Yankee Stranger

Rating:
Summary: Great storytelling
Review: This was the first book I read in the series...and have since devoured all of them. The first 3 remain my favorites...my only complaint/gripe is that Eden is given such short shrift after "Yankee Stranger". She's such a compelling person...and to suddenly disappear almost from the pages is very disappointing. At least we keep up with the exploits of Susannah and Bracken. This is a wonderful series for romance..and you learn a lot about history, besides!

Rating:
Summary: Days and Spragues -- The Next Generation
Review: Well, not quite, perhaps. A couple of generations get skipped (as do several wars) between the first and second books in this series, but "Yankee Stranger" is well worth the wait. The presence of Tibby Day, now approaching 100, gives the meandering trail between books one and two a context and much-needed continuity -- and the overlap of the generations which this scenario demonstrates has always fascinated me in my own life. As in book one, Thane's characters grip you firmly and draw you unresisting into the tangle of their lives, battered by war and division, anchored by family affection and made luminous by love and passion: Eden, the Titian beauty pulled in different directions by love and loyalty; Cabot, product of an embittered father who learns to love and trust despite the cataclysm of war; Susannah and Sedgwick, the star-crossed lovers who must face the future without each other; and most joyously, Tibby Day, a matriarch in wisdom, a "character" in the idiomatic sense, and the glue that binds the family and the book together. As usual, the history in this book is exact and irreproachable, the historical characters become human, and the atmosphere is tangible and touchable. Libby Prison is juxtaposed against fashionable Willard's Hotel; war-ravaged Richmond underlines in blood-red the quaint and restful pastels of ante-bellum Williamsburg; military camps stand vivid against civilized family holidays and the gentle spirit of Tibby Day presides over all. Courage and dedication, sacrifice and humor, the entire spectrum of human emotion emerges in this book. The superficial reader will be offended, as in Thane's other books, at the casually racist undertones, but the historically aware will rightly attribute them not only to the age in which the story takes place, but the era in which the author is writing. With history books firmly in hand and love stories firmly in mind, Thane once more slips us back through time into a memorable past -- and makes us eager to move forward to the next book in the series!

Rating:
Summary: Days and Spragues -- The Next Generation
Review: Well, not quite, perhaps. A couple of generations get skipped (as do several wars) between the first and second books in this series, but "Yankee Stranger" is well worth the wait. The presence of Tibby Day, now approaching 100, gives the meandering trail between books one and two a context and much-needed continuity -- and the overlap of the generations which this scenario demonstrates has always fascinated me in my own life. As in book one, Thane's characters grip you firmly and draw you unresisting into the tangle of their lives, battered by war and division, anchored by family affection and made luminous by love and passion: Eden, the Titian beauty pulled in different directions by love and loyalty; Cabot, product of an embittered father who learns to love and trust despite the cataclysm of war; Susannah and Sedgwick, the star-crossed lovers who must face the future without each other; and most joyously, Tibby Day, a matriarch in wisdom, a "character" in the idiomatic sense, and the glue that binds the family and the book together. As usual, the history in this book is exact and irreproachable, the historical characters become human, and the atmosphere is tangible and touchable. Libby Prison is juxtaposed against fashionable Willard's Hotel; war-ravaged Richmond underlines in blood-red the quaint and restful pastels of ante-bellum Williamsburg; military camps stand vivid against civilized family holidays and the gentle spirit of Tibby Day presides over all. Courage and dedication, sacrifice and humor, the entire spectrum of human emotion emerges in this book. The superficial reader will be offended, as in Thane's other books, at the casually racist undertones, but the historically aware will rightly attribute them not only to the age in which the story takes place, but the era in which the author is writing. With history books firmly in hand and love stories firmly in mind, Thane once more slips us back through time into a memorable past -- and makes us eager to move forward to the next book in the series!

Rating:
Summary: Days and Spragues -- The Next Generation
Review: Well, not quite, perhaps. A couple of generations get skipped (as do several wars) between the first and second books in this series, but "Yankee Stranger" is well worth the wait. The presence of Tibby Day, now approaching 100, gives the meandering trail between books one and two a context and much-needed continuity -- and the overlap of the generations which this scenario demonstrates has always fascinated me in my own life. As in book one, Thane's characters grip you firmly and draw you unresisting into the tangle of their lives, battered by war and division, anchored by family affection and made luminous by love and passion: Eden, the Titian beauty pulled in different directions by love and loyalty; Cabot, product of an embittered father who learns to love and trust despite the cataclysm of war; Susannah and Sedgwick, the star-crossed lovers who must face the future without each other; and most joyously, Tibby Day, a matriarch in wisdom, a "character" in the idiomatic sense, and the glue that binds the family and the book together. As usual, the history in this book is exact and irreproachable, the historical characters become human, and the atmosphere is tangible and touchable. Libby Prison is juxtaposed against fashionable Willard's Hotel; war-ravaged Richmond underlines in blood-red the quaint and restful pastels of ante-bellum Williamsburg; military camps stand vivid against civilized family holidays and the gentle spirit of Tibby Day presides over all. Courage and dedication, sacrifice and humor, the entire spectrum of human emotion emerges in this book. The superficial reader will be offended, as in Thane's other books, at the casually racist undertones, but the historically aware will rightly attribute them not only to the age in which the story takes place, but the era in which the author is writing. With history books firmly in hand and love stories firmly in mind, Thane once more slips us back through time into a memorable past -- and makes us eager to move forward to the next book in the series!