The Secrets of Nanreath Hall
Set in World War II England, Rickoff’s historical novel sends a grieving young woman to her mother’s childhood home—and into the arms of the family who had forced her mother to leave.
After a harrowing experience at Dunkirk, volunteer nurse Anna Trenowyth is assigned to duty in at Nanreath Hall, the ancestral home of Anna’s mother’s family in Cornwall, which now serves as a military hospital. Anna is a stranger there. Her mother, Katherine, ran away before Anna was born and died shortly after. Anna’s cousin is the present earl, but the bitter wounded man and his snobbish mother are dismayed to learn Anna’s identity when she arrives. Entries from her mother’s journal, in which Katherine describe her love for a man she cannot marry, are braided with Anna’s story. Who was the father Anna never knew? Why did Katherine’s parents call him “unsuitable”? The journal contains the answers Anna desperately wants but, unaware of the journal’s existence, Anna turns to her unreliable cousin for the truth.
Katherine’s story is an overly familiar one. But Anna’s search for love and meaning in her life, apart from her family history, is touchingly real, which makes the novel difficult to put down. The Secrets of Nanreath Hall is intriguing, if not totally original, and will be enjoyed by romance readers.
