THE ROYAL ANNE TREE

by Patricia Campbell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 1955

A hundred years ago the Vanes sold out in Cincinnati and Joined the westward procession. Pa was constitutionally a failure- and met final defeat with death just as they reached the goal in dismal, windswept Olympia, Washington. Ma followed him-and Louise, just turned fourteen, was left alone virtually penniless, and glad to be taken into a family, if only as a maid of all work. With equally immature acceptance of fate's intervention, she married the recently bereaved Uncle Herman, sure that love would find her out as it did in the books she read. Instead she gradually came to know an abiding fear of the man she had married- a miserly German, who drove her mercilessly, cut her off from human contacts, prevented her from becoming pregnant, and expected her to keep his house, work beside him in his fields, further his accumulation of gold Just for the sake of the gold, and do her duty as his wife without lessening her value as a drudge by child bearing. The hand of fate intervened- and while the ultimate outcome is predictable, the way of achievement affords a new twist. A pioneer story, reasonably conceived and developed, but not particularly significant.

Pub Date: Feb. 21, 1955

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

Categories: FICTION