Theirs Was the Kingdom

This is book two of the three-book Swan Saga. It was as advertised, and I was pleased to find it.

This is the second of Delderfield's Adam Swann during the late 1800s and features his children growing into their various interests including the family haulier business established during the British industrialization age 1860+ Adam's wife, Henrietta, had taken the business reins while Adam fought in a war and lost his leg. Now she is attending their 9 children while they choose schools and vocations.

As with all Delderfield books, this is a real winner--a hard to put down book.

Adam Swann, founder of transport giant Swann-on-Wheels, sits beside his aged father's deathbed as this sequel to God Is an Englishman begins. His family with wife Henrietta is growing up - indeed, his two oldest children have already left the nest. That leaves six at home. Adam and his beloved Hetty have their hands full with the challenges of rearing the rest of their brood, and of continuing to provide help and guidance to those they've already launched. For Adam there's also the challenge of guiding the business he built from nothing, using a stolen ruby necklace as his starting capital, through an era in which technological advances are driving social change at a sometimes dizzying rate. Does this book take place in the 20th Century? Not at all. It plays out between 1878 and 1889. Adam Swann is a surprisingly complex character, a man of business who nevertheless cares deeply about the social ills of his Victorian world. His relationship with Henrietta, and with his company's regional managers (whom he considers his other family - not at all the typical attitude for an employer of that era!), drive many of the story's threads. The rest are taken up by the Swann children's passages into adulthood. This richly detailed and wonderfully authentic historical novel can be read on its own without difficulty, as I can attest because I read it without first reading God Is an Englishman. I'm now eager to do that, however!

If you enjoyed 'God is an Englishman' by the same author, you will want to continue reading about the saga of Adam Swann and especially his family in this sequel. Both novels are what one might label `industrial fiction,' or books that treat England's economic transformation during the 19th century and its social consequences, along the lines of a Dickens novel. Although I was attracted to read both novels for this reason, even if one isn't interested in the economic and social aspects, the story itself, based on the interpersonal relationships of a varied list of middle and lower class characters and especially the entrepreneurial Adam Swann, is intriguing enough to keep reading to the end. And `Theirs was the Kingdom' was the stronger of the two novels in this sense, especially in developing how Adam's children reached adulthood, the career paths they followed, and how they came to meet their spouses. If you want to learn the basic story line, see the reviews for 'God is an Englishman.'