Act Of Love

Written by Iris Gower
Review by Sara Wilson

On her first day at work as a cleaner at the Palace theatre, Swansea, Ella Burton meets Anthony Weatherby Nichols and falls in love. She progresses rapidly from cleaning to helping run the show behind the scenes. But this blissful time is cut cruelly short by financial difficulties and a personal family tragedy. Forced to abandon the man she loves in favour of the man her father has chosen for her, Ella tries her best to be a good wife to Jolly Mortimer and stepmother to his five young daughters. She finds happiness of a kind, but her heart always remains with Anthony and the love of the theatre is never far from her thoughts. Fate takes another turn, and it seems that her dreams might just come true.

Iris Gower has a legion of fans both in Wales and elsewhere and it is easy to see why. She is a natural storyteller with a flair for drama and romance. Once again her characters leap right off the page and engage the reader in their exploits from page one. Act of Love is yet another high-class page turner.