cover image The Last Summer of Innocence

The Last Summer of Innocence

Linda Sole. St. Martin's Press, $19.95 (325pp) ISBN 978-0-312-07015-1

Deftly maneuvering her busy characters through a convoluted plot, Sole ( Lovers and Sinners ) demonstrates flair, imagination and a fine ability to evoke a time and place: England during WW I. Kate Linton is 16 when her mother Emma, dying of consumption, sends her to live with distant cousins, the aristocratic Redferns. The anguished girl needs all of her formidable wits to cope with the initially hostile family, which seems to pursue riding, tennis and adultery with equal vigor. In due course Kate and young Harry, heir to the property, fall irreversibly in love, but the onset of the war and a secret from the Redfern past keep them apart. Meanwhile Emma, who told Kate she was dying in order to run off with a lover, is secretly living her own eccentric and dangerous lifestyle. In due course it is discovered that Emma has betrayed Kate in more ways than one. Much of the action takes place in the lush countryside around St. Ives and in the sophisticated environs of London, settings vividly rendered by Sole. The war in France and its grotesque toll on young men is graphically rendered in this electric romance. (Feb.)