his lord to the dangerous pinnacles of power.
Tangled in Richard's web of treason and tragedy, Christie learns the full price that his destiny demands, Meg his beloved sister and only friend, rejects him. Julian, daughter of a knight of Oxfordshire, bears him undying enmity.
And the long shadow of the Welsh adventurer Henry Tudor falls dark over Bosworth Field...."
Tortured by a cold, dogmatic Puritan father, Silence has learned to conceal her passionate nature deep inside a prison like shell of meekly calm. The escape offered by marriage an illuion, it is the sweep of history that finally offers Silence a kind of freedom.
Civil war has raged, her sombre husband has been away for two years and Silence St. Barbe, now Mistress of Wintercombe has enjoyed a harmonious time with her children.
This sheltered world is shattered when enemy Cavaliers invade, instigating an orgy of male bravado. Wintercombe, once a tranquil bastion of family virtue, is transformed into an unruly, drunken and licentious garrison.
From this turmoil still more subtle threat dawns in the handsome shape of Captain Nick Hellier. As the battle for England is matched by the struggle within her soul, Silence begins gradually to unlock the chains of her fragile Puritan heart.
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England lies quiet after the ravages of Civil War. But in Somerset, at Wintercombe, the death of George St. Barbe will change forever the course of events, leaving the rest of the family with uncertain, uneven destinies...
For his widow, Silence, it is a time of freedom and of longing - for reunion with the dashing Captain Nick Hellier. For their children, too, promises and pitfalls beckon: young Nat claims Wintercombe as his own, and Rachel, like her mother before her, falls victim to an arranged marriage.
Fate unfurls across the breadth of the nation. With Captain Hellier at his side, Charles II invades England to claim his throne. And Silence's daughter Tabby weaves a rope of intrigue that will draw Nick back to Wintercombe ... To meet Silence .. To face the future.
After years of shameful exile in Holland, Sir Alexander St Barbe is back in Somerset to claim Wintercombe as his inheritance.
Bitter quarrels break out on the night of his arrival - and soon the old fires of family passions and religious contention are raging. Even Alex's aunt Silence Hellier, herself once mistress of Wintercombe, cannot smooth over the ensuing rifts.
And she is one of the first to see trouble in the instant frisson between the libertine alex and his young and fiery half-French cousin Louise ...
Outside forces play an increasingly turbulent part in all their lives as the Duke of Monmouth returns to England to claim the crown and raise rebellion - bringing disaster and tragedy to Somerset, and the St. Barbe family.
Review
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My copy of Treason's Gift is in Canberra for some reason so I can't type up the blurb yet.
Review
To follow
From Kirkus Reviews
Fourth in Belle's 17th-century St. Barbe romantic adventures, this one featuring
the stormy marriage of Louise and Sir Alexander St. Barbe at the time of the
bloodless invasion of England by William of Orange. In the summer of 1686 at
Wintercombe, the St. Barbe ancestral home, Louise grieves for a stillborn son,
and her depression begins to sour a hitherto jolly union. There'll be rows,
sulks, and even blows before Alexander storms off--only to get disgracefully
bagged, have a ripe affair in Bath, and rage on to Holland. Helping along the
way are Alexander's plain and plain-spoken sister Phoebe of Bath, who houses
Louise and Alexander's natural son, Lucas, and Grandmother Silence (of Wintercombe,
1988). Meanwhile, lurking nastily is cousin Charles, who wants both Wintercombe
and Louise and who has tried before to erase Alexander (A Falling Star). All
affairs of the heart, however, are caught up in a larger swirl of events as
James II is about to be dethroned and as anti-Catholic, nationalist sentiment
swells--a movement clandestinally aided by Alexander and a courtier who proposes
to Phoebe (to her bafflement). Much muttering of plots, a royal progress, until
finally the wind stands fair for England, the couples pair off, and Charles
blazes to his doom. A restful cruise for the St. Barbe faithful and period-romance
insatiables. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Ingram
Newly settled into the St. Barbe ancestral home, Alexander and Louise St. Barbe
find their happiness cut short by Louise's tragic miscarriage, and Alex turns
to another woman for comfort, in a work set during the English Civil Wars.
Last updated 5 November 2001, sometime in the evening.