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Summary
Summary
Few writers have earned a place in readers' hearts as dear as Eugenie Price. Her novels entice us into a vanished world, peopled by characters who immediacy makes their joy, sorrow, heartbreak, and soaring love something we can share and savor. Eugenia Price chose Savannah, Georgia as one of the most fascinating cities of the South, as the setting of a quartet of novels that follow the fortunes of the city and families that gave it life. Orphaned Mark Browning was only twenty when he renounced his father's fortune and sailed to Savannah, his mother's birthplace...and the home of two remarkable women. The first is Eliza McQueen Mackay, his mentor's beautiful wife, whom Mark loves with a deep, pure love that can never be spoken. The other is lovely young Caroline Cameron, whose life is blighted by a secret that has tormented her grandparents for half a century--a secret that affects Mark more closely than he imagines. Desiring one woman, loved by another Mark must confront the ghosts of a previous generation, and face the evil smoldering hate, before he can truly call Savannah his home.
Author Notes
Eugenia Price, 1916 - 1996 Eugenia Price, born on June 22, 1916, was an American author best known for her historical novels which were set in the American South. Early in Price's writing career, she was a well-known author of many Christian books. While on St. Simons Island, she wandered through Christ Church cemetery where she found the graves of Anson Dodge, his wives Ellen and Anna, and his child. She wanted to take her writing in a different direction and the graves inspired her to write biographies about average people who only impacted those around them. The result was "Beloved Invader," the post Civil War story of the Reverend Anson Dodge. This first book about St. Simons Island, where she spent time in a cottage researching the Island families, created a new genre. She followed with "Lighthouse" and "New Moon Rising," which went back in time from the Civil War.
Price used everything that she wrote, such as articles she wrote for Coastal Illustrated, which were collected and published as "At Home on St. Simons," and the diary she kept while working on a novel became "Diary of a Novel." She also wrote the Savannah quartet, with the final novel titled "Stranger in Savannah." It's a love story that takes place during the time that the country was heading towards the Civil War. Her last book, which was finished a few weeks before her death, was "The Waiting Time."
On May 28, 1996, Eugenia Price died of congestive heart failure and was laid to rest in the Christ Church Cemetery.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Picking up more or less where the deadly-dull Don Juan McQueen (1974) left off, Price continues to mix Georgia history with sentimental romance--here concentrating on the 1812-1822 Savannah fortunes of young newcomer Mark Browning. Yale-graduate Mark--virtuous, noble, ""beautiful""--sails to Georgia from Philadelphia after the deaths of his beloved aunt and his world-traveling tycoon/father (who never stopped grieving over the death of Mark's mother). Determined to make his own way, Mark keeps his wealth a secret. He's immediately, warmly adopted by his new boss, trader Robert Mackay, by the Mackay children, and by Robert's adored wife Eliza (daughter of Don Juan McQueen). And he promptly wins the heart of beautiful, brilliant young Caroline Cameron. Still, there are a few dark murmurs in Mark's newfound bliss. He is taunted by notorious Savannah rascal Osmund Kott--the same varmint who appears to be blackmailing Caroline's old grandfather: could this be connected to the mysterious past of Mark's Savannah-born mother? (It could indeed. As Mark soon learns, she was Grandfather Cameron's illegitimate daughter, just as Kott was his illegitimate son.) Furthermore, though Mark reveres his half-cousin Caroline, he feels more passion for older Eliza, his best friend's wife! And after assorted calamities--Cameron's fire-death, Mackay's heart-attack death--Mark can at last confess his love to Eliza. . . who rebuffs him. (""What can I do with this--ugly humiliation? How can I face her again? How can I face--Caroline? What do I do next, God?"") This romantic muddle soon sorts itself, however: with Eliza as doting friend, Mark and Caroline do marry, finding ""their own free, wholly natural passion""; a daughter is born; meanwhile, Eliza's oldest sons grow up, one of them finding True Love. And the novel's last section focuses on the uneasy reconciliation between Caroline and her fierce, widowed, dying Grandmother (who hated Caroline's adored Grandfather)--with things left up in the air for a sequel . . . and the supposedly reformed Osmund Kott still up to no good, now as overseer of the Cameron estate. Price (Maria, Margaret's Story) drops in tidbits of Savannah lore and history: architecture, society, famous eccentrics, the fire of 1820, a visit from President Monroe. But the repetitious dialogue and belabored sentimentality here make this slow as molasses, sweet as treacle--and only for Price's most sedate, patient fans. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Hands gripping the rail of the plunging schooner Eliza, young Mark Browning, his well-tailored clothes wet and rumpled, stood on deck alone, determined not to be sick. From beneath a fashionable slouch cap, strands of damp chestnut hair clung to his lean face as he struggled for balance against the sea. Except for trips by boat to and from his Philadelphia home and Yale College, Mark had never sailed. His late father's tales of storms at sea, however graphic, in no way prepared him for this. Even so, his resolve held. Mark was headed for Savannah to build a life, to make his own way. He meant someday to create his own family because the last two other members of the small one into which he was born twenty years ago were now dead. There were friends and connections, but no one mattered anymore back in Philadelphia. Bearing south, the schooner slid down, then vaulted up and over gray walls of towering Atlantic waves. Mark's slender, strong body, more than adequate to any test he'd ever given it, was no match for this power. The Eliza floundered helplessly, inching forward, then seeming to rush back--getting nowhere. There was no visible storm, no rain, no wind, but the sea raged and hurled its weight over the deck--not in a regular motion so that a man might anticipate the next dousing--but with quixotic, uneven force, as though designed to take him off guard, to catch him with his hands momentarily loosed on the railing. There were no women or children aboard and most men were below, as were his cabin mates, too ill to move from their berths. Now and then during the turbulent morning, a few passengers braved the deck in desperation, unable to endure the smell of sickness in the stuffy staterooms and half- ashamed, as was Mark, that their stomachs churned when, in truth, there was no recognizable storm. "Mind over matter," he imagined he heard dead Aunt Nassie's voice chide. "You've a strong mind, Mark--a Browning mind. Use it! Just concentrate. You won't be ill. Concentrate. " On what? The sleek, handsome schooner Eliza--his only protection from the flailing sea? In fair weather, he was sure she rode high in the water, her bow proud and sharp, cleanly severing the waves, gliding, cradling passengers in safety for sun- and moonlight strolls on her deck, for sound sleep in her small, but adequate, cabins and staterooms. Excerpted from Savannah by Eugenia Price All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
