Hester Prynne never had it so good! The year is 1899, and
Olympia Biddeford, the headstrong daughter of a Boston
Brahmin family, has decided to test the limits of her
cloistered world. Spending the summer at her father's New
Hampshire estate, the teenage heroine of Fortune's Rocks is
entranced with the visiting salon of artists, writers, and
lawyers. She's especially captivated, however, by John
Haskell, a charismatic physician who ministers to the
blue-collar community in the nearby mill towns. This
middle-aged Good Samaritan hires Olympia to assist him as a
nurse, and their collaboration soon evolves into a fiery
love affair. Alas, it's only a matter of weeks before this
passionate exercise in managed care is exposed--with
disastrous consequences for the young, impregnated heroine.
Even her adoring father now considers her "an overplump
sixteen-year-old girl whose judgment can no longer be
trusted," and insists that she break off her
relationship:"There is nothing more to be said on this
subject," he says. She bites her lip to keep from crying out
further. She holds the arms of her chair so tightly she
later will have cramps in her fingers. She will refuse to
obey him, she thinks. She will accept his implied challenge
and set off on her own. But in the next moment, she asks
herself: How will she be able to do that? Without her
father's support, she cannot hope to survive. And if she
herself does not survive, then a child cannot live."In the
end, Anita Shreve's seventh novel is a polished, supremely
entertaining variation on Wuthering Heights, with Olympia
and Haskell sitting in for Catherine and Heathcliff. The
author did some meticulous research for her New England
background, which gives this study of one particular wayward
woman some extra historical heft. Some readers may find the
plot twists a bit pat. And despite Olympia's efforts to be
an independent woman, she overcomes her trials largely as a
result of her family's wealth and station, which takes the
edge off Shreve's feminist message. Still, Fortune's Rocks
is a romance in the classic sense of the word, and should be
enjoyed as such, unless the reader is absolutely allergic to
happy endings.--Ted Leventhal
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