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BLAKE'S REACH by Catherine Gaskin Kirkus Star

BLAKE'S REACH

By

Pub Date: March 19th, 1958
Publisher: Lippincott

Blake's Reach was an eerie, down-at-heels manor house, on a cliff overseeing the English Channel -- and its lord nourished bitterness in his heart against his only daughter, who would not marry to save the place she hated- and who ran off with a penniless subaltern, and bore his child, Jane Howard. Anne, Jane's mother, knew only one way to earn the luxuries she craved, when Jane's father died; so she put Jane out to nurse, left her with foster parents to become a barmaid in a village tavern, bore a second child, a son, to the only man she loved enough to hope to marry. But when Jane ran away from the violence of a man who lusted after her- and came to her mother in London, Anne taught her the ways of a lady- and died, leaving Jane debts, a young brother, and a dream about Blake's Reach. The story of how she sought that dream and found her own, has something of the flavor of Rebecca in the telling. There's the weird half-life of a community acceptant of smuggling as a way of life; there's a returned and unwanted heir; there's a new life for an old house; there's romance and a rocky road to a solution. Good reading -- on an entertainment level.