The Old House at Railes - Hardcover

Mary Pearce, a Londoner by birth, now lives in the relative peace of Gloucestershire. Her writing career began with the appearance of short-stories in magazines since when she has become the author of nine highly successful novels.

Pearce (The Two Farms, 1986, etc.)--evocator of 19-century England's rapidly industrializing, erratically democratizing rural villages and towns--again chronicles the rise of a working-class lad of pluck and luck; the constancy of initially unattainable love; and the wreckage caused by greed and ambition out of scale with the place and the times. Fifteen-year-old Martin Cox's life was changed the day he accompanied his miserly, mean-spirited father Rufus, stonemason and quarryman, for the last bit of work on the fine estate of Newton Railes. The house's impecunious, genial owner, John Tarrent, waffling on the bill, offered Martin (at Rufus's hint) tutoring with his twins, Hugh and Ginny, and the ``tutor,'' sweet and sensible elder daughter Katharine. Rufus, whose own children, Martin and Nan, lived in squalor and near starvation, expected learning to help the business. But Martin is captivated by the learning, the kindly people, the beautiful surroundings--and by Katharine. Then three deaths mark an era's end: Hugh dies in a fire, John soon after; and Rufus is killed in an accident, leaving, to Martin's rage, a near-fortune. Martin's rise is steady as he expands the stone-and-quarry business. Meanwhile, Katharine has married proud cloth mill-owner Charles, whose dangerous overreach costs him his mill and Newton Railes. Humiliated, he leaves for America and seems to have disappeared for good. Martin buys the house at Railes and offers Katharine a face-saving job as housekeeper. Three years later, though, the happy household is destroyed when Charles returns--wilder than ever. Still, there's a discreetly happy ending. Set to the rhythm of the looms and the pounding excitement of enterprise: a comfortable tale, at a country pace, of virtue rewarded and gentle pleasures. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.