Stranger at Wildings

When a young girl is turned out of her home, she runs away. She is lucky when a kind man from the circus takes her into his family. She becomes "Chantal" a trapezee artist, and is content with her new life. After she finds Martin, a man who can not remember his past, beside the river, mystery begins to flow. Then there is a dire warning from a palm reader, Chantal's trapezee breaking, and Chantal's past reaching out to claim her. Who cut her trapezee? Why does it seem like someone is trying to kill her? Madeleine Brent, female pseudonym for novelist Peter O'Donnell, weaves the story with intrigue always keeping the reader on the hook. His well written books don't need sex to keep you reading. Capable, intelligent heroines who have been raised outside the norm of English society usually find themselves surrounded by challenges that they did not anticipate or create. Madeleine Brent is a great author to read.

How I adore Brent's books! And this one is one of the best. We get the plucky English heroine who as a child suffers calamity at the age of thirteen and is headed for the orphanage but ends up running away to the circus and becoming an accomplished trapeze artist. I was surprised by how interested I was in reading about trapezing and about circus life at the turn of the last century. I detest circuses. We find her in Austria and Hungary at first, learn about her daily life and adopted trapeze family, encounter various people along the way, including the hero and villain, and gradually learn about her past childhood and birth as incidents unfold. I never knew what was going to happen next nor what had happened in the past. Very exciting. And just which personable fellow was the hero and which the the enemy? Hmmm. She chose the name Chantal but who was she actually? Hmmm. And those trapeze skills sure come in handy when one needs to make an escape. Never a dull moment for Chantal or the reader.

Madeleine Brent, aka, Petel O'donnell, introduces us to Chantal in this, his third novel. Our heroine, after running away from a daunting past, joins the circus as a trapeze artist. She's settled into her new life, enjoys her quixotic circus friends, and is, generally, happy. A dark cloud emerges, however, with the entrance of Martin. He's a man with a shady background and a bad case of amnesia. It's left to Chantal to unravel the mysteries of her past, test her faith in friends, find the real bad guys, overcome troubling emotional tendencies and, finally, discover who she really is.This is classic Brent, with familiar story format but new twists and turns! I just love the geography also; this time we're in Hungary before getting shipped into England. Another great read from the master of Gothic Romance/Suspense.Oh- and this novel was originally published as, "Kirby's Changeling", but is typically available only to the consumer willing to pay exorbitant rates!

I was seaching for the only Madeline Brent book I hadn't read when I discovered I had read it. KIRKBY'S CHANGELING is the English title for STRANGER AT WILDINGS. STRANGER AT WILDINGS is about an unhappy English girl who's life is changed when she runs away and joins a circus. While there she works as a trapeze artist and meets a mysterious man named Martin who has amnesia. Five years after she joins the circus she finds out she's not who she thought she was and goes to live with some strange English relatives. This book is similar to Brent's other books in that a girl grows up in an unusual place where she learns an unusual talent, meets a strange man, goes back to England, finds out about her mysterious past, meets the man again, and uses her unusual talent to save the day.

I have just realized that "Kirkby's changeling" is actually "Stranger at Wildings". Why it was published under two different names I don't know. Chantal, the lead character is "Stranger at Wildings" is the child of John Kirkby, and was switched at birth, and is thus referred to several times in "Stranger" as "Kirkby's changeling".