Now Face to Face » (Reprint)

KARLEEN KOEN is the New York Times bestselling author of Through a Glass Darkly and Dark Angels, a BookSense pick. She lives in Houston, Texas. Visit her online at www.karleenkoen.com.

The unforgettable sequel to Karleen Koen’s beloved debut, Through a Glass Darkly

A Book-of-the-Month Club main selection

A bride at fifteen, widowed at the tender age of twenty, Barbara, Countess Devane, embarks for colonial Virginia financially ruined by the death of her husband in scandalous circumstances. Dressed in mourning as is proper for a woman, she is patronizingly described as a “fragile black butterfly,” but the fragility is deceiving. She makes a place for herself in the new world, takes lovers and friends across political divides, and questions the established traditions of slavery. Facing enemies she never suspected, she must return to England and deal face to face with the problems created by her husband, who haunts her even in death. Back in London, she quickly finds herself pulled into Jacobite plotting, and the treachery of powerful men suddenly threatens her family, her friends—and a new love.

Now Face to Face sweeps readers from eighteenth-century America to London and brings both worlds to vivid life. It is a magnificent evocation of an era, from the plantations of Virginia to Hanoverian England.

Publishers Weekly

Ten years after Koen introduced heroine Barbara Devane in her bestselling debut novel, Through a Glass Darkly, she brings back the strong-willed young woman to face further challenges among the baroque world of the European and colonial American nobility of the early 18th century. The settling of America and the courtly intrigues of the Jacobite rebellion in England serve as both backdrop and parallel for Lady Devane's path toward her own independence as an aristocrat and as a woman. Having been widowed at age 20, she has embarked for colonial Virginia, determined to develop a plantation there. Spunky and headstrong, she bristles when she is patronizingly described by one of her many admirers as a ``fragile black butterfly''; anything but fragile, she takes lovers across political divides and frees her slaves against all advice. These flamboyant gestures often seem shallow, however, and Lady Devane's dismay at the treatment of the slaves in the New World characteristically seems more picturesque than humane. Koen doesn't hesitate to make her heroine less perfect than conventional characters of this genre; Lady Devane comments in a rare moment of self-reflection that her pity for her favorite servant never led her to seriously consider his feelings. A pervasive tone of gentility grounds the novel in its period, and Koen's smooth prose and nicely integrated background details make this a superior historical romance. Major ad/promo; author tour. (Jan.)