A Perfect Stranger

Rating:
Summary: engaging historical romance
Review: In 1912, panic is rampant as the mighty Titanic begins sinking into the sea. Wealthy American Loretta Linden tries to help Isabel Golightly and her six-year-old daughter Eunice gets into a lifeboat, but it took a handsome stranger to get the females safely off the doomed vessel. The three women manage to reach New York while the casualty list grows everyday and the dead exceeds the available coffins. Isobel wonders if that kind stranger died rescuing others.

Miss Linden takes Isabel and Eunice to San Francisco with her when they meet their rescuer Somerset Fitzroy. As Isabel struggles to adapt to the modern American world that her kind patron provides for her, the precocious and intelligent Eunice loves the new environs. Meanwhile Somerset begins courting Isabel, but she wants him to remain a friend while he wants a family with her, her daughter, and future Fitzroys.

This engaging historical romance provides insight to readers at a momentous time when the suffragette's movement is taken hold with simple changes in women's lifestyle. Readers will get a taste of a technological boom with new gizmos like telephones and cars, etc changing the way people communicate and relate. The characters are well written as the difference between mother and daughter show the generational chasm. Although the romance is fun to follow that plot takes a back seat to the marvel of pre World War I America.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: engaging historical romance
Review: In 1912, panic is rampant as the mighty Titanic begins sinking into the sea. Wealthy American Loretta Linden tries to help Isabel Golightly and her six-year-old daughter Eunice gets into a lifeboat, but it took a handsome stranger to get the females safely off the doomed vessel. The three women manage to reach New York while the casualty list grows everyday and the dead exceeds the available coffins. Isobel wonders if that kind stranger died rescuing others.

Miss Linden takes Isabel and Eunice to San Francisco with her when they meet their rescuer Somerset Fitzroy. As Isabel struggles to adapt to the modern American world that her kind patron provides for her, the precocious and intelligent Eunice loves the new environs. Meanwhile Somerset begins courting Isabel, but she wants him to remain a friend while he wants a family with her, her daughter, and future Fitzroys.

This engaging historical romance provides insight to readers at a momentous time when the suffragette's movement is taken hold with simple changes in women's lifestyle. Readers will get a taste of a technological boom with new gizmos like telephones and cars, etc changing the way people communicate and relate. The characters are well written as the difference between mother and daughter show the generational chasm. Although the romance is fun to follow that plot takes a back seat to the marvel of pre World War I America.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Very enjoyable...
Review: Titanic ended with the ship's demise, but for those who survived it was only the beginning. Isabel Golightly and her daughter, Eunice were fortunate enough to be rescued by a handsome stranger as the ship descended into the icy waters; but they were left with the lingering fear that the kind man who helped them was lost at sea. To Isabel's relief, they meet him again in San Francisco months later. Somerset Fitzroy indeed escaped, and is glad to meet the Golightlys again. With fellow survivors they are setting out on a new life, though not without difficulty.

Isabel had only worked as a char woman, but that career has little future. Her new benefactress and friend, Loretta, has greater dreams for her, much to Isabel's dismay. Soon, she finds herself dancing with strangers and using all kinds of modern things like telephones and riding in cars. Eunice takes to the new world with glee, reading everything her six year old hands can get. Somerset is an ever present temptation and challenge to Isabel. She is willing to have him as a friend, but he offers more. Is it only out of niceness, or love, that he proposes?

*** Colorful language and in well researched details add depth to this historical "debut". Watch as the women's movement begins to form with the wearing of comfortable cloths and see how what we take for granted is new to those who first used modern marvels. Against the backdrop of stiff Victorian mannerisms, new love blooms. Particularly enjoyable is all the Scottish dialect. (...)