Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305230166
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Impulsive actions, like words spoken in haste, carry permanent consequences. But this is a lesson learned only with the difficult passage of time.
When teen-ager Lee Archer abandons her infant daughter - when she disappears into thin air - she cannot even begin to imagine the repercussions of her action in her life, in her husband's life, or in the life of the daughter she never sees. She discovers only years later, when she tries to return and reclaim the child, that the past can never be undone.
Caroline Leavitt allows us to see all sides of this complex and wrenching story, and there are no villains. Only the hard reality of human imperfection.
- MONTY S. LEITCH
November of the Heart.\ By LaVyrle Spencer. Putnam. $22.95.
Unless you've vowed to read every single one of LaVyrle Spencer's novels, you might want to give this one a pass. Not that the characters aren't well-drawn and believable - they are - but the conflict is so predictable that its outcome is obvious long before the last page.
The story begins in 1895 at White Bear Lake in Minnesota at the summer "cottage" of the wealthy Barnett family. Their yacht has just lost the first of a "three-year series of regattas." At dinner with family and friends, the Barnetts' feelings are low. But they become even lower when one of the kitchen help, Jens Harken, has the temerity to suggest to Gideon Barnett, in a note slipped into Barnett's dessert, that Jens could build him a winning boat.
Barnett explodes and threatens to fire everybody, but his wife intercedes and the incident appears to be over. The eldest Barnett daughter, Lorna, however, passionately loves boating and believes that Jens' plan just might give her domineering father a winner.
The "stock" plot appears when the reader realizes that Lorna, an 18-year-old with a rebellious streak, and the handsome Jens are becoming increasingly drawn to each other, as well as to Jens' plans. The rich girl and the hired help begin a dangerous relationship.
Spencer's characters, as ever, engage. Devoted fans will probably not object too much to predictability as, after all, this is a romantic novel.
- HARRIET LITTLE
Monty S. Leitch is a columnist for this newspaper.\ Harriet Little teaches at James River high school.
by CNB