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BY THIS STRANGE FIRE by Edith Pargeter Kirkus Star

BY THIS STRANGE FIRE

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Pub Date: March 16th, 1948
Publisher: Reynal & Hitch

A story within a story, and of two centuries, this subdues the melodrama with the metaphysical, provides high-keyed romantic entertainment. Claire Falckie cold and successful by external standards as wife, mother and writer, leaves Loud at the death of her husband, retreats from the world and into another world in a lonely country house, Long Coppice, undisturbed save for the attentions of Charles Kenton, a bachelor, and his nephew, Jonty, who fall in love with her. There she writes, almost as if by possession, of the tragedy centuries age which took place Long Coppice when Salathiel Drury was accused of witchcraft and hung. Still under the spell of Drury, with whom Claire falls in love, she is forced back into the present as Jonty, for love of Claire, shoots his uncle- and the new tragedy dele the old... With its period mounting, strong narrative and emotional interest, should appeal to women.