Annette Motley

oooh, where to start.....As a historical romance, it's not too bad, but as the story went on, more things began to annoy me. She gets raped, kidnapped (sometimes twice in a day), runs around on horseback around most of the middle east, is considered to be of high enough rank, and yet never sees a physican? Never gets a cut or a bruise, headache or cramps? And she has all these men running around providing 20 or 30 soldiers at a time, with no consideration of how they were going to paid or fed, and no apparent concern on anyone's part that she's a sodding hazard to everyone she's around as everyone seems to get killed everytime she goes out (and STILL no physician?!). I'd consider her cursed and jixed and refuse to go anywhere near her for my own safety if nothing else. And considering that at the start of the story, her farm is supposed to be in debt to the local money lender, she blythly goes off on the crusades, without an apparent care in the world, and doesnt worry about the place being there when she gets back. Bah!… (mere)

Sigh..Lady Eden. And Tristan. This is one of the first Historical Fiction books I ever read in my life which is why I think of it and smile even though let's face it, as anyone who read this knows, it isn't the best book in the world.

Still it was fun to read this even though I was but a young slip of a girl then and I remember thinking that everything that could happen to Eden happened. And yet still she stood strong. Maybe she could teach all the rest of us how she did it.

Anyway, this is in my "want to read again" category, purely out of girlhood fondness.… (mere)

Two years after her husband Stephen departed their estate to "take up the cross" and join the Third Crusade, Lady Eden of Hawkhurst is assaulted and her home and lands threatened by a nearby landowner. Unwilling to suffer further abuse or wait passively any longer, she resolves to rescue herself by riding to Winchester to appeal to the queen for assistance. In Winchester Castle, she is welcomed by Eleanor of Aquitaine and her ladies and, further, invited to travel with them to seek out the crusaders and, with luck, her missing husband.

I sought out this book at the recommendation of author Marina Fiorati, listed among her favorite historical fiction novels, and I have to admit I was dubious upon first glancing at the very 1970s romance cover art. Though there is undeniably a romantic element, I found it to be less a romance than a tale of adventure to places unknown and exotic at a time when women were unlikely to have the means, authority or social station to do so. Recommended, if you can find it -- I had to request an inter-library loan out of state.… (mere)