Summer Campaign by Carla Kelly
Mar. 20th, 2006 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksAngieW’s March challenge is historicals. I’ve tried a few so far this month, but haven’t been thrilled, so I went back to reread some keepers, mostly trads by Carla Kelly.
Major Mischief
The book opens with the hero, Major Jack Beresford*, on his way home to Yorkshire from the Peninsular War. He is exhausted from war and has terrible nightmares of Badajoz and other battles, but is desperate to be home again after four years of war. Indeed, he tells a travel companion that however beautiful the cliffs of Dover may be, he wishes never to see them again, for to see them will mean that he has left his home once again.
We meet our heroine, Onyx, living on sufferance with Lady Daggett, her stepmother, and being browbeaten into accepting the offer of marriage of one Reverend Andrew Littletree. We learn that Onyx and her twin brother were foundlings, left on church steps and adopted by Reverend Hamilton, to whom Lady D was once married. He is long since dead and Lady D remarried, with Onyx as her Cinderella and Gerald (Onyx’s brother) dead in the Peninsular War.
Littletree has been granted a living in the village of Chalcott. Onyx will stay there with Lady Bagshott (sister-in-law of Lady Daggett) while bringing the vicarage into order. The coach breaks down on the journey to Chalcott, and while the coachman is gone for repairs, Onyx and her maid are accosted by highwaymen. Just in the nick of time, Major Beresford happens upon the robbery. He is shot during the rescue, but the highwaymen are routed. Onyx solicits help from a neighboring farmer, who assumes that she and Jack are married. She does not correct his assumption, fearing that they will be turned away. After obtaining assistance and nursing Jack through the worst of this new wound, Onyx takes Jack to Chalcott, where he can continue recuperating. She is in for a surprise, though, because Lady B knows Jack – he’s a wealthy man in Yorkshire, younger brother to Adrian, Marquess of Sherbourn.
After Jack has recovered and headed homeward, Onyx begins setting the vicarage to rights. Her efforts are interrupted by a hasty message from Jack, who has returned home to find the estate in a mess and his brother on his deathbed. With her fiancé’s blessing, she heads off to help Jack nurse Adrian through his last days and to prepare Emily, Adrian’s wife, for the shock of his death.
There’s more meat to the story than that, but that is the basis of the book -- Onyx and Jack nursing his brother and learning about each other and falling in love. I almost typed “gradually falling in love,” except it wasn’t gradual. Jack knew fairly early in the book that Onyx was the woman for him, and said so. The words, in this instance, did not make Onyx happy, because she was constantly aware of the differences in their stations in life.
Summer Campaign is a keeper for me, even though I like it a little bit less than most of Kelly’s other books. It ranks low among my preferences for CK books due to a combination of things. First, the premise for their pretending to be married seems terribly flimsy to me. It works while I’m reading, caught up in the narrative, but once I put the book down and think about it, it seems a bit contrived. Second, it took until the very end of the book for Onyx to stand up for herself. Jack is so open about what he wants (her) and what he doesn’t care about (gossip), that it verges on TSTL for her to keep refusing him. Intellectually, I understand that she has been beaten down and told that she is worthless and useless and a bastard who is accepted only on sufferance all of her life, which makes it hard to believe anyone saying otherwise. But he kept saying it. And showing it. Which makes me want to shake her to get her to wake up to him.
Having explained what frustrates me about SC, let me now explain why it is a keeper: Jack. Jack is titled (in the end) but isn’t a useless layabout. He was a soldier for four years; when he returns home, he takes up the management of the family estate. He wasn’t a rakish gambler who spent his time gambling, drinking and wenching. He loves his brother, and tends him carefully, while simultaneously being furious that Adrian frittered away so much money and let the estate decay while he was away fighting for England on the Continent. He sees Onyx in a way that no one else has ever seen her. Not only does he respect her, but he likes her and values her.
Although Onyx frustrates me sometimes, I appreciate her strength as a heroine. There is something to be said for simply enduring, and she has endured the loss of everyone she loved, and managed not to become utterly miserable in the face of that loss. There are sparks of life and spirit scattered through the book that hint at who she could become, if she is allowed to grow and if she is loved. An underlying message of her rebellion at the end of the book (and the HEA) is that she is going to become that person, if she isn’t quite there yet.
Something about Carla Kelly’s voice and style works for me. I’m not a particular trad fan, but I’ve got almost all of her backlist on my keeper shelf. In fact, they are the only trads on my keeper shelf. In part it is the characters, who seem so human and real; in part the humor that pops up and leavens the saddest parts of the books; in part it is the language that grabs me – she writes with an economy that fits the subgenre but manages to include imagery and detail that sketch in the story – no florid language or purple prose.
The cover: is awful and does not match the content of the book at all. There are cover quotes from Romantic Times and Mary Balogh; Balogh’s is specific to Summer Campaign, while RT’s quote is a generic one about Kelly’s voice and style. The blurb is not all that accurate – Onyx is not beautiful; Littletree proposes because of convenience, not because he is incredibly taken by her; Jack is charming but not particularly handsome.
*Historical note for the anal retentive – a Marshall William Beresford commanded the allied army during the siege of Badajoz, which plays a role in Jack’s nightmares through out the book, and Battle of Albuera, a town 12 miles from Badajoz. Was the name intentional? I think so, if only because CK does such meticulous historical and military research.
Miss Onyx Hamilton was on the verge of making what everyone agreed was a perfect marriage. The overwhelmingly respectable Andrew Littletree was so taken by her virtue and beauty that he was willing to overlook the scandal clouding her birth and her lack of family and funds.
Then, handsome, charming Major Jack Beresford came galloping into Onyx’s previously sheltered life. But his wealth and aristocratic blood clearly made it highly improbable that he would ever ask for her hand.
Fortunately, the laws of probability had no effect on what Onyx was ready to give this supremely unsuitable gentleman. Her heart . . .
The book opens with the hero, Major Jack Beresford*, on his way home to Yorkshire from the Peninsular War. He is exhausted from war and has terrible nightmares of Badajoz and other battles, but is desperate to be home again after four years of war. Indeed, he tells a travel companion that however beautiful the cliffs of Dover may be, he wishes never to see them again, for to see them will mean that he has left his home once again.
We meet our heroine, Onyx, living on sufferance with Lady Daggett, her stepmother, and being browbeaten into accepting the offer of marriage of one Reverend Andrew Littletree. We learn that Onyx and her twin brother were foundlings, left on church steps and adopted by Reverend Hamilton, to whom Lady D was once married. He is long since dead and Lady D remarried, with Onyx as her Cinderella and Gerald (Onyx’s brother) dead in the Peninsular War.
Littletree has been granted a living in the village of Chalcott. Onyx will stay there with Lady Bagshott (sister-in-law of Lady Daggett) while bringing the vicarage into order. The coach breaks down on the journey to Chalcott, and while the coachman is gone for repairs, Onyx and her maid are accosted by highwaymen. Just in the nick of time, Major Beresford happens upon the robbery. He is shot during the rescue, but the highwaymen are routed. Onyx solicits help from a neighboring farmer, who assumes that she and Jack are married. She does not correct his assumption, fearing that they will be turned away. After obtaining assistance and nursing Jack through the worst of this new wound, Onyx takes Jack to Chalcott, where he can continue recuperating. She is in for a surprise, though, because Lady B knows Jack – he’s a wealthy man in Yorkshire, younger brother to Adrian, Marquess of Sherbourn.
After Jack has recovered and headed homeward, Onyx begins setting the vicarage to rights. Her efforts are interrupted by a hasty message from Jack, who has returned home to find the estate in a mess and his brother on his deathbed. With her fiancé’s blessing, she heads off to help Jack nurse Adrian through his last days and to prepare Emily, Adrian’s wife, for the shock of his death.
There’s more meat to the story than that, but that is the basis of the book -- Onyx and Jack nursing his brother and learning about each other and falling in love. I almost typed “gradually falling in love,” except it wasn’t gradual. Jack knew fairly early in the book that Onyx was the woman for him, and said so. The words, in this instance, did not make Onyx happy, because she was constantly aware of the differences in their stations in life.
Summer Campaign is a keeper for me, even though I like it a little bit less than most of Kelly’s other books. It ranks low among my preferences for CK books due to a combination of things. First, the premise for their pretending to be married seems terribly flimsy to me. It works while I’m reading, caught up in the narrative, but once I put the book down and think about it, it seems a bit contrived. Second, it took until the very end of the book for Onyx to stand up for herself. Jack is so open about what he wants (her) and what he doesn’t care about (gossip), that it verges on TSTL for her to keep refusing him. Intellectually, I understand that she has been beaten down and told that she is worthless and useless and a bastard who is accepted only on sufferance all of her life, which makes it hard to believe anyone saying otherwise. But he kept saying it. And showing it. Which makes me want to shake her to get her to wake up to him.
Having explained what frustrates me about SC, let me now explain why it is a keeper: Jack. Jack is titled (in the end) but isn’t a useless layabout. He was a soldier for four years; when he returns home, he takes up the management of the family estate. He wasn’t a rakish gambler who spent his time gambling, drinking and wenching. He loves his brother, and tends him carefully, while simultaneously being furious that Adrian frittered away so much money and let the estate decay while he was away fighting for England on the Continent. He sees Onyx in a way that no one else has ever seen her. Not only does he respect her, but he likes her and values her.
Although Onyx frustrates me sometimes, I appreciate her strength as a heroine. There is something to be said for simply enduring, and she has endured the loss of everyone she loved, and managed not to become utterly miserable in the face of that loss. There are sparks of life and spirit scattered through the book that hint at who she could become, if she is allowed to grow and if she is loved. An underlying message of her rebellion at the end of the book (and the HEA) is that she is going to become that person, if she isn’t quite there yet.
Something about Carla Kelly’s voice and style works for me. I’m not a particular trad fan, but I’ve got almost all of her backlist on my keeper shelf. In fact, they are the only trads on my keeper shelf. In part it is the characters, who seem so human and real; in part the humor that pops up and leavens the saddest parts of the books; in part it is the language that grabs me – she writes with an economy that fits the subgenre but manages to include imagery and detail that sketch in the story – no florid language or purple prose.
The cover: is awful and does not match the content of the book at all. There are cover quotes from Romantic Times and Mary Balogh; Balogh’s is specific to Summer Campaign, while RT’s quote is a generic one about Kelly’s voice and style. The blurb is not all that accurate – Onyx is not beautiful; Littletree proposes because of convenience, not because he is incredibly taken by her; Jack is charming but not particularly handsome.
*Historical note for the anal retentive – a Marshall William Beresford commanded the allied army during the siege of Badajoz, which plays a role in Jack’s nightmares through out the book, and Battle of Albuera, a town 12 miles from Badajoz. Was the name intentional? I think so, if only because CK does such meticulous historical and military research.
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Date: 2006-03-21 03:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-21 03:14 pm (UTC)