EDUCATING WAVERLEY

In her latest taut, wind-swept romantic saga, veteran author Kalpakian (Steps and Exes, 1999, etc.) re-creates a small and ferociously idealistic community around a girls’ school in Puget Sound.

Nona York, the indomitable elderly writer of romance novels, runs through temp workers and spits them out as fast as the agency can send them over, though the latest young assistant, Rebecca Devere, reveals blood ties to Isadora Island, a fact that stirs alarming memories in Nona. In the great middle swath of the story, we backtrack to 1939, when Nona—née Waverley Scott—is banished as a teenager to the once notoriously progressive Temple School, founded on Isadora Duncan principles by the idealistic, Montparnasse-trained Sophia Westervelt. There, Waverley is no longer treated as the spoiled bastard child her mother doesn’t want (sired and supported by that mother’s rich employer), but as a North American Woman of the Future who Learns by Doing that Form Is to Function as God Is to Nature and that progress means consuming solely a True Foods diet. Waverley, plucky if not artistic, cements friendships, especially with a smelly, intractable girl sent from Paris when the Nazis roll in, Avril Aron, who happens to be the daughter of headmistress Sophie’s ex-lover and painter, Denis Aron. In true romance fashion, there are a great many small-town interminglings to keep straight, lovers ill-crossed, and letters delivering fatal news. But through the decades and bad weather, the intrepid author manages to keep a grip on the refreshingly antagonistic protofeminist Nona and her nutty though memorable lifetime Temple School influences.

Crafted by a pro who cares about her characters: another that won’t disappoint readers who enjoy Kalpakian’s tenacious, reliable, by-the-book approach.