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Return to the statley environs of Rutherford Park and the embattled Cavendish family—from the author of ‘The Wild Dark Flowers.’
This novel is the third book that revolves around Rutherford Park, a mansion surrounded by a large estate. It is April, 1917 and Charlotte is to be married, she is nineteen, and the daughter of Lady Octavia and Earl Cavendish. She has a sister, Louise, and a brother, Harry, who is a pilot in France where the world is in the throes of the bloodiest battle in history, World War I.
I must admit I was very impressed with the descriptive writing of author Elizabeth Cooke, she has a natural gift that takes you into the trenches, which run in blood, sweat, and more than a few tears. In the first World War, horses were used and the plight of these animals brought a terrible anger to your heart, the way Cooke draws you into the the fields of Flanders where men in their thousands died and were stacked up on the side of the road, waiting for a burial place.
The story is complicated, well-written but it weaves the narrative of the Cavendish family into a depressing area that makes you wonder if they can survive. The language and inferences in dialogue leaves you in no doubt of the double standards of the elite as opposed to the stations of their servants.
I assume there is another book coming as there was little of the story that inferred a finale. I would recommend this book, it is very well done.
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