Satan's Coast

It wasn't supposed to happen---Nell Valentim expected her life to continue on "happily ever after. " But then her husband died suddenly leaving her a young widow with a fifteen-year-old stepson to care for. She felt cheated and alone---until she decided to pick up the pieces of her shattered world by taking her stepson Chris to see his family's ancestral home on the Portuguese coast.. This contemporary romance has the trademark Elsie Lee touches with a smarter than expected heroine, some suspence, romance, interesting setting.

In the 1960's and 70's the gothic novel was the book that epitomized romance. It's been cynically described as girl gets house because the main characters were a heroine who is usually somehow tied to a sinister and usually palatial home. In this book the heroine is a recently widowed fashion model. Her 15 year old step son is left in her care, and their inheritance is an estate on the coast of Portugal. Elsie Lee had a way of taking cliches and turning them inside out. Her heroines are rarely helpless or stupid. The dialogue is spritely and the story moves at a good pace.This one is well worth reading.