For a Father’s Pride
For this story we are taken back to Victorian Yorkshire in the year 1871. Here we find Daisy Fraser living with her family, which includes her father, a local baker, and her sister, who is about to be married to the son of a local landowner. On the eve of her sister’s wedding Daisy is raped by her brother-in-law to be, with the inevitable consequence. When the resulting child is born she is told that it was still-born and is promptly thrown out of the family home by her father. From then on the book relates Daisy’s life away from her family, earning her own living with the baking skills she learnt from childhood.
I have to admit that I was not totally enthralled by this book. The characters were wooden and totally predictable and the events, as they unfolded, brought no great surprises. There are historical social pointers to the age and according to the Author’s Notes, the story is based on two real families who lived in the Yorkshire Dales at this time. Diane Allen has recently been made honorary vice president of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and this is more romantic novel than historical novel.
It is the sort of book that would happily while away a long flight but would not tempt me away from other occupations.
