The Colonel's Daughter »

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born and educated in Shepherd's Bush, London and had a variety of jobs in the commercial world, starting as a junior cashier at Woolworth's and working her way down to Pensions Officer at the BBC. She won the Young Writer's Award in 1973, and became a full-time writer in 1978. She is the author of sixty successful novels to date, including the twenty-five volumes of the Morland Dynasty series.
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A poignant and emotional love story - In the summer of 1954, George West met young Josella Grace, the daughter of a retired colonel, and fell passionately in love with the reserved but beautiful girl a love that seemed destined never to be fulfilled. Ten years later Josella wanders through life, glorying in her freedom, pitying all those tied down by ordinary cares. But she bears a secret so terrible only George can release her from it if she will let him.

Publishers Weekly

Part romance and part character study, Harrod-Eagles's very British tale evokes a time chronologically close to, but startlingly different from, our own with nary an anachronism. In 1954, George West glimpses a beautiful 17-year-old girl on horseback over the Dorset Downs. Josella Grace, he learns, has background, brains and beauty-but also emotional scars from a mysterious childhood. George accepts a decade of Jo's brief and unpredictable visits without complaint while creating a stable (if otherwise abstinent) life. Jo is blithely rootless, renaming and reinventing herself-as a temporary London switchboard operator, the gofer for an Edinburgh theatrical troupe and the lover of a brooding boatbuilder-until several painful episodes reveal both her essential loneliness and her abiding love for George. Though deftly portrayed and counterpointed, neither George's passivity nor Jo's promiscuity creates much narrative drive. The cause of Jo's skittishness, when finally revealed, may also feel flat or old-fashioned to contemporary readers used to novels hinged on lurid traumas. Still, Harrod-Eagles (Julia) captures an unusual personality and a complex period beautifully. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.