FIRST LOVE, LAST LOVE

By the author of This Royal Breed (1991), and other English romances—which, like Christmas fruitcake, can have a traditional appeal but also a sodden poundage requiring slow consumption—a 1930-to-WW II novel set mainly in East Anglia and involving three diverse families. Sybil Cream, her lovely sister Lizzie, and brother George are the children from a happy marriage of well-to-do Dora, who married down, and fisherman Henry. Poor but happy, that's the Creams—but Sybil's happiness really rises to the top when she samples life as lived by the Wintertons, her friend Christina's family who summer near Sybil's humble digs. Jump to the city of Manchester, where one-half Jewish Fennimore (``Fenn'') Kitzmann lives miserably with his ill-treated mother Rachel in the home of nasty relatives bent on punishing Rachel because she bore a bastard child (the sire split, leaving nothing to Fenn but a strange name). Fenn will stow away to New York as a young teen and live by his wits—while back home in England, Sybil soars in schoolwork; class ties slacken; and Lizzie makes a dread decision about her pregnancy by Ralph, Christina's handsome brother. Then comes the war. Guess who wings over Britain as a pilot in the American Air Force; who escapes the Kitzmanns for career and marriage; and who will pair off—in spite of war scares, death, a case of polio, and crossed wires? Another homefront bubble-and-squeak romance—all warm, cozy, and soporific.