The Hidden Letters
Summer 1914. A dramatic encounter by a moonlit lake brings together debutante Cordelia and Isaac, the handsome landscape gardener hired by her father to redesign his Cornish estate. Despite class differences, love blossoms as Cordelia begins to take an interest in gardening – but will the looming war tear them apart? I really enjoyed the first half of this book, with its well-developed characters and evocative descriptions of the garden.
Unfortunately once the war began, I was unable to suspend my disbelief because of the number of historical inaccuracies. The bibliography suggests Cook has done some research, but she seems to have misinterpreted much of what she has read to fit preconceived myths. There isn’t room here to list all the mistakes, but key among them is the dating. A two-minute internet search confirmed what I suspected: that the two battalions of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry sent to France in 1914 were pre-war Regulars. The first of the New Army ‘Service’ battalions raised by the DCLI only arrived in France in May 1915, due to the time it took to provide uniforms, equipment, and training.
The author also seems confused about which duties were carried out by privates and which by officers. Officers would not stand on sentry duty, but they were expected to censor the letters of their men. Their own letters, however, were left uncensored because they were trusted not to betray anything that might aid the enemy if the letters fell into the wrong hands. But here we are shown officers undergoing both sentry duty and censorship.
For me, the novel never recovered fully after this, and I found the twist ending too predictable. However, I’m sure the many readers of this author’s previous books, set in the present day, will enjoy this novel.
