Finished Sa 12/29/18
This is a hardback novel that Janny lent to me. It's most definitely a Romance Novel, but it's beautifully written and the story is fantastically engaging.
Set in 1899 thru the first decade of the 20th century.
Fortune's Rocks- a beach area in New Hampshire near the border with Maine. This is just a few miles from Ely Falls which was a mill down filled with poor workers and foreigners.
A love affair between fifteen year old Olympia Biddeford and John Haskell, 41 yrs. old with four children and married to Catherine.
Haskell is a doctor and has written a collection of essays. This is why Olympia's father has invited him to Fortune's Rocks. This is their vacation home and Olympia's family lives on Beacon Hill near Boston.
They meet on the first day of the summer solstice in June, 1944; Fourth of July there is a party and John and Olympia go to the hospital in Ely Falls.
The affair is discovered on August 10, 1899. The party for Olympia's birthday. The house used to be a Catholic nunnery and John and Olympia were making love in the chapel area. Her father had given Olympia a telescope and a poet who was at the party suspected the affair, and he dislikes Olympia. He aims the telescope at the chapel window and asks Catherine, John's wife, to take a look. This is the last time that John and Olympia see each other for four years.
Olympia is sent to The Hastings Seminary For Females when she learns that she's pregnant. She is sent to a family with four young men and a widow. This man comes on to Olympia and she leaves and decides to return to Fortune's Rocks and live in the house that has been vacant since the day of the party.
Rufus Philbrick is a wealthy hotel owner and friend to Olympia. She contacts him (he was at the first party when she met John Haskell) with her plan to sue for custody of the child that was taken from her at birth. She maintains that she was given laundnum and was unable to make a real decision. The court will later agree.
She decides to try and keep her son. She learns that his name is Pierre Haskell and has been in foster care with a French couple. They work in the mills.
She engages the legal service of Payson Tucker. She wins the suit because the woman tells the court that the boy will be working in the mills when he is only ten. She sees nothing wrong with this and then the court believes that Olympia and her family could provide a much better future for the child.
At the end of the novel John and Olympia are married and John has a practice among the poor of Ely Falls and the house has been changed into a house for pregnant unwed girls. They can stay and receive services as long as they agree to keep their babies.
As kind of an epilogue, Olympia learns that the French woman and foster mother to Pierre is dying and her husband is on death's door. Since Olympia is already the legal guardian of the child she agrees to take ten year old Pierre. He is brought to the house and is fascinated with the telescope. Rufus Philbrick sets this up.
From the book's page on wikipedia-
"Fortune's Rocks is a 1999 romance novel by bestselling author Anita Shreve. It is chronologically the first novel in Shreve's tetralogy to be set in a large beach house on the New Hampshire coast that used to be a convent. It is followed by Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife and Body Surfing.
In the summer of 1899, Olympia Biddeford, a privileged, intelligent and confident 15-year-old who is vacationing with her family at Fortune's Rocks, falls in love with a married 41-year-old doctor and journalist, John Haskell. Their passionate affair, and subsequent discovery, produces a son and leads to far-reaching consequences that span several decades.
The novel is loosely based on the seaside neighborhood of Fortunes Rocks, located in Biddeford, Maine."
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