The Glass Virgin

Annabella LaGrange is the daughter of English aristocrats who have absolutely nothing in common and who loath one another. Annabella's father constantly holds his wife, Rosina, emotional hostage with Annabella,threatening to take the daughter away. When Annabella comes of age, her father Edmund LaGrange tries to marry her off to assuage for mounting debts that he has incurred. Annabella refuses to marry the handpicked suitor and all hell breaks out. Secrets that have long be kept hidden are revealed and Annabella runs off with the groom for her father's estate, Manuel Mendoza. The story is a rousing historical and though a bit overwrought at times, thoroughly enjoyable.

Annabella Lagrange has grown up as an overly protected aristocrat. She was never allowed to go outside the gates of her home Redford Hall though once she saw rioting children assault the grounds. She learned when she was younger that her parents were estranged as her father was a womanizer who lived in a different house. Her mother was a pious individual who showered religion on Annabella as if she must save her daughter's soul from the devil or her philandering husband, but never displayed one iota of affection or love towards her child. Now seventeen, Annabella's gilded cage collapses when her father finally bankrupts her mother's Rosina's glass factory. Her personal life implodes too as Annabella finds out that Rosina is not her mother; that her biological mom is a local madam that her father impregnated. Annabella begins her new life far from wealth as a farmhouse maid with only handsome Manuel Mendoza willing to help her adjust. This Edwardian tale is vintage Catherine Cookson at her best as the deceased author places her heroine in an extreme makeover in which the probability is that she will not survive. The bottom seems endless as one nasty revelation after another sends a formerly pampered Annabella into the working world. As she slowly adapts she falls in love, but her social upbringing remains part of her personal frame of reference so can she truly find happiness with a working class stiff? Though some readers will detest the myriad of sidebars that describe social conditions in Edwardian England, Ms. Cookson continues to be the best chef for cross-class historical tales of that era even several years after her death. Harriet Klausner