By Sun and Candlelight - Softcover

Sallis, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 055215394X ISBN 13: 9780552153942

Publisher: Imprint unknown, 2008

Synopsis

They discovered the empty cottage in 1940, when they were still at school—four teenage friends from wildly different backgrounds and with the war casting its shadow over their lives. The cottage became a place of refuge for them, symbolizing their loyalty to one another which held in the face of jealousy, passion, tragedy, and betrayal. It was to the cottage that Monica came, pregnant, alone, and frightened, and it was there that their story really began. For Bessie, born secretly and shamefully to one of them, raised by another, and loved by them all, came to represent what was the very best in their lives. This is a huge and powerful novel of four friends and the lifetime bonds that held them together.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Sallis is the bestselling author of many novels including Choices, Come Rain or Shine, The Keys to the Garden, The Apple Barrel, Sea of Dreams, Time of Arrival, Five Farthings and The Pumpkin Coach. She was brought up in Gloucestershire and now lives in Clevedon, Somerset.

From Publishers Weekly

Pleasure-seekers who aren't fussy about plausibility might be momentarily diverted by this tale of four English friends, women bound in an increasingly intricate web of relationships. On V.E. Day, teenage Monica tells her best friend, Carol, not only that she is adopted but that she is now pregnant with the child of her adoptive brother--all this within four pages. Sallis's speeded-up soap opera makes a heroine of Carol, whose mother adopts Monica's baby; a glamorous but hard woman of Monica; and quasi-husband-swappers of their friends Liv and Myrtle. This willingness to share babies and husbands is presumably praiseworthy but is rendered as far less than lifelike. Meanwhile, tragedy strikes often and in suitably dramatic international settings. One member of the quartet is killed off early on; her death creates a gap in the narrative for which Sallis tries to compensate by forcing the survivors into even more strenuous contortions. Eventually she overwhelms the innate and genuine appeal of her own protagonists, who virtually cry out to be rescued from this exaggerated plot. British writer Sallis is the author of Summer Visitors and YA books.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Imprint unknown
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 055215394X
• ISBN 13: 9780552153942
• Binding: Paperback