3 Review(s)

This book, written in 1935, won the National Book Award for novels. The storyline is compelling, at times almost operatic in its passion, and the literary style is beautifully evocative of the sights, sounds, and scents of the New England seasons. This novel is a Galsworthian saga of the Fortune family as told by the voice of Kate Fernald, who came at age 10 with her mother to live and work at Fortune’s Folly, the family’s seaside home. She, therefore, grew up alongside Clarissa Fortune, who was fiercely and jealously protective of her brother, and Nathaniel Fortune, who had a powerful musical gift, forging a bond among them that would persist, for good or ill, throughout their lives.