Elvi Rhodes

I have read 4 of this author's other books and have enjoyed them all. This one left me a bit wanting and I didn't enjoy it as much as the others. The author tends to write books about the period between the late 1800's - early 1900's.

Back Cover Blurb:
Although Madeleine Bates and Sophia Parkinson were both eighteen years old, the contrast between their two lives could not have been greater.
Madeleine - daughter of a tyrannical and bigoted father who worked in the Parkinson mill - spent her time either at chapel, or working a fourteen hour day as housemaid at Mount Royd, a victim of Sophia's whims and occasional spitefulness.
But Madeleine - who beneath her obedient and dutiful exterior was volatile, strong-willed, and rebellious - was not the kind of young woman you could overlook, and when Leon Bonneau - younger son of a French wool baron - came to stay at Mount Royd he was, against his own inclinations, startled into noticing the dignity and beauty of the young housemaid.
From that moment on the lives of everyone at Mount Royd began to change and Madeleine stepped forward into a new and challenging future.… (mere)

I just loved this book and couldn't put it down.

Back Cover Blurb:
She was twenty three when her husband died, leaving her with three small daughters and nothing else. The day came when she was so hungry, so tired and worried, that she was reduced to going to Akersfield market and asking Dick Fletcher for help - Dick who had loved her years ago, who was now running his own successful market garden - and who was engaged to some else.
It was Dick who took her back home to her village in the Dales, gave her a job, helped her to gain her self-respect again.
But the time came when she knew she must stand on her own - make a life for herself and her daughters without him, and use all her courage and determination to become successful.
It was to take many years, and all the tragedy of the 1914 war before Eleanor was able to repay Dick Fletcher for the great debt she owed him.… (mere)