THE WHITE DOVE

by Rosie Thomas ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1986

A buoyant love saga set in between-the-Wars Europe by a British author of mass-market romances. Amy Lovell hasn't turned 20, but she's bored stiff with bland suitors, champagne and invitations on thick cream-colored paper. So one crucial night, she dresses down and goes to a rally in support of impoverished Welsh coal miners. After a violent skirmish, she invites a stranded miner to stay the night at her posh London home. Over breast of duck, Amy and Nick Penry flirt and spar. While describing her moneyed but meaningless life to this handsome, long-suffering stranger, Amy makes a fatal decision: she'll become a nurse! So Nick goes back to Nantlas, Wales, to his downtrodden wife, Mari, and brain-damaged son, Dickon. Blacklisted for his union activism, Nick is dirt-poor and desperate. To pay for the specialist Dickon so badly needs, Nick swallows his pride and writes to Amy, asking for work on the grounds of her ancestral home. When Amy returns to her estate to recover from the rigors of nurse-training and a bad bout of the flu, it's not long till she knocks at the door of Nick's caretaker's cottage: ""I'm afraid of you, but I want to be with you."" But the ensuing idyll doesn't last: Nick is drawn home to Nantlas to work for the miners' union, and Amy's back on the hospital roster. And soon both Nick and Amy volunteer for the Spanish Civil War, where they see firsthand carnage and the fragility of their political ideals. With regrouped ambitions and great regret, they part again--Nick to return to his family and a political career, Amy to enter medical school. A full complement of three-dimensional characters and neatly orchestrated subplots makes this genre-outing light-footed and often sparkling. Romance con brio.

Pub Date: June 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION